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The GT3000 Center for People Who Can’t GameDev and Wanna Do GameDev and Other Stuff Good Too
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gamedevtipz.md

The GT3000 Center for People Who Can’t GameDev and Wanna Do GameDev and Other Stuff Good Too

This list comprises of a quick (but by no means complete) summary of the big three game engines and their relevant chosen programming languages. In addition is a list of resources both free and paid to help you get started on your journey as a turtletastic gamedev.

Join us on the #dev_gaming channel of the Turtlecoin Discord located here: http://chat.turtlecoin.lol/

Dos and Don’ts

  • Do explore your options at the outset. Each engine strikes at a different level of expertise and know-how. Game Maker is going to be a lot more forgiving than Unreal Engine in the programming department but that ease comes with inflexbility.

  • Don’t be afraid to experiment while you find what you like and don’t.

  • Don’t try to over-extend yourself. Programming is an iterative process. You want to build and build and build in successive projects from small to large. Trying to tackle too much at once is a surefire recipe for overwhelming yourself. Seek help after you’ve give an honest go at tackling the problem yourself.

  • Do take time to rest, relax, and sleep. Pounding 8 hours of knowledge in your brain on 2 hours of sleep is a great way to waste a day. You won’t retain anything, you’ll make yourself miserable, and worst of all you produce crap while you’re at it.

  • Don’t leapfrog from project to project or language to language without completing what you have started. It can have a depressing and debilitating effect on morale whereas looking back at completed endeavors is always uplifting. If a little strange. “I made 5 games? What?”

Game Engines

Game Maker Studio

Babby’s first game engine. Excels at making 2D Games and uses it’s proprietary language GML. Game Maker also uses a unique Drag and Drop system for making games quickly but lacking in flexbility that scripting brings. GMS2 is not free to publish but is relatively affordable at 39 dollars to publish to desktops. Licenses for mobile, consoles, and other platforms can get expensive but it does have a Free Trial. If you are unable to afford to the license to publish to Desktop contact me on Discord @GT3000#5136 and I will buy one for you provided you have a complete game to show for it. GMS’ most famous titles are Hotline Miami, Undertale, and Risk of Rain.

Honorable Mention:

  • Phaser, A framework built around mobile HTML5, WebGL, and Cavas as well as ease of use to porting to web/desktop. While not a full-feature as something like GMS, still worthy of being looked into. Has an interesting plugin system that allowed people to swap plugins to add functionality to your project.

Unity

Goldilocks Engine. Unity is by far the most popular game engine on the block. Using an Entity Component System where the building block of the game is the GameObject and the components within. It occupies a middle ground where it’s flexible but accessible to new developers. It can be slightly intimidating as it’s somewhat of a blank canvas but in the right hands can suit any sort of development or artistic requirements. Unity’s primary language is C#, a strongly typed language that is much more approachable than C++ and much more flexible than GML. A good choice for those who want to make complex game titles and have a strong programmatic foundation. Famous games made with Unity include Hearthstone, Battletech, and Rust.

Honorable Mention:

  • Godot, An open source competitor to Unity looking to rectify Unity Technologies' habit of breaking things and not always wrapping around to fix it. Uses a similar system to GameObjects/Components called Nodes. Still deep in beta but has the potential to usurp the throne with proper sheparding. Godot games are created either in C++, C#, languages with GDNative bindings such as Rust, Nim, D, or by using its own scripting language, GDScript, a high level, dynamically typed programming language very similar to Python. A great resource (among many) is the YT channel kidscancode which takes an elementary but foundational approach to learning Godot. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQ7soQ-N-eQ MARCH 2019)

Unreal Engine

Big Lads’ Game Engine. Favored most by AAA studios, Unreal Engine provides a world class engine that used to cost an arm and leg for pretty much nothing. Unreal provides beautiful games straight of the box with little tweaking on the user’s part makes it popular with people who want to make simple if beautiful games. UE’s blueprinting make prototyping games quick and easy. Unreal uses C++ as it’s programming language and is considered the industry standard by many. It has a steep learning curve even for those familiar with programming taking even the most dedicated student a few months to truly become proficient. However the level of flexbility is unmatched by C# or GML allow programmers to create incredibly efficient and creative code. Famous games made with Unreal Engine include Fortnite, Sea of Thieves, and State of Decay 2.

Honorable Mention:

  • Cryengine/Lumberyard, Known as the "other" AAA game engine for all intents and purposes is Amazon Lumberyard which is a slightly updated version of CryEngine with Amazon Web Services prepackaged in. Lumberyard's default scripting language is LUA as well as C++. Currently documentation is lacking but Amazon seems committed to filling the void left by Crytek. Many of the features found in UE4 are in Lumberyard however things such as an asset store are still forthcoming. The primarily motivator for using Lumberyard at the moment will be largely financial as Amazon has very competitive fee structure for smaller studios.

Resources

• GMS
    ◦ https://www.yoyogames.com/blog/392/beginner-resources
    ◦ https://www.reddit.com/r/gamemaker/comments/3lyoik/game_maker_handbook_resources_for_beginners_an/
    ◦ https://github.com/Listwon/learning-gms2

• Unity
    ◦ https://unity3d.com/learn
    ◦ https://www.udemy.com/unitycourse/(PAID)
    ◦ http://catlikecoding.com/unity/tutorials/
    ◦ https://www.youtube.com/user/quill18creates
    ◦ http://brackeys.com/
    ◦ http://www.csharpcourse.com/
    ◦ https://noobtuts.com/unity
      
• Unreal
    ◦ https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/
    ◦ https://www.youtube.com/user/UnrealDevelopmentKit/search?query=tutorial
    ◦ https://www.raywenderlich.com/97058/unreal-engine-tutorial-for-beginners-part-1
    ◦ https://www.udemy.com/unrealcourse/ (PAID)
    
• Phaser
    ◦ https://github.com/Jerenaux/phaserquest
    ◦ http://phaser.io/learn/
    ◦ http://phaser.io/tutorials/making-your-first-phaser-game
    

• Generic Resources
    ◦ http://www.pixelprospector.com/
    ◦ https://freesound.org/
    ◦ https://opengameart.org/
    ◦ https://itch.io/game-assets/free
    ◦ https://www.reddit.com/r/gameassets/
    ◦ https://kenney.nl/assets
    ◦ http://www.superflashbros.net/as3sfxr/
    ◦ http://www.bfxr.net/
    ◦ http://www.get-sounds.com/
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