I’ve been having so much trouble beginning to make things with Godot even though I’ve loved game design all my life, and I think I just can’t bring myself to slug through tutorials for hours in a day, so I wondered what changed, and I figured it out, I need it to be fun for me.
If I treat every single thing like a big pre-planned perfectionist masterpiece before I even know the basics, then I’m just never gonna learn to enjoy this.
I need it to be like Mario Maker or Roblox or modding, where I can mash together premades and slowly get more and more intricate with what I put together.
How can I do that with Godot? I want to just start off simple, where’s the simple starting point where you can do simple things and learn the engine at the same time?
there are probably premades in the asset store, things like animations and lighting and stuff to slap together. you could also try finding tutorials where the finished project is included somewhere (zenva’s paid lessons and heartbeasts’ youtube series on making an RPG are ones i know off the top of my head) and try to put finished assets and scripts from those together for private learning, but you might run into problems with node interaction and scripts not being able to call what they need.
getting through hours of learning can suck, but finding a short and simple project full of things you want to learn might be helpful! and there’s plenty of free assets on itch and elsewhere for things like sprites or 3d models or lighting maps and whatever else to grab so you dont have to feel like making everything yourself
Well, you shouldn’t. You’re a human being, not a tape recorder. It’s just not possible to cram several hours worth of material in your brain and perfectly recall it when needed. Those forty hour-long YouTube ‘tutorials’ that promise to teach you how to build a dungeon crawler or whatever don’t exist so they can teach anything. They exist to: 1) sell you on the dream that you might one day become a game developer, and that the only thing you need to do is watch the material in full and 2) form a secondary advertising income stream to whoever filmed the ‘tutorial’.
Set yourself very small goals in very small sections of time. For instance, set yourself the goal of drawing a square on the screen and making it move by pressing the arrow keys on your keyboard. Set a 15 minute time limit on implementing this feature. If you can’t do it in that time, you can look up information on the internet, but only to solve that problem. Once implemented, move on to the next fifteen-minute goal.
It really depends what works for you. I learned the majority of game development through structured courses and game jams before becoming a professional game dev (rather briefly). If I was going to do it again, without these courses, I would kill off the time pressure and grand vision. Because I was focusing so much on becoming a competent game dev, I would feel bad about my current stage and it would drain the joy. Solving problems felt like obstacles to actually getting something I wanted working. This let to me becoming frustrated and doing something else.
I ended up reframing the problem solving as the interesting part, and tried to enjoy the process. In part, seeing the possibilities of what the game could be converge into what I made it be is pretty fun. Also realising all the problem solving wasn’t wasted time, as it helped me inform future approaches helped a lot. Removing the time pressure, and giving myself the permission to faff was great - as I ended up learning a lot by accident. When I messed about with Roblox, I most fondly remember making weird abstract games that explored the mechanics I found fun. In my experience, it helps a lot to be in a positive, relaxed mind space with the capacity for logical thinking - something I lacked during my teenage years.
The learn programming first approach may not work for you. I learn best when someone holds my hands through basic concepts, into the intermediate, and then advanced. From there, I gain enough intuition think how I may want to express these concepts using engine features. It’s the same as Roblox/Mario Maker in that sense. You won’t know what works without finding out the things that don’t.
Some people I know prefer to just follow tutorials then cobble things together from them to make a game. They start with a basic game that may be further away, and build on it in future projects. They keep some code and assets before adding things. By releasing half-baked projects like this, it helps them feel like they’ve progressed.
In my opinion, slogging through long tutorials is absolutely the wrong approach. As was already suggested, take small steps with no grand goal. Learn how to move an objects as one goal. Learn how to make two objects collide as another goal.
Learning game development is going to take a long time. Accept that, and you’ll have a lot more fun in the journey. Stop and appreciate your small achievements. Eventually, they will combine into something larger. Don’t try to rush the process. You will hate it.
can any of you give me a link to some sort of asset library for godot? It kind of feels like you guys are just repeating what I say back to me, and I’m grateful for the help, but I need resources.
The first words of the first answer to your question.
There is a little website called godotengine.org with assets in its main menu. Perhaps that might help. There is also an assets button in the main menu in the game engine itself too for direct download of assets to your project. https://store.godotengine.org/
There are also demo games and scenes available from Godot.
Maybe PC game dev is not for you?
Try boardgames. All you need is paper, scissors and color pencils. It’s way easier and more fun than watching tutorials.
