As I’m into Game Development almost 4 months , I’m noticing how much knowledge I’m lacking and is needed when doing game project .
From Gimp, Blender needed as making adjustments, tweaking around colors ,sizes , create simple poly terrain and still so much to learn .
But finally I can do really quickly basic of game mechanics without following tutorials .
Also I realise when I come across idea which I like to execute I’m trying to figure out myself, mostly just end up asking here anyway 
.
How do you approach an ideas if you haven’t done them before , if it’s related to type of nodes you not used ?
Some tips to avoid being discouraged or overwhelmed by lot of things which need to be learned in order to create solid feel of game ?
First I have a good read of the documentation. Then I create a new project, build the most minimal example scene I can, and just try out using the new node as best I can. Then back to the docs, then perhaps a tutorial, some forum posts about it, depends on the questions that are raised really as I play with the new node.
For instance I was using an animation tree node for the first time. So I started a test project, built a test scene with a couple of animations for a basic character with basic movement controls. And when all that was working as expected, started with the animation tree node.
By doing that I can add in as many input controls as I like to simulate in game events. Like if the player died, when I press D, the player in my test scene dies.
Focus on your successes. Look at all the things you can do now that you could not do before. It is a long journey, but one step at a time, focus on the next step, not the vast mountain yet to go in the distance.
Also, learning new things is fabulous. Just don’t beat yourself up if your first attempt is a bit sub-par, of course it will be, you are probably judging yourself against things created by people that have been doing it for years! Also, don’t expect to be an expert in everything, that is why so many free and paid for resources are available. And finally, when building a prototype, don’t focus too much on the details. No, you don’t want the Godot icon as your main character, but equally you do not want a finished, stylised, polished and perfectly animated sprite either for your prototype. Polishing comes later.
Good luck with your game!
2 Likes
As someone who is also new to game development, I personally found that the feeling of being overwhelmed is very strong in the beginning, especially if you’ve never done anything like this before. But surprisingly, this feeling dissipated fairly quickly as I kept learning. With every little bit of knowledge gained, I grew more confident. A year ago, I had no clue how to do a lot of things that I can now do with ease.
I found that motivation and patience will go a long way learning any skill. Might sound odd, but I decided after a few months of development, to write a personal ‘dev diary’. Kinda like a collection of patch notes, to keep track of what I’ve been working on. Every time I felt like I didn’t make any progress, I just took a look at it and realized that I actually did quite a lot. Kept my motivation going.
For me, it was a lot of trial and error - a lot depends on your project and not for everything you’ll find tutorials that align with what you’re trying to do for your game specifically.
There usually isn’t the one true universal answer to a lot of things either- again, really depends on what you’re trying to do. In my case, it was creating a dialogue system for my game. I was like 4 or 5 months into the project and I barely used UI related elements like Control Nodes. I’ve watched some tutorials to get a broad understanding on how it works and then just experimented. Did take quite some time and over the course of development, as I kept learning more, I rebuilt that system from scratch three times until I was finally satisfied.
Diving into something like that can be challenging but it’s also incredibly rewarding once you get it to work the way you want.
3 Likes
The more time I spend doing it, the more the old tips EVERYWHERE on this subject become clear to me: Scope small, take time and finish the damn game.
I think of “Scoping small” as actually a skill to develop really early to not get discouraged quickly. Especially if you have not yet developed any other skills needed to make an entertainment product.
One thing that might also not get enough attention as a possible path: if doing everything from scratch (and, tbh, Godot is far from “from scratch” with all the tools and backbone an engine provides) start with something, that gives you more tools: The Unreal Engine for Fortnite (UEFN) or Roblox is a great start to learn something about games, scripting and managing assets.
For me, it was Minecraft and before that Clonk. Both games with a fairly easy entry to modding and working with assets already there.
I guess, there is no easy way here, as with everything else. 
I take a pencil and some paper and draw it. How does it look? What happens in each step? What data do I need where and when? Where do I store/retrieve that data?
And then I try to do everything with nodes and functions I already know. If something by this point is not yet taken care of, I look for keywords in the docs. The docs provide.
If I’m totally blanking out, it’s either YouTube time or time for a walk outside and reflect how increadibly hard game dev is. 
1 Like
That’s something I do but prefer FreeForm instead of pencil 
.
But when when recently was trying to figure questing which I never done before it came lot of useful feedback on forum , because I only new I need some DB with parameters and Boolean to check status and enum till that point never used in Godot only Arrays .
Something I trying to understand more about creating terrain I tried .gltf and using gridmap3d instead as it has fill bucket to make covered large areas quickly , but thing I noticed sometimes stick to ground (down Page) doesn’t work .
is there easier way to limit draw distance then split map into chunks with preloading ?
The main thing for me is camera as I noticed on recent project in certain direction gridmap looks bad and also performs below 60fps on 1080p 
and all was only around 1000m x 1000m area , with 15 low poly buildings .
Something I found hard is to decide when I’m happy with result , also when code is not just over complicated.
I followed a specially gamedev course but it was 4.2.2 and I see there is way too much interpolation, also blending of animations feels like nightmare as is lots of functions and conditions to make smoother transitions between animations combined with AnimationTree .
That probably something I would like to focus more to do things more easily as it seem to lot of computing resources just being wasted .
I was very happy with 2d but my anti artistic talent put me off and decided to go into 3d which is way more complex with navigation .
Thanks for kind word , I try to adapt some small changes everyday .
I started using GitHub desktop app to keep track of changes and backup this way as well
How do you approach an ideas if you haven’t done them before , if it’s related to type of nodes you not used ?
I’m still very new and from a design background. As someone who learns more by doing I tend to hit video tutorials before the documentation, because it helps my brain to see it in action to understand what the documentation is explaining. I try to find commonality in things I do know, and step across to areas that are new. For instance, I felt comfortable using GD Script because I’ve coded scripts and expressions for Adobe products using Javascript. Getting stuck in with my own projects and seeing how far I could get with the knowledge I aleady had really helped me understand exactly what I had to learn, so I knew what I needed to look up first.
Some tips to avoid being discouraged or overwhelmed by lot of things which need to be learned in order to create solid feel of game ?
I think learning how to say “this is good enough” is a great skill to have in any creative persuit. I find a lot of people want to get things exactly how they have it in their head, but it’s okay to compramise if it is the difference between something being finished and working, vs not working and thrown in the bin. Give yourself time if you are getting frustrated, give your unconsious mind space to try and process everything, then come up with a plan of action - whether that is making the process more simple, asking for help, or practicing with more tutorials.
2 Likes