How to Start Gamedev in 2024

hey guys welcome I'm Brandon and I have been helping people get into game development for almost 2 years now so if you are looking to start your Game Dev Journey then you have come to the right place so this is an overwhelming journey to get started so with that in mind this video is going to serve as a complete road map for starting your game development journey and we want to do it in a way that makes sense and we want to skip any potential time wasters that might come up so where do we begin there are a lot of different opinions on even just where you should start and everyone learns a little bit differently but if if you are a Hands-On learner what I would recommend is that you just Dive Right In and start learning your engine straight away so naturally then our starting point is going to be we have to pick an engine and the landscape for this topic has changed a lot in 2023 so I want to give you the most accurate and upto-date information that I possibly can to help you make the best choice for you because ideally you can switch engines no one's saying you can't switch engines but it's ideal that you don't switch engines you want to Master One tool and there are dozens in dozens of game engines out there but I'm going to focus on the big three unity gdau and unreal and whenever we talk about these three engines the topic of Graphics almost always comes up so let's just get that out of the way if you are a solo developer or you're working on a small team you really don't need to worry about graphical capabilities all three of those engines I just mentioned will suit your needs just fine if you're working solo you're probably not going to be pushing the boundaries of any of those engines so I wouldn't worry about that you can make your game look phenomenal in any of those engines but there are a few factors that you might want to consider and normally when it comes to game development I wouldn't talk about the pricing of the actual engine but this has been a really hot topic since 2023 so let's deal with that really quickly so that you have all the best information and we'll start with the paid engines unity and unreal now neither of them cost any money unless you're making a pretty substantial amount of money from your game already most Indie developers will have to pay very little if anything at all and both unity and unreal are free to download and there are no core engine features locked behind a pay wall now Unity made the headlines in 2023 and that's a big understatement they announced updates to their pricing and they did not handle it very well whatsoever but they have since walked it back to something very reasonable but ever since then I've noticed there has been a lot of misinformation floating around in terms of what they landed on so I just want to make sure that you are getting the accurate information that you need so the next major Unity update is going to be Unity 6 that is when the new pricing will take effect if you update to that version of unity so with that new version here's how the pricing is going to work if you make more than $200,000 annually with your game you'll need to upgrade to Unity Pro which costs about $185 a month at that point you will also owe the lesser of 2.5% of your gross revenue or a download fee per install and again that's the lesser of so the very most you're going to be paying is 2.5% revenue on top of your Unity Pro subscription again this is for Unity version 6 which is not out yet the current pricing for all Unity versions right now which you can stick with by by the way if you don't update is free up to when your game makes $100,000 annually if your game Revenue exceeds $100,000 annually then you will need to upgrade to Unity Pro okay so that's unity's pricing so let's talk about unreal unreal charges 5% if you have earned a lifetime revenue of a million or apparently a lifetime of 5 million if it's on the Oculus store so unreal is a lot more simple gdau on the other hand is open source and therefore is completely free and I don't want to be mistaken here I'm not necessarily advocating for anything but just because gdau is free I'm not necessarily saying that that is the best choice for you gdau is free which is a really really big Advantage but if you go with unreal or if you go with unity they have really big advantages as well they have asset stores they have far more resources they're not open source so they are more stable they have baked in multiplayer services that you can utilize they will often introduce The Cutting Edge new technology if you want Cutting Edge new technology that's the way to go and in a lot of cases both of those engines are more performant than gdau is under the hood and on top of that if you were looking to to get a job in the industry at any point then learning those two engines would be greatly to your benefit but with all that being said gdau is a really really solid engine and unless you're wanting to pursue really high-end rendering then gdau is a very popular and very good choice I personally still use the unity engine and I don't have any plans on changing and if my game makes over $200,000 in a year then I will happily share 2.5% Revenue but that's just me so that's pricing now the other thing that you need to consider with these engines is which programming options do they make available to you because each one has a different path that you're going to have to follow so with unreal you will mostly be using blueprints blueprints is a visual node-based scripting solution you can write native C++ but most of the resources that you find online are going to be centered around creating blueprints so if you're new and you're just opening on real then blueprints is going to be the easiest thing to learn with unity you have the option of writing C code or their visual scripting solution which is now just called Unity visual scripting their visual scripting is going to be very very similar to unreal's blueprints but in this scenario it's a little bit flipped because most of the resources that you'll find online when you're searching for solutions to problems will be written in C not using unity's visual scripting so again if you're new and you're just starting out and you choose to use Unity then you'll have the easiest time getting started if you choose regular C scripting with gdau based on my research it looks like they no longer support visual scripting as of gdau 4 so you'll be writing their own language called gdevelop which is the one that they recommend although it looks like it also supports C and C++ but again if you're looking at tutorials online and you're trying to learn it then you're most likely going to run across gdevelop Solutions personally if you were brand new and you're looking to just start out then I would try all three of them spend one or two days in each of them and see which one you like the best personally they all have slightly different feels so you might find that one of them feels just a little bit more intuitive for you all right now let's say you've gone ahead you've picked your engine now you're back here what is next you need assets to make your games right you need Sprites if you're working in 2D or you need models if you're working in 3D for now at the beginning stages what I would recommend is using other people's art drawing and modeling are two completely different skill sets outside the scope of what you need to learn with your game engine and now programming as well if you don't know how to draw or you don't know how to make 3D models you could learn those things in parallel with learning your engine and programming but for the sake of getting up and running really quickly just use our from online right now you have enough to learn in the early stages open game art is a great resource I'll put a link for that down below but when you are actually ready for art if you're working in 2D then Photoshop is generally your top choice but if you're on a budget K is free and open source and is also really great if you're doing 3D just download blender use blender it is free all the other choices are very expensive okay but again for now if you are in the early stages of just getting started you're going to get up and running much more quickly if you just use other people's art assets just for learning not for making your actual game don't steal people's stuff so okay you have your engine what do you do now to learn your engine and the basics of programming what I would start with is watching two or three beginner friendly tutorials follow them listen to the instruction that they give you this is just to get your feet wet and to get comfortable and familiar with your engine once you've done that and that is a really really boring way to learn but it is going to get your feet wet but once you're done that I want you to think of a really really simple game like Flappy Bird or pong or a simplified crossy Road something like that okay and you're going to try to make it it's preferable that you choose a game that already exists and you can find some art online for it somewhere what the game is doesn't matter so much as how you're looking at it the idea here is that you're able to break down the things that you need to make into really small googleable chunks I don't know if that's a word but I'll say it again googleable chunks some tiny simp simple little game like Flappy Bird can be broken down into really tiny micro steps how do I get the bird on the screen how do I get the pipes spawning in how do I make him fly every time I click the mouse etc etc since this is a game that already exists this is going to simplify things for you because it takes the design out of the equation it saves you time because you don't have to think up the game rules you just copy them now this exercise you're going to want to do this several times and if you want to push yourself even a little bit more so that you learn more quickly what I would do is add a little twist to the end of each of these micro projects doing this is going to help you develop your skills so quickly but it will also help you stay out of what we call tutorial hell that is where you are stuck in the learning stages forever and ever and you never feel like you have enough confidence to actually go out and start something on your own okay so if you have made several micro projects what do you do next you're going to want to start participating in game jams find them and participate in them Solo or with a team it really doesn't matter just search them in Google there are billions of them going on all the time one of the biggest and most popular is ludum Dar these will force you to create something fast under a deadline and most importantly you're going to get critical feedback on your game if you have done a few micro projects and you have participated in a couple of game Gams what I would recommend you do next is trying to make a game in one month the first game Jam actually that I ever participated in was a month long and it was a very very different experience than something like blumar which is either 48 or 72 hours depending on which one you do because in a month you suddenly have time to make a lot of different levels you can add polish and particles and do some of these things that you might not necessarily have time for in your typical game Jam things like particles shaders music sound design level design animation 3D modeling these are all skills you're going to need to acquire but they are not what you start out with you can learn all of those skills after you have gained some competency and some confidence in your game engine and with your programming language so here is a bonus piece of advice for you okay when you are playing video games I would say start playing them with a much more critical eye still enjoy them but actually pay attention to what they are doing pay attention to what they did well and what worked or moments that frustrated you and why did they frustrate you how would you go about solving that you can learn a lot about game design just by playing with a critical eye like the video if you liked and if you want a tutorial to help you get started with your very first game project I have one right here bye

Channel: Sasquatch B Studios

Views: 425,122

Keywords: game development, game dev, indie game dev, indie game development, game developer, indie developer, gamedev, game dev motivation, sasquatch b studios, game dev tips, game dev tips and tricks, indie dev, making indie games, game developers, level design, super meat boy, ed mcmillen, edmund mcmillen, game design, meat boy, meat boy creator, game analysis, level analysis, game level design, how to make levels, how to make awesome levels, how to make good levels

Id: gFSJhSy9ofk

Length: 10min 27sec (627 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 15 2024