I have very limited background in programming. I quite want to develop the game myself, or with only minimal help. Is there one language that is better than others for game development, or is more versatile?

  • @[email protected]
    4•1 year ago

    Depends on what you want. I’ve been liking Godot, but I’m an “Open Source” person. There’s definitely more of a community around Unity or Unreal.

    But Godot is free in both ways and relatively user friendly, and since you’re uninterested in hiring a hundred people, using a tool that you like is fine, even if it’s not the most popular.

    There’s a course I’ve never used called Learn GDscript which teaches the inbuilt language for Godot (GDScript) in the browser with fun interactive tasks. It looks neat, but I’ve never tried it myself. You can use other languages with Godot, but I recommend the GDScript. It’s very similar to Python and is well integrated into the engine.

    So from there it’s about screwing around! Like other people have said, you’re not going to whip up the game that’s in your head in anything like the time frame you probably think. Even if you think you’re being realistic, it’s probably even worse than that. But I don’t say this to discourage you, I say this to prevent you from discouraging yourself!

    If you can get a game where a green circle goes through a maze and then text shows up on the screen that says “you did it”, that should be viewed as an accomplishment! It’s simple, sure, but it’s something you did. Try to break your game’s features up into micro chunks that are playable. It’s easy to spend 6 months working on something and making progress, but not in any way you can show friends or whoever, and can’t even really “play” yourself. That can be demotivating. Try as much as you can to have something playable as often as possible. It will feel much more like real progress if you constantly have something you can demo.

    And also don’t underestimate how much a bit of art and sound effects can change an experience. Silent 2D boxes is fine to test things out, but even a free art and sound effects pack makes a huge difference in how fun a game can feel. It can make even a simple premise suddenly feel like a game.

    Good luck, have fun! Oh, also once you’re done tripping over your feet, maybe try a game jam! They’re good exercise.