How to Become a Really Good Game Developer In Under a Year

so to start off if you don't have any programming experience you want to watch one or two tutorials a day for two to three months that'll give you a good foundation of technical knowledge here's the game that I made after three months with no background programming experience I just watched one or two tutorials a day I recommend Brack ease he's who I watched he makes pretty good tutorials so now you've done that it's time to start making games so first off you want to make a game in one hour so like just something really simple make a platformer one level you just jump onto some platforms touch the door and it says you win right really quick really simple use public domain assets sound effects music or whatever just go on to open game art org or something and just pull some stuff make it fast as you can one hour right then you're gonna make a game in two days so for this you want to look and see how much was I able to get done in that one hour how much spare time do I have over these next two days so looking at how much I got done in that hour applying that to my spare time I should be able to get this much done so I'll plan accordingly and I'll make a game that's still really simple but with this much content or this you know this much more maybe make a top-down shooter with like two levels or something just really basic and simple then after you've done that again expand make a game in a week then doing the same thing you know looking back how much you'd uh were able to get done in the two days and then make a game in two weeks and then once you've done that you know made a pretty big game go back and make a game in one hour again and then two days and then a week and then two weeks so you're gonna make a total of eight games really small simple games gradually getting more difficult than going back and this will get you really efficient at using your tools and really efficient with your technical knowledge you'll improve a lot during this time and I'll also give you a really good sense of what you're capable of doing but most importantly this is going to get you really good at finishing games which is a really good skill to have like you need this so now you made eight small games or so now it's time to start working on your game design abilities so what you want to do for this is you're going to make a series of eight small games preferably in we con each one of them and you're just gonna get an idea for a game simple mechanic and then you're gonna make five levels for it so you want to experiment with these ideas so typically just do something weird experiment right so they've come up with ideas you can do come up with something that involves hand-eye coordination hand-eye coordination is fun like catching a ball playing ping pong whatever just think what can I do on my computer that involves hand-eye coordination like maybe circles appear on the screen and I move the mouse to touch them or some something right another thing that's fun is numbers for some reason we humans like to see numbers that go up and hit a goal or they go down to hit a goal like you know level up or the enemy dies or something so you can make a text adventure where you have to go and farm gold off trees or something to get enough gold to go to the next level another way to get ideas is to take an existing concept and just say it's like that but it's weird like it's a platformer but when you jump gravity switches direction it's a it's an FPS but bullets don't kill people they just knock them backwards so you just take that idea and then you make five levels for it the first level will be a tutorial and then the next ones will be just increasing in difficulty until the final fifth level and again use public domain art music sound effects you just want to make the game just focus on making the game and experimenting and trying ideas out and then have your friends play these games see how they get through them see what they have trouble with what they struggle with how can you think about how can you improve that how can you make it better so that they wouldn't have trouble with that and make it the right amount of challenging right experiment try things out get feedback then once you've done this once you made those eight experimental games it's time to make a full full length game right so take one of those ideas and then just try to make a hundred levels for it so you're not gonna have a hundred ideas for levels how do you make levels when you don't have ideas you can do the intuitive approach kind of an iterative intuitive approach where you just you make a starting area like here's the platform and then it's like you hit play and then it's like well what if there's another platform there so then you go back to the editor and you add that then you play it again you jump from there to there and it's like what if feel like there could be a spike there or something and you jump over that and then you just kind of gradually add things playthrough add another thing playthrough add another thing until you make a whole level this is kind of what if you ever read masters of doom let's you'll see this kind of what John Romero did when he made levels for doom he would just kind of iterate play through add one thing and play through add another thing and it's a pretty fun intuitive way to make levels that flow really well another way to come up with levels is just to just take a bunch of mechanics and just throw them out like I'll put ten spikes and three moving platforms and then just look at this mess you made and then just think of a way maybe if I move that over here and I'll move that over here and just kind of arrange them in a better way that would kind of make a level and then you play it's like yeah that's alright maybe move that over a bit that's one way another way is just a I mean again just throw random stuff out and try to play it and it probably won't work but your brains still going to try to solve the level and try to get through it and you can pay attention to how it tried to solve it and see one of those solutions that didn't work just take that and make it so it does work I don't know it's kind of hard to explain but it's something I've done in puzzle games right I just throw down random things and then it's not beatable but my brain still tries to solve it and I just try to pay attention to how it tried to solve it and it comes I'll just randomly discover neat ways to make a puzzle or a challenge so make hundred levels make your game polish it have friends play it and then once you've done that you made your big game try to make it again in under like four months maybe and so yeah once you made that then you'll be a really good game developer and then just you just keep doing this you experiment writhings out and then make a big game experiment again try things out make a big game do whatever you want you're you're a pro now

Channel: Miziziziz

Views: 268,331

Keywords: game development, gamedev, game design, tutorial, game design tutorial, gamedev tutorial

Id: 5-iST0a69cI

Length: 6min 15sec (375 seconds)

Published: Wed May 15 2019