Some of you kids have no idea what you’ve missed! Imagine written articles that get right to the point without 20 minutes of “Like and subscribe.. Check out my new premium tutorial series only on Patreon.. and here’s my OnlyFans! Now turn your brain off and follow exactly what I do while I explain none of it.”
Then again, I guess it would have taken those 20 minutes to load the page of text before mom told you to get off so she could use the phone.
Anyway, I don’t suppose there are any good quality, up to date books on Godot? Or any hidden gem blogs, perhaps?
I find that instead of learning Godot specifically, it’s a lot better to learn Programming as a whole first. Lots of great books out there about clean architecture, I can happily recommend anything from Robert C. Martin. (Or not, its up to you what sources you learn from or not.)
From there, it’s a lot, lot easier to learn godot specific things, since you already have plenty of knowledge you can apply to a game project. And at that point, all you need to worry about is learning the different syntax of GDScript (Or not if you stick to something like C++ or C#), and the Godot docs do a great job of providing an overview of engine features.
I couldn’t find any good books back then, but the documentation was a good learning source too. Now there seem to be more books available, but I don’t know how if they’re up to date or good.
Well, I remember spending a fortune on the only computer books that existed, which were complete garbage, and not learning a single thing.
I wish YouTube had existed when I was young.
There’s incredible content on YouTube. There’s also garbage, just like there was a lot of garbage on the internet before YouTube.
Twitch is also an amazing site for learning game development.
It’s never been easier than it is now.
My first computer was an Amstrad, and there wasn’t even internet.
Fortunately, YouTube is blocked in our country. That’s probably the only thing the world could usefully borrow from us.
All modern technical books are rubbish. They become outdated by the time they’re printed. Especially “books on Godot” — it’s evolving too fast. Updated articles on websites — that’s what can keep up with current developments.
I suspect that some of you here already have grandchildren.
Sadly, we live in an age where embellishment is content… where reacting to something is considered new content, or remastering a classic album, or rebooting a film franchise, or making a 20 minute over-produced video about what can be expressed in a few sentences.
The more unnecessary glitz can be added, the more we seem to clap our little hands and call it ‘better’.
Sorry, it’s something that occupies my mind… I know of no Godot books
I’ll just link this article here. Could link more of the quality material that’s critical of uncle bob’s doctrines, but I won’t spam since this is off topic.
For counterbalance and perspective widening, I strongly recommend listening or reading some stuff by Casey Muratori, to anyone who’s hard-entrenched in “clean code” mentality, especially if they work on performance critical applications, which games certainly are.
For those who studied programming so long ago that they’ve forgotten how to learn. Godot is currently probably the simplest and most intuitive way to learn programming. GDScript is the perfect choice for a first programming language.
Unfortunately, I feel the same way. I hate watching YouTube as a “learning tool”, I genuinely prefer and always preferred written instructions. It’s really hard to get a grasp on what’s a “good” article on coding though when you… don’t know how to code? I don’t know, it just kind of sucks that most people make articles that go “and the full explanation is in this video!”
I came here to read, not spend 10 minutes watching ads.
I’d also disagree. The projects I’ve been involved with valued a codebase that was very easy to understand and pick up for other developers. Performance was almost never a concern.
I’m sure this is different if I went to a massive company with realistic 3D goals, but I don’t want that.
I’d say there is a case for video tutorials when it comes to software that’s heavily visual in the first place, e.g. a lot of Blender and some aspects of Godot (where an article would be full of images and somewhat short on text). But for programming tutorials videos are easily an awful choice of a medium - no copying, no searching, rewinding is more than moving your eyes a little bit - the list goes on.
Your recommendation was for Martin’s books, not for codebases you’ve worked on. It’s not only about performance although zealously following “clean code” significantly raises one’s chances of producing poorly performing systems in general. There’s a lot of valid criticism of Martin’s ideas out there, especially when it comes to beginners who are primary intended audience for those books. At least read up some of it before recommending his books.
I wanna say I learnt more from the youtube tutorials as a base before referring to the documentation.
Godot’s docs are like a dictionary, same as Java docs. I don’t even know where some of you found the code your own 2D game docs from the website. It’s a maze XD.
I wanna say if not for the YouTube tutorials and my own fooling around and feeling incredible pain, I would not be able to even build anything using the official docs.
The reference part might be. However, there are whole chapters in the docs that are descriptive and some are literally tutorials or tutorial-like. If you didn’t go through “your first game” tutorials that are in there - you certainly should. They are quite good and focus on introducing you to many of the fundamental engine concepts. Most video tutorials are too narrowly focused on “do this and now do that”, and never explain overarching concepts. Which greatly contributes to locking you into tutorial hell.
I found that a fascinating rabbit hole and agreed with everything I read (even in the linked articles). I did look up Casey Muratori and found his page, but I mainly found YouTube videos, not articles. So I didn’t find anything to read and the videos were all long and the topics of no interest to me. Any specific article suggestions?
I realize that you and I disagree a lot on OO, and its usefulness when answering questions. What I don’t often talk about is that I do plenty of functional programming in my code too. Especially anything to do with file access. In reading these articles, I realize that perhaps what I say doesn’t always reflect what I do. Not because I’m misrepresenting myself, but just because it doesn’t come up often.
Reading this also had me reflecting on how even when I read SOLID, I didn’t really agree with it. I’m pretty sure at the time, it was Ruby programmers I was working with who were telling me about it, and I was learning Ruby. This was in the early 2000’s and it quickly replaced PHP for me as my web programming language for a while.
Going back to read the solid principles, the only one I ever really agreed with was Single Responsibility Principle, and that in moderation. Which is to say that I think it’s an idea to keep in mind, but it’s not a realistic (or preferrable) goal. It just guides me in keeping a class from bloating too much as it changes over time. But I didn’t really internalize that until just now. So I now think that referring to the SRP is probably not a good thing, because I don’t really follow it at all. (Because it’s dumb and impractical.)
Anyway, I appreciate the links. Gave me a lot to think about.
Videos as a Learning Tool
I personally prefer reading a book or article, but I came to understand about 10 years ago why some people prefer videos. I was talking to a co-worker from India whose native language was not English. She spoke perfect English and had no trouble communicating verbally. But she told me that she, and a lot of people from India who are in Tech, prefer to learn from videos because their reading vocabulary is not as strong. So a video allows to them to see exactly what someone is doing, and bridge that knowledge gap. It also allows people to appear to be more technical than they are, because they can do more complex tasks without needing to completely understand all the underlying reasons why.
I also believe that videos are much better for people who are primarily visual and/or auditory listeners. And while I don’t love them, I often find them useful, because even if someone explains something poorly - I can see exactly what they are doing and figure out what’s going on. I think a lot of questions we get on here with links to tutorials are related to the video creator doing and saying two different things.
Godot Books
I got a Godot book about 2 years ago. It was a great start to teach me some deeper things about the engine. It took me so long to get through it because even though it was new, it was a few versions behind (this was early 4.x) and I had to do a LOT of research just to get everything working. I learned a LOT, but mostly because I had to teach myself. In contrast, the book also had a Blender section, and that all still worked the same even though I was on a newer version of Blender.
I do not think books are a good format for learning Godot. They just change too much. Also, I don’t think there are that many people who really understands how Godot works. I know certain things about Godot really well, but there are areas where I still get corrected by @gertkeno , @normalized, @athousandships and others on at least a weekly basis.
I’ve been using GDScript as my primary programming language for 2 years now, and trying to make my living with Godot. (It has not been easy or very successful.) I started writing an online lesson plan for teaching people programming using GDScript to try and make money almost 2 years ago now. I cringe looking back on all the things I didn’t know.
I just don’t think it’s possible to write a book fast enough for it to stay relevant because of Godot’s aggressive release cycle.
Demos
I think Godot has a lot of demos that are under-utilized. I have found so many cool things in them. @wchc pointed me to one last month that literally showed me how to solve a problem I’d been having for months. It was complex, but it worked and I am (hopefully) going to be able to pull it apart and make it work for me.
Perhaps we need a culture of Godot learning blog posts? And the caveat that all this might not be true tomorrow. I certainly have lots of replies that could be turned into blog posts pretty easily.
Ultimately I find there’s no substitute for just doing when it comes to learning, and I think there are a lot of people who rely too much on there being a clear and simple guide for how to do things beyond the initial getting into something, demos and other tangible ways to get good working examples to work from are great, but ultimately if you don’t dare to be wrong for a bit you’ll never really learn IMO
By which I mean that resources to find what things does, like a class reference, is really important, but I see many people be too afraid to just do things, and learn by trial and error when it’s not explicitly written out how to do a specific thing
