My take on “RPG Core Combat Creator” course from GameDevTv
Ben Tristem’s Complete C# Unity Developer: Learn to Code Making Games was probably the most important online course I have ever taken. In my life I had several adventures with coding. But after finishing Complete C# Unity Developer I decided that I would be seriously focusing on learning to code. Having taken a few other courses, I decided to enroll to RPG Core Combat Creator. It is a intermediate course by Ben Tristem and Rick Davidson.
The course is by no means easy and requires an intermediate knowledge of Unity and C#. I was certainly not an intermediate coder when I attempted it. To manage the increasing difficulty I would often take a break form the course to take other courses that would fill in the blanks in my knowledge. In fact during the 3 months it took me to finish the course I managed to squeeze in 4 minor courses on programming (2 on YouTube and 2 on Udemy).
Please note, that after I have completed the course an updated version of the course came out with a new tutor replacing Ben, but I yet have to try it. Any comparisons I make in this post (and the following articles) shall refer to the “pre-update” version of RPG Core Combat Creator.
The final product
By the end of RPG Core Combat Creator I had a product very similar to that of the tutors. Please check their Udemy profile or GameDev.tv to get a feel of what the course offers. The mechanics of my final version were identical. However, I decided that I wanted to push the project a bit further. I also wanted to check how much in control of the code I was. So I refactored the code heavily and rewrote many of the core mechanics. Below is a quick comparison of features between the two versions:
| Original version | My version | |
| Movement | – click to move, based on RayCasting | – additional dodge mechanics using movement buttons |
| Combat | – mathematical, based on “time to attack” | – physical, based on weapon colliders – collision and destructible environment items – animation logic for combos and “tired” animations |
| Health and stamina system | – standard health based system | – every action uses stamina – rest action to replenish health and stamina |
| Armor system | – N/A | – selectable list of armor types – hit sounds based on selected armor type |
Unfortunately, I do not possess the initial version of the game anymore. As an inexperience programmer, I started implementing all the changes on the “living organism”. I slowly transformed the course material into what it is today. It is a shame, as running both versions alongside each other could be quite interesting. Gameplay from the finished demo of my game is available here:
In the following articles I will provide a quick write-up of some of the features and refactors I introduced into the code. I will start in a few days with movement mechanics.
My rating of the RPG Core Combat Creator course
The crucial question is “Would I recommend this course”? This is a bit tricky, because the version I followed has been currently replaced with and updated and improved one. From what I have seen Sam (the new instructor) is very likeable and is an expert. If I finish the updated course I will certainly provide a write-up on the differences and my experience with the new version.
As for the legacy version, I would call it one of the best learning experiences in my life. I had so much fun and the whole process boosted my coding skill greatly. I need to point out, however, that I was constantly doing the “additional reading” provided by the tutors. As already stated a few paragraphs earlier, if some aspects of coding were too difficult I would go as far as taking additional courses in-between.
One of the key points of the course was the focus on refactoring. A few times during the whole process we would go back to an already established, working piece of code (e.g. movement controller) and rework it. The purpose of this was to make the code cleaner and adaptable to newly added functionality. This was, in fact, a key learning experience. It gave me great confidence and control of the code base. Without it I may not have been able to introduce the features I did later (and which I will demonstrate in the next articles).
All in all, I would rate the course a solid 9.5/10, and the updated version may be at least as good.
Thanks for your help and for writing this post. It’s been great.