3 Months of Learning Game Development

a little over three months ago i decided to try gamedev for the very first time previously on this channel i focused on making college advice career advice and some computer science projects and topics sprinkled in so game dev wasn't a huge departure from what i was already doing but it was far enough to get absolutely lost within it this video is less of a devlog and more of a reflection of my experience so far how i went from literally no experience in game development to actually engineering some working features but three months and four devlogs later this has been my game dev journey so far stick to the end for some final conclusions about game development overall this video is sponsored by datacamp but more on that in a little bit i've mentioned this in my very first devlog but it never really was interested in game development before i've always loved playing video games and i thought getting into game development might ruin the magic of video games for me similar to say a film director watching movies but what initially made me finally try game development was the almighty youtube algorithm now i watch a lot of tech channels in general so it was only a matter of time before the game development channel started getting recommended so that's why i started but what was the first step when starting game development i had to choose a game engine i really liked c-sharp as a programming language and a lot of the videos i watched were utilizing unity so unity was definitely a natural choice now unity might seem like overkill for my little 2d rpg but i wanted to ensure that i had the flexibility to add everything i wanted to and avoid restrictions that might come with more restricted but easier game engines one thing i often struggle with when it comes to side projects is that i start a lot of projects but i don't finish a lot of projects mostly just due to waning interest and i didn't want that to happen with game development what i realized about myself as it pertains to side projects and maybe some of you can resonate is that once something becomes a commitment it loses some of its initial fun for example i've done this before where i'll say okay i want to at least dedicate one hour per day to this side project that usually works in the beginning but it starts to feel like a chore and then i quit so i try to approach learning unity and game development in a slightly different way instead of trying to hold myself to some set schedule like working on it every day for an hour i work on it when i want to work on it some days i spend hours adding features and other days i spend time playing video games and doing other stuff i've also mentioned in previous videos that i currently work full time where i code almost every day so on some days i really don't feel like coding after work at all and this has been much more sustainable than other projects i've worked on additionally i think the nature of game development in general is more interesting and rewarding similar to say web development because additions are very visual and tangible if i add a new combat mechanic or player zone you see those changes immediately but if i was working on some sort of api back-end project the output is overall less exciting so as a general recommendation for side projects from my experience find something you genuinely like and work on it at your own pace to avoid burnout and overall resentment now back to my initial impressions of unity i won't lie opening unity for the very first time was pretty intimidating i had no idea what did what what the different windows were and i had to pretty much rely on youtube tutorials for the first few initial sessions additionally game programming in unity was significantly different from other areas of software engineering that i was familiar with specifically unity's whole monobehavior scriptable object system one hurdle that i still struggle with is trying to optimize every little thing in the field that i work i worry a lot about scalability so when developing software in a professional setting i constantly have to think about how to optimize different code executions and computations so when learning unity and seeing for example the update method that executes a block of code every frame my skin was crawling as it sort of went against my nature of usually minimizing the amount of code execution now obviously game optimization is important but constantly trying to find the most optimal and scalable solution when developing a game can sometimes be an inhibitor as it slows down the overall development and this is one area i really need to improve upon instead of trying to optimize things that haven't even been added i need to first get something working even if it's inefficient then optimize it later when learning something new the dunning-kruger effect also comes to mind basically as you get some initial knowledge of the area your confidence spikes and you feel like you already know everything about the topic for example if you were learning unity made a quick platformer and then were confident enough to make a halo clone but then as you gain more knowledge you realize how much there is still to learn and i definitely felt this in the beginning as well watching a couple youtube tutorials i felt i had a good grasp but then i would find something new like render pipelines in unity and pixel perfect camera jittering and my confidence would plummet again but this is all part of the overall learning process you know what else helps the learning process this video sponsor datacamp datacamp is an online learning platform that makes acquiring data skills easier and more convenient for everyone datacamp has over 350 data science courses designed by top experts in the field and just like video games datacamp focuses on a gamified learning experience by giving you xp points at my full-time job i use python daily for many data science and machine learning projects but i haven't had too much experience with r which is the other common data science programming language so i recently started the introduction to our course on data camp and really liked how they didn't assume you knew how to code all of their instructions were super clear even for someone with no experience and each exercise was extremely concise and to the point unlock new career opportunities and become data fluent today use my link in the description box below and check out the first chapter of any data camp course for free thank you to datacamp for supporting the channel a common problem in game development overall is scope or feature creep which i've also struggled a lot with where you get excited about adding tons of different systems and forms of gameplay but eventually it's too much for a single person to develop in any reasonable amount of time so if you're starting out like me write out a concrete list of the minimum features to make your game and then focus on building that if and when you finish those then you can add all of that extra fluff another thing i struggle with and i've mentioned before is art now i am not a good artist nor do i really enjoy creating pixel art for example here is a bob ross painting i did in microsoft paint so you kind of get the gist instead of forcing myself to also learn pixel art i decided to pay and support actually talented artists two artists that i've purchased assets from and that i highly recommend are pimmin and final boss blues and i even subscribe to final boss blues patreon now i'm not affiliated with them in any way i just want to give a shout out because they are incredibly talented pixel artists and i'll link their pages in the description below and this ultimately helps me avoid burnout as well because whenever i do set aside time to work on this game i get to work on the aspects i really enjoy which is the programming and design side instead of dreading creating a bunch of terrible looking sprites within these last few months i have definitely learned a lot and the process of creating a game has also helped improve my programming skills overall here is my get contributions calendar and you can see that i've tried to stay relatively consistent as i developed the game and i can confidently say this is the most fun side project i've ever worked on but i also want to mention that it's okay to not work on side projects all the time sometimes i literally want to just sit and do nothing i just want to sit and go 0 0.8 as karthus mid in league of legends to complete this reflection i figured i might give some recommendations from my naive perspective if you are interested in game development should you try it i would say yes i'm always a proponent of at least trying something maybe first watch some devlogs on youtube to see if you would actually even like the process do i recommend unity as this is the only game engine i've worked with i don't think my opinion is very helpful but i do think unity is very powerful and after the initial learning curve a lot of the functionality became very intuitive additionally unity is one of the most used indie game engines so there are literally so many different tutorials and forum posts for almost every problem or topic ultimately again from my naive experience i haven't had too much to complain about but i also haven't had too much to compare it to how do i learn i think before you spend any money on courses just try watching some youtube videos like i mentioned before and following some tutorials some great channels that i watch for game development and design for both information and entertainment are brackies dev duck blackthorneprod danny freecodecamp.org game endeavor game makers toolkit josh strife hayes in-scope studios code monkey taro dev lost relic games and adam c eunice there are probably a ton more i didn't mention but just know there are so many free resources out there how do you slash i stay consistent i don't think you necessarily need to but it depends on your own situation if this is just a fun side project then i don't think there is anything wrong with not staying consistent work on it when you want to and don't make it feel like another job or chore which is basically what i'm trying to do if you are taking this more seriously like you're collecting money on kickstarter or something like that and i do think it's more important to remain consistent i would suggest using an agile or scrum board to plan out the mvp features you will be developing by what dates and dedicate time every day to its development and lastly has it ruined the magic at the beginning of this video i mentioned that i was worried about starting game development that i would lose some of the fun and magic that makes up being a consumer of video games and i can confidently say for me it did not and even increased my appreciation for those games trying to develop my own game i can't even imagine the struggles and the effort and the complex process of creating a game like league of legends or call of duty but that has been my experience with game dev for the past three months and some change if you haven't checked out my devlogs i'll link them in the description where i go more into detail about specific features i've added to the game thank you all for watching the video and sticking to the end check out datacamp again with my link in the description below let me know if you have any suggestions for future videos you might want to see or that might be helpful or useful or entertaining my name is michael we do bad british accents at the end of every video check out one of my past videos in my past self would thank you daily check out one of my future videos and my future self would also thank you dearly that's all from me hopefully i see you in another one bye bye [Music] you

Channel: Byte of Michael

Views: 765,244

Keywords: game development, indie game devlog, unity, devlog, dev log, game dev log, game devlog, game developer, software engineering, computer science, indie game developer, indie game dev, building my dream game, game dev, 3 months of game development, 3 months of game dev, day in the life of a game developer, game design, indie game design, indie rpg, unity 2d rpg, unity 2d, unity game development, unity game dev, indie game development, how to make games

Id: x5wndRdBowo

Length: 10min 47sec (647 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 26 2022