How To Get Started With Game Dev (Beginner's Guide)

all right so i was challenged to make a game in g develop and not just by you guys but actually from the creators themselves but i just don't want to make a game i also want to answer a question that i get a lot from you guys and that's how do i get started with game dev and it's actually a lot easier than you would think but where do you start and what software do you use well today i'm gonna be making a game while i teach you guys how to get started making games but we're not just gonna make any old game we're gonna make a duck game so let's get started let's start with the very basics for those of you who are completely new to game dev you may not even know what a game engine is it's actually pretty simple it's the software you use to create your game and there's all sorts of game engines out there ranging from godot to unreal from 2d to 3d each has their own unique strengths but today i'm going to be using g develop because it's incredibly fast and easy to use especially for beginners and not to mention it's open source and free which is fantastic the game engines aside the only other software i'll be using is pixel edit for making pixel art but honestly you can just use piskull which is built into g develop so you don't have to do this i just didn't for some reason alright so we got our game mentioned but what else do we need to make a game well we need a concept your game's concept is probably the most important part because it's literally deciding what you're going to be doing what the genre is of your game and i think this is where a lot of beginners can get stuck because they don't know where to start or they want to create something crazy big now i'm all for making mmos i'm all for making big games but when you're first starting out you need to keep your expectations realistic try to make something that's really simple or you can even make an arcade style game like pong or asteroids or heck even flappy bird now since i was challenged by the creators of g-develop to create something epic the only thing cool enough to fit the bill pun intended are ducks so here's my game concept there's a duck and he needs to unlock a door using a key to escape this room but we're not gonna make it easy for the duck we're gonna put some spikes in the way and some pits and the ducks gonna get a little mad sometimes and that's it that's the game so we have our game engine and our concept it's time for us to get started actually making your game and the first thing i like to do is make the artwork especially with smaller games by making all your artwork first it makes you less likely to add new things and have scope creep also you already have one part finish of your game without even programming yet and know that in the future you probably should prototype your game first before you make the art but i think when you're just learning or if you're copying a game like pong or asteroids or something that's already out there to just make the artwork first because you know what to expect also i know some of you out there may hate making art or feel insecure about your work don't be we all have to start somewhere and it's the best feeling when you play a game with artwork that you actually made like this beautiful game i made when i was 14. beautiful with that said if you're not interested in the art side of game development then you can always download some free assets by the lovely kenny link in the description now normally i would just jump into making pixel art but this time i actually decided to sketch out some ideas because why not after that i tried to take the sketches i liked the most and remake them in pixel art that's what we got some beautiful duck art so our duck is ready it's time for us to put everything together in what i like to call the programming phase i think this is the part that people are the most afraid of but is surprisingly simple one of the reasons why i'm using g develop is it uses a scripting language called visual scripting basically instead of typing out code in some scary microsoft environment you use this visual representation to do the programming logic what's great about it is beginners don't have to worry about learning syntax and all this code instead they can figure out on the actual logic part of programming because a lot of people think that programming is math and even though math is a part of programming it's not the same thing programming comes down to conditions and actions so think about a condition is flipping on a light switch what's the action the light turns on or in my case for my game when i press the space bar that's the condition the action is jumping simple enough right so by playing around with these conditions and actions you can slowly manipulate the character to doing what you want it to do also the great thing is i'm gonna be making a platformer and i don't even need to do anything i just need to attach this platforming behavior onto my spray here so i got a duck but he's gonna follow the map if i don't give him a solid surface so then you just make another object your tile in this case and then you just give it a platform behavior so it doesn't fall outside of it it's a solid object that the duck can walk on so now it's just taking the time to go through each and every object that i want in the game and programming it i make a key and a key variable i make it when you walk into the key your variable goes up by one and boom beautiful key system then add a door it checks to see how many keys you have and it opens the door add some spikes put in the artwork and wow we already have most of the game figured out and surprisingly that's pretty much it and i know this may look like an incredibly simple game and that's because it is and that's what it should be for your first game the amazing part is if i want to expand upon this more i can i can add more levels more objects more things more characters i could add storyline i could add rpg elements you can add whatever you want and this is just the base and if you understand the base of how you create a game then you can really make any game you want to in any engine that you want to now was i successful in creating an epic duck game uh no i actually wasn't but i hope that this helped demystify the process of game development a little bit more of course there's things like sound and music that you want to add and there's all sorts of different aspects of game development but this is the very bare bones on how to get started with making a game create something basic it doesn't even matter if you don't finish it because you're still learning from it and for those of you out there that really want to see more of this duck game or maybe you want to play around with it and see how i did some of the stuff like the squash and stretch and the particles well you can actually go over to g-develop.io and you can use it as a template play around with it make your own levels i would love to see what you guys create and i know some of you may out there would want a full tutorial on how exactly i did it but there's already so many amazing tutorials especially for g develop on how to make a platformer how to add coins how to make enemies and if you're not sure what game engine to start with g develop is fantastic for learning and it's open source guys we really need to support open source projects because they make software free and accessible to so many people not just for educational purposes but also for professional so if you have any questions on getting started with game dev let me know in the comments down below or any g developed questions i would love to help out i also want to give a huge shout out to heath sargent james albert luke the duke remtain rye bread and skies and the rest of the fantastic patreon supporters these videos wouldn't be possible without you and also thank you so much for watching the video especially to the end and i'll see you next time for another game dev adventure [Music] you

Channel: Goodgis

Views: 255,163

Keywords: goodgis, ohio, devlog, game dev, indie dev, game programming, game process, how to make, firith, firith studio

Id: U9vqzH65Zzw

Length: 7min 9sec (429 seconds)

Published: Wed May 18 2022