Game design and development used to require you to know all sorts of coding, maths and gobbledegook which made it inaccessible to the layman. Over the past few years a number of development tools have appeared that makes it much easier to design, develop and publish your own games online. These range from single game type focused tools such as RPG Maker to behaviour led programs where graphics can be dragged and dropped into the 'stage' such as Gamesalad. This video has a round up of tools available for beginners.
Programs included:
- Gamesalad - Gamemaker - RPG Maker - Pygame - Stencyl - Scratch - Sploder - Alice - Phrogram - Construct 2 - Adventure Game Studio - Flixel
Is this an AGDG? And also, why shouldn't the bar for entry be set high?
Simply programmed games result in SJW bullshit and "experiences" with no entertainment, challenge, or style. The first thing that comes into the devs head is shat out on the screen- minus any talent of course.
If you need decent knowledge of mathematics and coding, plus the willpower to keep working at it, then you're bound to be able to theorize and improve upon what you create. The dev improves it bit by bit, and the final game might be totally different to the original idea- but usually improved.
Of course this doesn't apply to AAA- who grind it down to maximizing profit.
Why shouldn't a band who play live just record their work before hand and lip-synch? Why shouldn't artists just draw and not waste time with painting or sculpting? Why shouldn't an architect just slap the bricks together to make it look good- without reading up on physics and material properties?
There is no easy route in game development. Not if you want to make something good.
So keep at it. Everyone has 1000 hours of being terrible at something in them. Get them out as soon as you can.
Nicholas Gray
Most of those are extremely limited, shit, badly optimizer and give you zero useful skills to expand upon or translate into bigger games.
They're shit and so is anyone who uses them.
Logan Walker
If you ever want to finish a game it's better if you actually learn to program. If you don't have some idea of OOP, data structures, and how to organize code in a logical and meaningful way you're going to end up with a maze of spaghetti code and your game will no longer be enjoyable to work on.
People who start with engines like GM or Unity will always use it as a crutch, they'll rarely ever learn or become better at programming and be able to make games because all they know is their respective engine. You will run into frustrating problems you simply don't know how to solve because you don't know how to program and how engines actually work. It's much more advantageous to use these engines once you actually know what you're doing.
Jason Scott
Move this thread to /agdg/ to be honest. Also, just look at the shit that you're reccomending, the only SLIGHTLY decent thing you reccomended is Gamemaker, and even then it really isn't that good. The best 2D engines around at the moment are Godot and Love2D, and you didn't even mention them. Shitty bread
Kayden Clark
This is my issue, hell, even with Game Maker you'll want to know GML to have real control over everything. The hard part is really understanding coding, the way it works, and how it all fits together.
I really want to make vidya, but the language is so difficult to understand. I just wish there were more books and tutorials helping you get down the foundations and really getting them to click and stick with you.
I don't want to just niggerrig a game together with other people's code.
Grayson Wilson
I just feel guilty using these tools that make it so easy for the unskilled imbeciles like myself to make games like that.
I feel that I should learn the technical skills to make an authentic Atari game using 1979-era hardware in order to consider myself a serious game designer but, alas, I haven't the time, space, money or other resources to make one.
Dylan Peterson
what the fuck
Zachary Hughes
You can use C++ for Godot too. It's way faster than their scripting language by the way(not that it matters that much on 2d games)
Jordan Allen
There's nothing wrong with using tools like Game Maker or Stencyl if you're just starting out. Everyone learns differently, and they have very easy difficulty curves for beginners.
The trick is to not get complacent. That is where a lot of shitty devs come from, they learn RPG Maker and then just stop trying to improve themselves because "well, I can make games now, why bother learning anything else?". You have to keep going, you have to use what you've learned from your first games and keep building and building, never stopping with the limitations of your tools. Same goes for art, for music, for everything. You can't stop, not until you're done with vidya development for good.
Adam Brooks
This shit here is why I cringe every time I see a "serious" Rpg maker project(pokemon sage, seventh stand user two). It's even worse so when the guy who uses rpg maker calls himself a "coder" or "programmer"
Colton Johnson
Look up the Handmade Hero videos by Casey Muratori on youtube. Those are helping me a lot right now. If you're like me you shouldn't aim to make the exact game he's making, because then you'd just be copying every act he makes for far too long and you'll get burned out too. You'd also have nothing of your own by the end of it. At a certain point you shouldn't feel like you need to watch every single video or follow it second to second. You'll start to see how your own starting project differs, but there's still a lot of good information and examples to use.
He even has an Intro to C series you can watch before getting into the Handmade Hero ones, so if you're new to it you'll get up to speed. I think he did a fairly decent job of explaining things. Just fuck around with the language while you're learning it and look at everything with an inquisitive mentality.
If you're on windows you might want to set up mingw, a good text editor, and a nicer terminal like Cmder instead of using Visual Studio for anything other than debugging. But do whatever setup is comfortable for you. Whatever gets you working without prolonged hassle.
Is /agdg/ good for casually asking questions and inquiring about programming? Like a chill study group or something?
Ryder Stewart
/agdg/ the board is dead as fuck, /agdg/ thread here can be quite decent though
Sebastian Baker
What's the skinny on GameMaker? I've thought about trying to learn it since I was impressed with Spelunky.
Hudson Hill
...
Joseph Turner
Game Maker is okay for learning the fundamentals of devving, but if you're actually serious about wanting to learn video game development with it then you will have to learn it's proprietary language, GML. No one has ever accomplished anything by using the drag 'n drop part of Game Maker.
If you need questions answered right away, the /agdg/ threads on Holla Forums are best, but if you have a long-standing question about something (such as individual recommendations for music/graphics software) or just want a general pseudo-dev blog for your own game, /agdg/ the board is pretty nice.
Adam Allen
How hard is it to learn, taking into account someone only having a semester of BASIC 10 years ago? I made some bitchin' databases.
Blake Ramirez
You won't know until you try
Elijah Barnes
no, if your not a woman or a person of color you should not be making games, the market has too many privileged white males on it already.
Noah Phillips
Not terribly hard, I've seen people with zero coding experience go from nothing to deving in a few months with some honest effort. is correct in saying that it is similar to C# structurally, but I personally find GML to be a bit more of a detriment if you are actually looking to graduate to C# at some point in the future because the differences are vast enough that you're just going to be re-learning the basics anyway.
