How to ACTUALLY get into Gamedev

Many people ask me how to get into gamedev or how they can get better at it. This video is somewhat of a broad guide to get you through the hard parts of learning gamedev.

Wishlist Yawnoc:

20% off Tabnine:
Tabnine no longer provides free access to students.

Patreon:

My Projects:

Discord:

Potato Tier Patrons:
Keill
Eivl
David Graey
Agent Effe
Miggy

Videos Mentioned:
Why I'm Glad I Didn't Use a Game Engine:
Pygame's Performance - What You Need to Know:
How to Code (almost) Any Feature:
I learned Godot in 48 hours [Timelapse]:
A Programmer's Guide to Pixel Art:

Timestamps:
0:00 - Introduction
3:02 - Choosing Your Software
6:03 - Start Learning with Tutorials
6:54 - Tutorial Hell
8:45 - Early Projects & More Learning
10:20 - Grow Skills with Game Jams
12:36 - Continue Improving / Selling Games
13:23 - Final Notes / Outro

#gamedev #gamedevelopment

[sdkn]

One thing that I’d recommend for people who are stuck in tutorial hell is to choose a tutorial series and after every episode, try coding something on your own that’s related to, but slightly more complex than what they did in the video. For example if they implemented a one-frame jump animation in the video, try implementing one with multiple frames by yourself. This is still a pretty approachable method, but it’ll help you build up a wider toolkit for when you’re ready to work more on your own!

[rickrouse]

copying is an excellent way to learn things, so be unafraid to copy

what's going to happen is you will want to make small changes so you start experimenting with what you copied and boom you start learning that way. dissecting, swapping, experimenting, putting things back together is learning and it all starts because you're a copycat :)

[ayylmao.mp]

I think the first project should always be something simple and classic like pong / snake / tile breaker, so you have a fixed scope and know what needs to be done. Finishing something small and clearly defined will teach you so much and give you both a concrete image of the development process and motivation for doing your own ideas as you know you can finish a game. Do not get stuck in a loop of side projects that never get finished.

[Noone]

From the introduction I can tell you get it. I’m not asking someone to teach me game dev in 15 minutes, I want to learn what are effective strategies to learn as well as good lessons learned so that I can avoid those mistakes or at the very least, recognize them when they happen to quickly adjust. Love it

[ivragi]

I escaped Tutorial hell and ended up in No idea wasteland. Here lies dosens of projects with single game mechanics, some design docs with broad descriptions of big games, some ruins reminding me of finished game jams and big empty nothing ahead. I just have no idea how to finish my first commertial project.

[smellyfrog]

A good way to avoid the tutorial hell problem (or any problem at all) is to think about what you can do with your current knowledge instead of trying to make something that you have absolutely zero idea how to make.

When I first made the prototype of Project Froggo I didn't search for a million tutorials on how to code grappling hook because I want to make this specific feature so much. I made it because I was bored at my math class and suddenly realized I can use trigonometry to make characters move in any direction. Based on that, I realized that I can probably utilze this to make some form of grappling hook mechanic.

[quentinnorthern]

The thing about a lot of tutorials that I've noticed (depending on the engine) is that it can be pretty difficult to find a good tutorial that actually explains what they're doing instead of just telling you what to type and moving too fast for you to understand. Also a lot of them are either really outdated, or the uploader just decides to vanish into the shadow realm halfway through the series. Pretty frustrating if you ask me.

[qidu]

I was stuck in tutorial hell for about 2.5 years and I’ve finally started making my own stuff without needing tutorials! I just needed to pause the video after a while and predict what code will be used to fix a problem and take notes for later

[BrainDeadXX]

5:30 Visual scripting is also an option, I started learning unreal engine really quickly because of its blueprints. Visual scripting means you get these blocks of code that you can connect together to get whatever result you want. It may seem weird but it's actually really powerful.

[Rovsau]

Your video is worthy of its title.
I'm learning through deep dives on individual features. Very slow, but...
Recently impressed myself by making a surface/ground check OnCollision script from scratch.
Officially out of tutorial hell \o/

[aviFlashbacks]

There’s a really good tutorial series I found somewhere about making a colony survival game in godot, think rimworld, and the only reason I think it’s so good is that despite it being so slow, and going over maybe 10-20 lines of code in 5 minutes, he actually goes in depth to explain how or why what works, and how it interacts with the rest of the code
Most tutorials I’ve seen for game development just try to put as much code in as possible, and just barely go over how it works, or just show you it and not tell you about it.

[jeremybrett]

Thanks so much man. I'm just getting interested in the building blocks of game development right now, but I haven't been sure how to really get started, especially when it comes to coding. So having some options to actually start with will be a big help!

[xeviusUsagi]

"Tutorial hell"
well, I'm happy I ascaped it really soon.
and the main cause for it was *LASERS*
when I started I wanted a turret that shot lasers and the last thing I thought is that I would be doing some trigonometry and find out that lasers are just a strip of like 6 pixels...
yup, just 6 pixels, you then use a program (an iteration) to put them row after row and create the laser and that's how they stop once hitting a wall.

and well the tutorial explained only how to make the player shoot it, not turrets, and well lets just say I had to spend 5 days figuring out.
1) let turret shoot laser
2) make laser align with turret barrel
3) make laser stop with barrel and not follow player
4) Make laser start at the position of the turret that fired it, instead of all going to the same turret.
5) somehow all laser used the same direction to hit player not counting for where they where so if a laser was above player it would shoot down, and if another was under the player it shot down as well.
6) give turret an animation before shooting player
7) stop laser from instantly deleting a player on hit
8) for the love of god why do I have to do trigonometry (wasn't actually hard I'm just dumb)

and well yeah it was quite the journey, and since I had only me and the game engine manual I had to figure it out by my self, and it was a nice experience...
now I will forever look with admiration any game that has a laser in it

[calebanderson]

A friend and I are currently working on our first game. In order to avoid the tutorial issue, I taught myself how to use the software and look things up as I go if I can’t find out how to do it myself. Although it may take longer, I retain way more information now.

[Baekstrom]

Stop watching videos like this and get busy coding. You are procrastinating, and so am I.

[brightnemesis]

5:15 that whole game ??!!! Man you're awesome ! I came to game development with the inspiration of you and hope I do well. I started with c++ but I went python (coz I thought it was cool) and am currently learning the language. Nice video !

[AnAppleInABox]

I've been in tutorial hell. I was really just copying code. In the end I had a game but I had no idea how it worked and I had no idea how to add new features. I've started learning code again a week ago and I already know more then I did back then.

[poisonapleproduction]

I’m working on my first game in gamemaker studio 2, and so far the language has been extremely easy to learn. They have functions for almost everything, so you don’t need to do a lot of math. The main problem I’ve had to deal with though is whether or not I’m doing things in the most efficient way possible. It always seems like there is a better way to do stuff

[monga]

Ok so I am currently going through tutorial hell and a problem that I noticed I had was that sometimes I didn't really understand what I was writing. So, what I have started doing is writing down the function of each line of code and dissecting what makes them work. After I started doing this I found that I am able to use what I learn in the tutorials outside of the tutorial project.

[dragontailsb]

I was kinda stuck in tutorial hell for a little bit but got out fast by making my own game and using 100 different tutorials to tell me how to do it. This made me learn what all the different things were actually doing and not just copy the code line for line.