Hello, so I’m working on a game where I want the player to be able to place and builds things. Easiest example you all should know is the Sims. Where they can select from a menu and place the the item on a grid which would then be an in world item for interacting. I like learning and using the tutorials to just figure out the very basics and where to start and not just copy and paste what they do.
I’m very new to Godot and looking into how to do this. Does anyone know of a good Godot 4.2 tutorial on this basic function to help me get started? Been googling but not having luck. (Might be the way I’m wording it.) Any answers might also help other new people when they google this.
Thank you all for any help or attempts. Good luck on all your projects.
PS. If there’s already a thread on this please let me know and I can delete this one. (sorry I couldn’t find it.)
To start with Godot, I recommend to start with very simple games, or recreating some arcades. Try out the GDQuest tutorials, they are really good for understanding the basics and the best practices.
To place and build things, you might want to look into RTS (Real Time Strategies) tutorials, where player builds buildings and stuff. In most RTS games, buildings have some sort of menu, similar to how Sims series do the objects interactions. They also have point and click movement of player’s units that is applicable to Sims’ movement.
Also you might want to look into how Sims is actually made to understand it better.
Thank you so much. lol I didn’t even think about an RTS. (I play a ton of those to lol, even recently.) This is why asking is so helpful for me. I get so many blind spots when working by myself.
I have done a little platformer but you are right, I should try doing a few more arcade like games.
Again thank you. This kind of helped me push pass a temp block I was having.
I would still love to hear other thoughts and inputs if others wanted to share.
As much as I love all kinds of management and building games, it’s not an easy type of game to get started with.
Most important thing when you start off:
Have a plan!
That means: writing down what you want to build, how specific thing should behave, basically what the scope of your game is.
After starting without a plan you’ll notice soon that there are many devils in many details that distract you from moving on.
Defining a behaviour for buildings or interactions can be complex depending on what you want to achieve. First questions are: how is a building defined or abstracted? where can you build? can you build on top of other buildings?
And that’s just the start of the building aspect, there’s a lot more.
Personally, the biggest lesson I learned from some small games is:
Finish your projects. You learn a lot from making shooting things around and test some mechanisms but you get so much experience from actually finishing a game.
Make the core gameplay, make a UI, make some animations etc. So you get in contact with as many systems as possible and know the quirks when you start your next one.
Life simulations like Sims are incredibly complex. From requirements to the actual implementation. Even big players like Paradox seem to struggle with that.
My favorite recommendation is a tetris-like clone. Rules are written down. You can just start with gameplay and go as far as you want. You’ll have fast results that keep up your motivation (what’s very hard when you reach the point where it’s actual work ).
Sorry for that wall of text. I hope some thoughts will help you find a way.
Interacting with the item on the map is an entirely different topic and you can google that separately. Might be something like “when player bumps into object do X”, which means googling Area2D.
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