How to Stop Following Tutorials and Actually Start Coding Myself - Is My Approach Good Enough?

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Godot v4.2 Stable

So I am currently following the official Godot documentation and tutorials. So far I am almost done with the “Your First 2D Game” part of the tutorial. It’s all fine when following tutorial but I know for sure that if I just closed the tutorial and tried to do something on my own I wouldn’t be able to achieve anything.

So in order to end the “follow tutorial step by step” approach, I decided to do the following:

  1. Set myself a very small goal like import a character model and make it move by pressing arrow keys
  2. Try to do it without looking at any tutorial
  3. Once I am able to do so, expand the goal (e.g. add collision detection to character)
  4. Rinse and repeat and learn as many different mechanics as I can

Is this a good method? How would you improve it, or how did you start to actually code things on your own? Thanks for all the answers in advance and have a wonderful day!

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Hi, I teach game development to 17-18 year olds.

Your approach is a good way to get started. Another similar exercise you can try is to follow a tutorial, but try making changes or adding little features that are similar to what the tutorial shows. For example, you could take the “Your First 2D Game” tutorial and try to add some kind of powerup item that briefly makes the player invulnerable, or increases move speed, or something like that. That shouldn’t require anything you haven’t seen so far in the tutorial, but it lets you puzzle out how to use those elements in a new way.

At some point you have to actually do a project of your own, and here, it can be helpful to start with a simple game that uses common game mechanics. This way, you can look up tutorials for individual game mechanics (how to make an inventory system, how to make a dash mechanic, etc. etc.) in order to get some inspiration, but you have to figure out how to combine and apply them yourself. When you have a mechanic in mind and need some help with it, it’s a good idea to look at several different tutorials and try to figure out a good pattern you can use, rather than just blindly following the first one you find.

Finally, a lot of it comes down to practice. The more games you make, the more you’ll get used to (a) the features of the game engine, (b) common coding patterns, and (c) thinking about problems in a programmer kind of way.

Good luck with it!

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