Godot 3 kickstarter tutorial question(s)

justinbarrett

So, I am a little confused...I want to understand if I am well...understanding this correctly. There is a indie game dev who teamed up with the godot team to make a 2d(where tutorials are not lacking) game tutorial series? There is a kickstarter paying for the series....aannnnddd people are expected to buy the tutorial series thereafter? I maybe confusing this...but to get more people using the software you need to empower them to use it....not put that ability behind a paywall. Or have I completely misunderstood something...I really hope I am wrong.

Megalomaniak

Well, creating high quality collection of content takes not only skill but also time and highly skilled professionals can't be expected to afford to spend large amounts of their working hours to create free content. In the big picture it's better for Godot's growth for there to be for-cost professional grade/high quality learning material than for there to be no professional grade learning material. Especially something on the scale of developing a full game from beginning to end.

Besides no-one's going to force you to buy the series, if you don't want to pay for the tutorials you consume then hey, vote with your wallet, by keeping it in your pocket. As for the KickStarter, people who pledge get, as mentioned on the KS page, a corresponding set of the tutorial material. You don't have to pay twice.

Kiori

@justinbarrett

I believe that buy supporting the kickstarter you are getting said tutorials by half price. The tuts are high quality as per other tutorials GDquest has done. I believe the tuts will be available post KS but like i said at a more expansive price.

Also, I believe the free youtubes every day are just an extra At any rate, I messaged the developer in question to answer this more properly.

Hope that helps. ;)

memzen

@justinbarrett: You say 2D tutorials are not lacking but I know they are lacking. I am very frustrated by the lack of examples for the proper usage of the 1000+ commands I find that would be useful to me when searching the help reference documentation. At slant.co Godot is listed as the best 2D game engine but one of the cons of the engine is "The documentation is poorly written, and has very few examples of real application and even fewer design guidelines about how to program a game in the engine." I would not agree that the documentation is poorly written but much more needs to be explained about the many useful commands in Godot. The persons contributing to the kickstarter campaign are grateful to those who are attempting to meet some of the need with this tutorial video series.

NeoD

I wonder if a tutorial on a single game will answer to all questions about Godot, and will turn people to ninjas of game development. If the documentation is poor let's create a Kickstarter fundraising to hire a technical writer. Reading such a tutorial takes time for a guy who has already read the "step by step" official tutorial, the officials demos (very very useful) and already know the basics. Generally such a guy just looks for explanations about some specific stuff.

Don't get me wrong, it's not bad to add a quality tutorial for Godot at all. It would be like a reference for beginners but I advise people that it's not a magic solution to be a master of Godot.

Rukiri

Isn't there going to be free tutorials during the campaign? I might donate $20-40 bucks when I get paid on the 2nd. I guess the unity Zelda series kinda stopped granted most of the stuff was there "battle, movement, ai, hud" but no menu system.

Will he be using C# or GDNative or GDScript?

Schuster

Yes,exactly....like memzen said : "I am very frustrated by the lack of examples for the proper usage of the 1000+ commands I find that would be useful to me when searching the help reference" .....I think we need a somethink like Godot Bible(book) with a practical examples of commands,functions. But this kickstarter is great.....Godot engine also needs professional video tutorials

Akien

@Rukiri said: Isn't there going to be free tutorials during the campaign?

Yes, every single day. The first one was published yesterday:

Will he be using C# or GDNative or GDScript?

GDScript. He might make a video or two about C# and GDNative to show how they can be used, but that won't be the focus.

GDquest

Hey there! Sorry it took me some time to get back to you. The campaign involves some stretch goals and contributions to the demos and docs for Godot 3. Looking at how the campaign is going, you can bet it will happen. With the next milestone, I'll open source the full project, comment the code and make it available as part of the Godot 3 demos (MIT / CC0 licences). You can find the details on this Kickstarter update.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ping me on Twitter or the Godot Discord server.

justinbarrett

Thank you, it's not that I am "above" paying for something, but in a market where unity and UE4 exist and have ample free tutorials out there and appear in many ways more appealing to the beginner....I felt that paying for information that should be readily accessible to any user is the wrong choice for the growth of Godot...investing in a kickstarter is fine, even with stretch goals, I just did not feel like that paying was a good path for "us"(not like I contribute, but should)....the larger the user base the more contributors will exist in larger numbers...plus I feel like all information on how to use and implet things in software should be free ESPECIALLY if said resources and information are coming from the people providing the software...there are other ways to make revenue and extend your product....in the end GDquest gave me the exact response I expected and had hoped for. I want to thank you personally as well as the contributors of the engine. My only gripe is that the tutorials are based on 2D, so I will probably never even take a peek at them....needless to say quality level tutorials are a great thing to have, be it 2D or 3D.. I hope this response makes some sense...I just rolled out of bed ;)

theApe

I think the confusion is that since Godot developers support this kickstarter, somehow they´re responsible for it? As far as I can tell this is still an indie developer trying to make a living providing quality tutorials for Godot (and Krita), who chose to approach the Godot developers to attain their support in promoting, and possibly also improve Godot documentation and examples if enough people back the kickstarter.. So it´s not actually "coming from the people providing the software".

whooshfrosted

Yeah he's independent of Godot. I read that he's rare in that he's willing to teach open source software. They said for some reason professional instructors generally won't teach open source software.

unity and UE4 exist and have ample free tutorials out there and appear in many ways more appealing to the beginner..

I tried them both, gave up and came here. UE is very complex, is suited for large teams and the documentation and tutorials date quickly, because development on the engine moves so fast. Unity, just no, but I won't get into that. Godot is the easiest to learn engine I've used so far, and the documentation is fine if you have any programming experience at all. If you are a beginner, you should start in 2D. 3D is a whole new level of frustration. Learn 2D on Godot thoroughly then move up to 3D.

And free tutorials do not compare to ones made by professionals. The difference between someone doing the odd video in their spare time to help out the community, vs something that is comprehensive cannot be compared. My only gripe is I would have to wait till October, but they said they will be releasing tutes before?

Rukiri

@whooshfrosted said: Yeah he's independent of Godot. I read that he's rare in that he's willing to teach open source software. They said for some reason professional instructors generally won't teach open source software.

And free tutorials do not compare to ones made by professionals. The difference between someone doing the odd video in their spare time to help out the community, vs something that is comprehensive cannot be compared. My only gripe is I would have to wait till October, but they said they will be releasing tutes before?

Daily videos on youtube but they're sparse and quite basic honestly...

brunosxs

Hey guys, he just posted the 4th video talking about how to create a zelda-like camera effect. If you can't back the project with money, share as this will help a lot too!

I've learned a lot with godot, having come from Construct2 a little more than a year ago and having material with the level of quality that he does(production and content) is invaluable.

GDquest

@whooshfrosted said: I read that he's rare in that he's willing to teach open source software. They said for some reason professional instructors generally won't teach open source software.

Because it's hard to make a living, you work long hours and you have no opportunity for jobs i.e. at local gamedev colleges or in game studios, Unity and UE being taught in the vast majority of schools.

@Rukiri said: Daily videos on youtube but they're sparse and quite basic honestly...

That's one of the trade-offs with daily videos [especially when you edit them]. There's graphic design and communication work on every one of them, plus more work for the KS, making it nearly impossible to tackle complex topics.

I'm not a programming expert, but a game designer first and foremost. I'm getting up to speed thanks to some industry veterans, so the quality will only go up over time, and you'll see after ~1 year focusing on Godot, you'll be looking at a ton of content for all kinds of users. Including important contributions to Godot itself.

Don't hesitate to point out when the code isn't Godot-ic (do we have a word for that? Similar to Pythonic for Python), when the solution isn't clear, not future-proof etc. I'm open to critiques, and although you can't change Youtube videos, I correct the code on Github and add comments there.

NB: I do have professional experience working in games, both as a freelancer and an indie (working on mobile and html5, browser-based titles that we sold to publishers). So hopefully there's still a lot of valuable info I can share right now.

whooshfrosted

I think they were saying there is a resistance to teaching open source software in general. I have also seen devs who won't make games for Linux, because they think people that use Linux have no money. I'd think that Linux users would have more money, because they don't have to spend so much on every day software.

Anyway, I will be supporting your Kickstarter and I'm very excited to watch the course. I only wish I could get it right now. Good luck. :)

Kiori

@whooshfrosted said: I'd think that Linux users would have more money, because they don't have to spend so much on every day software.

Yeah, that's my experience also, in the years inside the Ubuntu community I saw that very clearly. The catch though is there aren't as many linux users as there are windows or mac, in total absolute numbers. I remember a dev a while back, he made the effort of porting his game to mac/lin and 50% of his revenue came from non windows platforms, so... Who knows right.

whooshfrosted

@Kiori "50% of his revenue came from non windows platforms, so... "

Yes, I saw the same said by the Spiderweb Software guy many years ago. He said half his income came from Windows, which was 90% of the market at that time, and half came from Apple which was only 10% of the market. Brian Fargo from InXile also said they made a game that flopped, until they released it on a certain platform. For some reason the people there went crazy for it, and the game became a financial success. So as you say, you never know!

That's another thing I appreciate about Godot. As long as your game is entirely scripted, you can press a button and your game can run on another platform!

justinbarrett

some of us use linux because we do not have money to throw around. I make a modest living, feed and cloth my family etc...but any frivolous spending is for birthdays and Christmas....I will probably never pay for any tutorial...also the linux users mindset is to support foss and foss suporters(like a teacher :) ), but we are generally not a wealthy bunch...some are, but in general nope.

I was under the impression that they were backing this...still for me 8k+ euros is enough for me to live on for 4 months...easily and needless to say I will not be purchasing it. I'm not against this sort of training scenario....I just feel like it is marketed incorrectly.

whooshfrosted

". I make a modest living, feed and cloth my family etc...but any frivolous spending is for birthdays and Christmas..."

So how did you afford a computer with a 3D card? They aren't cheap

".also the linux users mindset is to support foss and foss suporters(like a teacher :) ), but we are generally not a wealthy bunch...some are, but in general nope."

You are speaking for some Linux users. Sounds like they are the reason why commercial developers won't give the platform any of their time.

I was motivated to move to Linux, because I resented spyware masquerading as an operating system. Personal wealth or socialist ideas had nothing to do with it. People who remain on Windows and Apple, I genuinely feel sorry for them, because I know what is being done with their information. So I like the open software part the most.

"I will probably never pay for any tutorial."

If you want free tutorials there are tons on Youtube. After reading the documentation, I used them to fill in areas I didn't understand. The information is out there, but instead of costing you some money to get it in one place, it will cost you a lot of your time to go out and find it.

"still for me 8k+ euros is enough for me to live on for 4 months.."

And what would you do for the rest of the year? Hold Kickstarters 3 times every year? This guy makes a living teaching FOSS, as he explained its not easy. He has to eat just like you and your family, lets let him do it. ;)