Trying to learn #Godot recently, what's everyones biggest advice for someone who is already well versed in programming but lacks experience in #gamedev?
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Try to use the engine to make something really tiny without following a tutorial, like, make pong,.but first only try to make a rectangle, then move it up and down, then a ball that accelerates and bounces and so on.
Enter a game jam. This helped me finally push through and finally get serious with it. I'm not sure why, but I learned so much by pushing myself for a few days to meet the deadline and have something working.
It was not the best game, but it worked lol. #TobuJam is about to start on https://itch.io!
That's not a bad idea. My first approach was to think back to high school / college (gymnasiet, in Sweden) when we had smaller tasks that built into bigger ones and so on - with the aforementioned deadlines :o So doing something else with a deadline, like a game jam doesnt sound bad
I'll probably try that in about 2 or 3 small projects time though, since I'm currently far too slow to make something on time. Thank you for the idea! 💙
Whatever project you choose to make, large or small. persist! Break problems down into bite-sized chunks, then if you're still struggling, break them down smaller. It's easy to be overwhelmed with the climb when you stand at the bottom and look up to the mountain top. Small steps gets you there :)
Yeah, I started with a fairly grand idea, then climbed down, and down again. I think my main focus right now is practicing movement and physics, which I've been doing with a tiny little car game :) This is a good minset, thank you 💙
Another approach I took is watching a tutorial, pausing and coding myself until I get stuck and then watching to rest to see how they solved it and learn from that best practice. Because of actually spending time to try and just looking & repeating I feel like I’m learning a lot.
I’m in a similar boat maybe just a little bit ahead of you. I feel like the best approach is following 1-2 tutorials first. Once you get basics, start a new game that belongs to you, and just polish the smallest gameplay you can find u til it feels good.
the best way to learn is to make mistakes -- as a programmer, you might find yourself stuck in analysis paralysis or trying to find the best-practice way to implement something, but it often it saves time to just try something and learn from the experience
Yeah, I'm trying to experience programming as I did when I was 15 - programming genuinely horrifically bad code, but atleast I finished things. It's very easy to get completely clouded with what university teaches you. Thank you for reminding me 💙
Or more succinctly "return to monke" :o Thank you for the advice! It's very easy to get clouded when you have a background in computer science, I find. Trying to learn to let go a little bit. As long as I do some refactoring at the end of each session :)
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It was not the best game, but it worked lol. #TobuJam is about to start on https://itch.io!
Once you have a better understanding of the fundamentals, then you can worry about how to do it right.
Too many new devs freeze in the headlights if “what’s the RIGHT or BEST way to do this”.
Build, appreciate strengths/limitations, refactor.
You got this 🤝