Recommended roadmap for no advanced experience in other game engines

General
, ,
1

Godot Version

Godot Engine 3.4.5 to Godot Engine 4.2

Question

My background as a developer is really basic compared to the average: Game Maker 8 (still no GMS), Scratch 3, RPG Maker and Ren’Py. I never had the chance to install or even try Unity or even Unreal Engine due to the huge file sizes and my poor internet connection, so I don’t want to repeat redundant arguments related to this.

I’m using and learning Godot since September of 2022, when the 3.4.5 version was still released. My first sessions, making projects with almost none interactions aside of the ones of the default Control nodes, was something I can only describe it as a constant obstacle course of dead ends, until I saw some tutorial on YouTube without much use, or saw it in the official Godot documentation, although at that time I had not seen it as polished as it is now. I got myself to a decent level for a newbie in December, making a decent demo of a top-down character with almost no physics, just moving it adding values to the position property of KinematicBody2Ds. I’d struggled with porting the project to Godot 4.0, so I started it from scratch. My only documentation resources were the class reference included with Godot, with some code examples for get started with, and web pages snapshots saved with my web browsers in my hard disk. I didn’t learn so much about recommended programming/design practices until I got my hands dirty in Godot.

I’d eventually downloaded a offline snapshot of the entire Godot 4.2 documentation and almost all the official demos, of which I never analyzed in my entire time learning Godot, until a few weeks, of which I applied loading using threads and multiple resolutions. My two years turned into oblivion.

Before I realizing I got something wrong months later, I wan’t to see some of the choices you guys taken while learning Godot. If I’m asking it wrong, my sincerest apologies.

2

At first I think I watched a few specific videos on subjects I wanted to learn quicker. But then I found that The editor has a pretty nice doc search, you can filter results too. It’s under the script tab. You can even Ctrl+click a class or function in the script and it will open the document to that symbol. Very useful imo.

Yea then there are lots of nice tutorials and guides on the Godot doc website.

The biggest contributor to my knowledge of the engine is making projects, this will really solidify the knowledge.

I typically just reference the docs, but had to go out into the wild to start leaning shaders at a deep level.

I also have come here to the forums and try and answer questions for others which forces me to look at things I haven’t used yet.

3

Yeah, the docs in the editor are what I’d mentioned in the post as “class reference”. They’re pretty helpful and I use them all the time, but when I want to see general documentation (like recommended practices, tips and tricks, etc.) I rather go to the Godot docs or the demos. But the option is there.