| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Gary Dallison |
Posted - 11 Jun 2020 : 08:39:25
I'm trying to develop my programming skills and am using Godot at the moment but it's pretty tough doing it alone.
I was wondering if anyone here is also a complete beginner at godot and game programming and wanted to try working together on a project. |
| 15 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Ayrik |
Posted - 12 Aug 2022 : 07:22:14
Been working in UE5. Maybe or maybe not "better" than Unity. Both engines can do certain things a little better than the other.
But UE5 is a lot less bloaty. A lot, lot, lot less bloaty. And small code runs faster, usually.
I found the initial learning curve a bit easier, too. A lot of primitives are simple - a comparatively "small" instruction set, sorta the same idea as RISC - things work well out of the box without endless tweaking and tinkering, whether you can code or you can not code.
And UE5 is free. Costs $0. No subscription, no license, no tiered privileges, no frustrating anti-efficient DRM. No telemetry, spyware, invasion of privacy. It's hard to see how bad Unity is in these ways until you realize that other engines aren't as evil and money-grabby.
Another good engine is OGRE. Built for the Torchlight games. Already has everything you'd need to build a Diablo-like or a Bioware-like CRPG - you just need to make your own assets (you could repurpose the existing ones, of course, but then your game will look like Torchlight, lol). |
| Italian Archmage Karsus |
Posted - 12 Aug 2022 : 00:34:56
I am a slug at game programming, and I'm at a late reply, but I've messed around with Gamemaker Studio on-and-off for nearly a decade now. Was considering trying my hand at something Realmsian when I get less busy. |
| PattPlays |
Posted - 15 Jun 2020 : 09:35:25
If you want to break into 3d engines there are free downloads of Unreal 3 that I remember playing with way back. Kootra had a really good tutorial on using it... |
| Ayrik |
Posted - 14 Jun 2020 : 02:24:56
There are a lot of free engines, free compilers, free everything.
You need to work with a few different ones to really learn which is best for what. Contrasts are educational, Godot just can't accomplish certain things, but you still have to start somewhere and Godot is not a bad choice.
If you are part of a group project then you have to use what everyone else uses. And many people have chosen Godot because it's "simple" and it's decently supported and it's no-strings-attached free. Although I think Blender, Solidworks, and Unity are the most common choices. |
| TBeholder |
Posted - 13 Jun 2020 : 22:12:47
quote:
Originally posted by Gary Dallison
Well the reason i chose godot is because its completely free and i tried a few game engines and they didnt work, but this one did and it runs nicely on my laptop (which is old and not particularly fast).
Point is, there's a lot of free engines, it depends on what you want from it and which languages you want to use.
Gamedevs on Reddit keep Engine FAQ (a few years old, but generally still applies) with big comparison tables: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/wiki/engine_faq
Also, there are simpler things than those. Most GUI/cutscenes/quest logic/other non-realtime non-3D stuff can be dumped into a scripting engine. Play something that uses RenPy to see how this works ("Visual Novel framework" is much more than just dialogue trees). Then if the engine running the rest of a game uses Python perhaps a lot more can be done via simple calls. |
| Gary Dallison |
Posted - 12 Jun 2020 : 19:10:07
Well the reason i chose godot is because its completely free and i tried a few game engines and they didnt work, but this one did and it runs nicely on my laptop (which is old and not particularly fast).
I tried out programming and game development forums but they seem a bit elitist so i dont hang out there very often (whereas i practically live here).
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| TBeholder |
Posted - 12 Jun 2020 : 18:14:51
A bit. I did muck around with things like QuakeC (as the very first contact with event based programming, it was fun) and wrote some for VegaStrike until it froze over.
Depends on what you want to do, of course. AI is a very special can of worm, for one. Though even then there are some good FLOSS projects to import from.
But also, why do you want to do it specifically in Godot rather than e.g. Ogre3D, urho3d, Irrlitch, OpenSceneGraph or Blender GE? |
| ElfBane |
Posted - 12 Jun 2020 : 07:03:19
Dazzler I wish you well, but you can pretty much forget "reading all the FR novels to mine them for Lore", if you get involved in the sink that is coding. If you actually start to like programming, IT WILL SUCK UP ALLLLL OF YOUR SPARE TIME. You will become a slave to the Holy Grail of "getting the code right the first time", which almost NEVER happens. I'm afraid that if you didn't fall in love with coding the first time you met it, then you will never get excellent at it. Yes, it is a "skill" that can be learned, but there is an inexplicable "art" to it that I just didn't have.
Coding was created for the Super-Geeks, and I say let them have it. |
| TheIriaeban |
Posted - 12 Jun 2020 : 05:04:06
Oh, man, I miss MOO and BotF. You got any recommendations for similar, I would much appreciate it. |
| Ayrik |
Posted - 12 Jun 2020 : 03:54:15
Join a game modding community. It seems like every popular game (or old once-popular game) has a collaboration of dedicated modders.
It's a good way to learn some code, some high-level stuff, some low-level stuff, some graphics, some audio, all of it. Easier to apply theory and see results because the emphasis is usually adding or changing stuff instead of reinventing the whole wheel from scratch. An excellent way to learn clever hacky sorts of stuff, get exposed to (or create) all sorts of useful software tools, become familiar with whatever "dirty tricks" and "elegant solutions" get the job done with least effort. And an excellent way to get connected to resources and people with a shared interest and variety of skills.
Once you know a few other people, are familiar with their work and their abilities, you can attract wider attention by posting a project on githhub or some other repository. You can try kickstarting too, although most such attempts meet failure unless you already have (most of) a product to "sell" or you have powerful credentials on your resume.
I've done this before with older games - Master of Orion (1 and 2 but not awful 3 or the weird new version, lol), a Birth of the Federation (which evolved into Birth of the Empires), Diablo 2, Torchlight, Planescape: Torment. Some succeeded, some failed, some just fizzled or aborted, but I learned new stuff and met new people every time. |
| TheIriaeban |
Posted - 12 Jun 2020 : 02:04:03
A wise man once said "Always look on the bright side of life." You might know of him. He is from the UK. 
I vaguely remember those. Is that what you are looking to make once you get over the learning curve? |
| Gary Dallison |
Posted - 11 Jun 2020 : 20:34:01
At 39 I certainly don't feel young anymore.
I always fancied doing something old school like the 1993 interplay version of the lord of the rings or the old death knights of krynn style game (but maybe set in the moonshae isles). |
| TheIriaeban |
Posted - 11 Jun 2020 : 19:27:17
Ok, I was just wanting to see how you were on theory since that can help speed up the learning process. Years ago, I had started on a Star Trek ship combat simulator but I ended up dropping the project when I moved into a development position at work. After a while, staring at Visual Studio at home lost it's fun since I was staring at it all day at work. These days, I just use PowerShell to create whatever D&D utility I need. The last one I wrote was a Night Parade generator. Now, I have a list of all 249 Night Parade members in Iriaebor (one is a particularly nasty fellow who charms you to come up to him and then paralyzes you by touch before he starts eating alive).
5 years old, huh? I am almost old enough to be your father, you young whipper-snapper!  |
| Gary Dallison |
Posted - 11 Jun 2020 : 16:58:20
No previous experience, spent several years reading books for various programming languages and doing little bits of automation for my job.
I've spent the last few months of lockdown watching and reading tutorials so I'm good on theory, I've had a go at creating a player and animating it and other stuff like tilemaps and engine specific tasks. The problem when working alone is that no one else is around to help when you hit a stumbling block and it's difficult to know where to start, and it's a bit boring.
A zx81 was my first computer as a kid (I was 5) but back then I didn't even know what programming was and like most people I though computers worked by magic. |
| TheIriaeban |
Posted - 11 Jun 2020 : 16:34:34
Do you have any previous coding experience/training? Are you familiar with general coding concepts like object oriented programming? I am self-taught for non-game development (my very first program was a D&D character generator that ran my computer out of memory, a Sinclair ZX81 if you are curious https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81). |
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