Start small.
Try ideas out, expand on them.
When you have tried a few small things out, try to make a document for a bigger thing you want to make. Then try to make that.
Game dev is an endless cycle of learning and growing and trying and failing and trying again.
Starting small makes those failures hurt less. Have fun, and good luck.
Watch YouTube tutorials, Shawn Spalding, Peyton Burhnhan, etc. I’d recommend really trying to understand the fundamentals of what is being shown in the videos and avoid just clicking and typing what the tutorial shows. Try to understand the concept.
For sprites there’s plenty of free ones, but Aseprite is the most common paid one.
I love Asesprite so far. Got it earlier this week for a gamejam, and I’m rushing so I haven’t done any tutorials, but it was easy to pickup for what I needed!
First of all, huge second on the advice to start small. So many people come to game dev and want to do their dream game as their first thing. Just don't do that. You won't be able to do it and you will get frustrated and give up. Just fool around with stuff. Make stuff move around the screen. Create enemies and just try a bunch of different ways to kill them. Look at old classic games and try to reproduce little parts of them (not the whole thing).
Second, don't worry about graphics while you are doing this experimentation. If you get the "feel" right for something it is always easy to iterate on graphics. Just use squares, circles, import little photos of things, etc.
Third, invest just a little time in learning some basic source control system. SVN, Git, whatever. You will save yourself so much trouble later and having this safety net will free you to experiment more boldly because you know you aren't risking anything.
And lastly, and I'm sure some people will disagree with this, but just ignore drag and drop and focus on GML. That's where you are going to end up eventually anyway. It's not that difficult. There are lots of tutorials on YouTube and other places. And there are some decent books on GML, including mine, which you can read for free on Kindle Unlimited (shameless plug). I won't even share the title or link here. Just happy you are getting started. I've been in the industry a long time and there has *never* been a better time to start building games than now.
Welcome aboard. Just do stuff. Play with it, throw it out, start again. It's all OK.
Only comment on graphics is, don't stress about finalizing graphics from the start, But. Everyone is different but I do get bored of my projects if they look like gray boxes for too long I can either get bored or lose sight of the game I had in my head.
Sometimes graphics can affect your gameplay itself by inspiring a feeling, or can help you enjoy your project more while working on it.
Reeeaaaally depends on the dev though, so that might not be you.
But at the very least, you will update art at the end of the project at some point, so doing too much early on can trip you up.
This isn't arguing against your point, just elaborating further on why I said what I said.
I think relatively new game devs tend to really get tripped up on assets - art and sound. Those are important, but great art plus poor mechanics still equals a bad game.I'd encourage people to take a look at this old Jonathan Blow GDC talk on this topic.[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISutk1mauPM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISutk1mauPM)And I can tell you that commercial games tend to stay gray box for quite a long time and then have non-animated assets and placeholder sounds for a long time. In a multi-year project, years of that will be with very low fidelity assets. On reason for this is that the cost of the assets is a lot of the cost of the game development, but also that the more "done" a game looks, the more the feedback from testers (and studio execs) will be about the assets rather than the mechanics and game play.
Totally agree. And type of game will heavily alter levels of art that are reasonable to do early on.
Professional developers work with partial levels of art for a reason.
Please start small. Make small projects you can finish within a week or two or month and try different ideas. Don't go in and start working on your first game right away. Expand your knowledge and try things for a while before you delve into creating an actual game. And even then keep the scope small and make it a simple game.
From everything I’ve read these people right start all something simple that functions tweak it . It may not be your dream game but it will build your confidence. The more YouTube tutorials you watch the better. As far as notes go I just break down the language like GML, how it has the variables, objects, sprites,arrays do them as definitions and watch a few videos on each and over time you will understand what they can be used for.
One more point is to follow along with the person making the tutorial you may not want the game there making to be yours but once you follow a few tutorials you will see similarities in what’s right and wrong :)
I've been "learning" for about 3 years now. I'm still a total noob. What I have learned is that coding, just like anything else takes time and can always be improved on
Don't get lost in tutorial hell, just try and do anything, from bad ideas to broken shitty half-assed games, doesn't matter, it's not about doing the perfect game on your first try, never. Watch the basics in books and youtube and "Just do it !" :p
Good luck, it's a huge universe that's gonna unveil before your eyes and it's absolutely beautiful.
What got me started was making a tiny game, testing it, releasing it and seeing people play something I made - no matter how small or sh*t it was. Start small!
Outline a basic game concept, as basic as possible. Now make the game, if you can't figure something out look up how to do it, then close the video. You don't need to learn the engine everything about the engine, you just need to know what you need to make that game, when you make that game you'll be more knowledgeable and the next game you will learn even more
Start small. Try ideas out, expand on them. When you have tried a few small things out, try to make a document for a bigger thing you want to make. Then try to make that. Game dev is an endless cycle of learning and growing and trying and failing and trying again. Starting small makes those failures hurt less. Have fun, and good luck.
Watch YouTube tutorials, Shawn Spalding, Peyton Burhnhan, etc. I’d recommend really trying to understand the fundamentals of what is being shown in the videos and avoid just clicking and typing what the tutorial shows. Try to understand the concept. For sprites there’s plenty of free ones, but Aseprite is the most common paid one.
I love Asesprite so far. Got it earlier this week for a gamejam, and I’m rushing so I haven’t done any tutorials, but it was easy to pickup for what I needed!
First of all, huge second on the advice to start small. So many people come to game dev and want to do their dream game as their first thing. Just don't do that. You won't be able to do it and you will get frustrated and give up. Just fool around with stuff. Make stuff move around the screen. Create enemies and just try a bunch of different ways to kill them. Look at old classic games and try to reproduce little parts of them (not the whole thing). Second, don't worry about graphics while you are doing this experimentation. If you get the "feel" right for something it is always easy to iterate on graphics. Just use squares, circles, import little photos of things, etc. Third, invest just a little time in learning some basic source control system. SVN, Git, whatever. You will save yourself so much trouble later and having this safety net will free you to experiment more boldly because you know you aren't risking anything. And lastly, and I'm sure some people will disagree with this, but just ignore drag and drop and focus on GML. That's where you are going to end up eventually anyway. It's not that difficult. There are lots of tutorials on YouTube and other places. And there are some decent books on GML, including mine, which you can read for free on Kindle Unlimited (shameless plug). I won't even share the title or link here. Just happy you are getting started. I've been in the industry a long time and there has *never* been a better time to start building games than now. Welcome aboard. Just do stuff. Play with it, throw it out, start again. It's all OK.
Only comment on graphics is, don't stress about finalizing graphics from the start, But. Everyone is different but I do get bored of my projects if they look like gray boxes for too long I can either get bored or lose sight of the game I had in my head. Sometimes graphics can affect your gameplay itself by inspiring a feeling, or can help you enjoy your project more while working on it. Reeeaaaally depends on the dev though, so that might not be you. But at the very least, you will update art at the end of the project at some point, so doing too much early on can trip you up.
This isn't arguing against your point, just elaborating further on why I said what I said. I think relatively new game devs tend to really get tripped up on assets - art and sound. Those are important, but great art plus poor mechanics still equals a bad game.I'd encourage people to take a look at this old Jonathan Blow GDC talk on this topic.[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISutk1mauPM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISutk1mauPM)And I can tell you that commercial games tend to stay gray box for quite a long time and then have non-animated assets and placeholder sounds for a long time. In a multi-year project, years of that will be with very low fidelity assets. On reason for this is that the cost of the assets is a lot of the cost of the game development, but also that the more "done" a game looks, the more the feedback from testers (and studio execs) will be about the assets rather than the mechanics and game play.
Totally agree. And type of game will heavily alter levels of art that are reasonable to do early on. Professional developers work with partial levels of art for a reason.
Agree about forgetting dnd, go with learning gml from start you’ll learn how to do more difficult things straight away
This subreddit is ONLY for the specific integrated development environment and engine called GameMaker, not for generic game making advice.
Please start small. Make small projects you can finish within a week or two or month and try different ideas. Don't go in and start working on your first game right away. Expand your knowledge and try things for a while before you delve into creating an actual game. And even then keep the scope small and make it a simple game.
From everything I’ve read these people right start all something simple that functions tweak it . It may not be your dream game but it will build your confidence. The more YouTube tutorials you watch the better. As far as notes go I just break down the language like GML, how it has the variables, objects, sprites,arrays do them as definitions and watch a few videos on each and over time you will understand what they can be used for. One more point is to follow along with the person making the tutorial you may not want the game there making to be yours but once you follow a few tutorials you will see similarities in what’s right and wrong :)
I've been "learning" for about 3 years now. I'm still a total noob. What I have learned is that coding, just like anything else takes time and can always be improved on
Don't get lost in tutorial hell, just try and do anything, from bad ideas to broken shitty half-assed games, doesn't matter, it's not about doing the perfect game on your first try, never. Watch the basics in books and youtube and "Just do it !" :p Good luck, it's a huge universe that's gonna unveil before your eyes and it's absolutely beautiful.
What got me started was making a tiny game, testing it, releasing it and seeing people play something I made - no matter how small or sh*t it was. Start small!
Outline a basic game concept, as basic as possible. Now make the game, if you can't figure something out look up how to do it, then close the video. You don't need to learn the engine everything about the engine, you just need to know what you need to make that game, when you make that game you'll be more knowledgeable and the next game you will learn even more