Where to start?

judd

Hello, I am relatively new to making games, but have been playing them for eons. My question is, what conceptual things do I have to have "down" to jump into Godot and connect with it as an editor. For instance, I want to warm up with a moon lander type game. Pretty simple, gets some stuff moving, pretty short. But I have never had to make an "endlessly scrolling landscape" like a platformer. Now I know there is a demo game out there, but there is not a lot of information around why you would do one thing over another - especially in those games that are in the samples. So looking at the samples, they are almost "too finished" to help me. Are there articles I should read to understand the approach? Online tutorials I should watch etc etc. I thought if I got some information on this thread, and maybe added some more, I could help create a foundation for other newbs. Thanks, J

BinaryOrange

Welcome! By far, this is the most comprehensive tutorials I have found on Godot. It is for previous versions, but it translates nicely and will at least give you an idea on the inner workings of Godot. The documentation is also extremely helpful, and will point you in the right direction on many things. And finally, download the sample projects. They're very well put together (although the 3D platformer demo does need a lot of work, it at least shows the basics of how to start one) and will provide invaluable insight.

judd

Thanks for the warm welcome. I am working my way through that set of video tutorials. They are pretty good to get familiar with stuff. What I am looking for, as well, is architectural stuff. For instance, when should I use a scene and when should I just stick it in the main list? Should every discrete element in a game be a scene - like is that the same as saying "object" in godot-ese? Are the recommendations on numbers of nested levels? Are there any good tutorials out there on side scrolling terrain? I am googling lots now, but I am looking for procedurally generated 2d terrain to "fly through" - picture a cave. Anyway, that is where I am at the moment. I will stick a bunch of links in this post at some point to show future folks where I wandered around the web.

Kiori

Since this post is gaining traction and it's pertinent in this category I'm sticking it until further notice in hope others will also contribute to the conversation.

Kris

The best thing for learning Godot, to me at least, has been the following YouTube videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9FzW-m48fn1iR6WL4mjXtGi8P4TaPIAp - Breakout Game by HeartBeast https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPI26-KXCXpBtZGRJizz0cvU88nXB-G14 - Tutorial Series by Andreas Esau https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLv3l-oZCXaql20IlPe7gfBEzomnPSLekY - Flappy Bird by Angega Studios About the side-scrolling thing you want to do, or the "fly through", the Flappy Bird tutorial may help you, but I'm not 100% sure that's what you're talking about. I'm still learning Godot myself, and I usually spend most of my time using a 2d game engine called Construct 2. But it's limited in a lot of ways, thus my reasoning for learning Godot slowly but surely. The GamesFromScratch link in the first reply post is helpful too, and I hear he's making a new series for the updated version of Godot. Good luck to you.

Kiori

My take on gameDev is this: there is a lot more to be learned than you realize at first. Remember trigonometry in school? no? Well that would come in handy... What about matrices, heard of them? There are many techniques in the gamedev industry that are just common place, a lot of ppl use them, a lot don't even understand them but use them. Getting to know all of these things is a process, a problem solving one. My suggestions is, to get you started simply learn a bit of gdscript & Godot, by reading the docs, then move over to experimenting by creating basic games, platforms. Mess with the projects Godot provides, have your own hobby project, etc. My second suggestion is: -don't be an amateur!- read books! There  are quite a few game dev books out there, eventually, after you get settled, it's a good idea to start reading them. Beyond that only time will give you the knowledge you need. Unfortunately, at least as far as I'm aware, atm there isn't a go-to resource for learning game dev. You just have to get into it and it will lead you the way.