This is a great opportunity to tell people about Godot, a free open source engine that has been killing it lately.
Here’s link to it, https://godotengine.org/
I’m a dad with a full time job and 2 toddlers. If I wanted to dip my toes into game development for the first time and I wanted to use Godot, what kind of project should I do first? Something that’s great for starting out and learning the absolute basics.
As typical as it is for the current indie game dev climate, making a ‘Vampire Survivors’ type game is probably a really good starting point for game development. 2D games are somewhat easier to make than 3D ones, so a 2D roguelike could be fun (but get’s very complex very quickly) or a old-school Zelda styled game would also be pretty cool in my opinion while remaining fairly simple.
Here’s are a couple other avenues to learn off the top of my head:
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Follow along with one or two of the large amount of tutorials they have for the engine and adding new features and gameplay mechanics to them when you feel like it.
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Think of a cool but simple idea and try to execute it yourself through trial and error, referencing the online docs and asking questions to the Godot game dev community.
It can be super daunting as there is a lot to learn. Try to learn by working on something that you yourself think is fun and that’ll keep you more motivated :)
If you have some coding knowledge, this series of videos was amazing: https://youtu.be/mAbG8Oi-SvQ?si=Tyy2hjrdrvafSo6z
Not everything he does is right and some things he doesn’t even understand that well, but it gives you a good idea into everything you’ll need and you can then quickly learn how to expand from that.
Shoutout to Bevy as well. It’s not as user friendly or polished as Godot but it’s a lot more powerful. If you’re a talented game dev I’m sure you could do some amazing things with Bevy.
Bevy is a very different kind of beast. It’s basically “here’s the ECS, have fun!” while it rides into the sunset.
My next project will use bevy, but mostly because its API is so ridiculously small that I can map it entirely into my own engine (which then exposes the ECS through my own API). That would be a lifetime’s task with Unity (don’t know enough about Godot to say definitely, but I bet it’s the same, since it has the same architecture).
I would have used it if they didn’t focus so much on their own GDScript instead of keeping C# support.
RIP Unity. First they partnered with Ironsource. Who are the people behind InstallCore it’s a wrapper for bundling software installations. It tricks people into installing enough browser toolbars and other bloat to hurt their PCs. Windows Defender and MalwareBytes blocks it. Now Unity does this shit.
Godot FTW
The enshittification of the tech industry continues…who’s next? Place your bets.
As soon as AV2/H.266 becomes standard, i’d say Youtube would be at risk.
Edit: Added AV2 to my comment.
I’m not saying that AV2/H.266 would make Youtube worse.
I’m implying AV2/H.266 would allow us to migrate to a platform other than Youtube.
Edit: Added AV2 to my comment
Wikipedia incorporates pay-to-win mechanics, lootboxes, microtransactions and cosmetics. There will also be a convoluted crafting system with decaying materials and several incompatible currencies for every purpose imaginable.
And that’s how Unreal become a monopoly in 3d game development
