How to Start Gamedev in 2024
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- Опубліковано 14 січ 2024
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Join us in this comprehensive guide on how to kickstart your game development journey in 2024! 🎮
Whether you're a complete beginner or looking to level up your skills, we've got you covered with the latest tools, trends, and tips to make your mark in the gaming industry. From choosing the right game engine to mastering essential coding languages, we'll walk you through the crucial steps to bring your gaming dreams to life.
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#gamedev #gamedeveloper #gamedevelopment - Ігри
IMPORTANT***
I don't know if I had the wrong info or if there was an update to the pricing I wasn't aware of, but the Unity pricing in the video is incorrect, here's the corrected info:
If you upgrade to Unity 6, as mentioned, you'll need to upgrade from Unity personal to Unity Pro is you make more than $200k.
BUT...the runtime Fee/2.5% (lower of) only kicks in when BOTH of these conditions have been met:
1 - you have made $1M in 12 month-trailing revenue, AND
2 - 1,000,000 initial engagements.
Apologies for the error in the video, here's the source:
unity.com/pricing-updates
Awesome video, B! It's very refreshing to see this new wave of devs on youtube being so honest and open about the dev process, it truly helps!
Glad you enjoyed it!
What do I do if I started game dev in 2013?
U must be a pro now
I started in 2008
Dang that's a long time, good for you!
I didn't say I was good. 😎 @@sasquatchbgames
lol. but seriously: i've hired once a young dev aged 14, after he showed me his minecraft clone written in c++. that dev has today an own game company and you know one of his games which became a huge thing on youtube. before you contemplate about game dev, if you are into coding: become a great coder first. clone some other complex game, as a challenge, i.e., minecraft. for some kids the hardest part about coding in their teenage years is... realizing that it is a choice you make. do you want to be a consumer (user, gamer) who wastes his childhood on products other people created, 24/7? or do you want to create finally something own, maybe with a minecraft clone as a first learning step. that's the difference. oh, and do not become a youtuber. youtuber game devs aim for views and likes, but actually, none of them made it so far as an actual commercially successful game dev in the industry.
I work 12 hour shifts while listening to you on spotify, trying to remember to find you on youtube when i get home but i always forget, randomly found you now lol : ) You have such a satisfying voice to me, instantly recognized it.
funny how i saw your podcast on spotify BEFORE even seeing you on youtube, and i gotta say! its sooo uplifting and helpful. thanks man.
seriously good advice, nobody else has put out such simple steps to follow for such a daunting task
Thank you bro I now am the head developer on the Last of Us part 3
Hustle up. What’s taking so long? I want answers!!
2030 hang tight@@ipodgolfer13
This is a great video. I especially liked how you called out certain things, like the recommendation to use premade assets. Too many of us get lost in the idea that we have to do everything itself. That's not the case!
I would like to see more mention of learning about the "why" of making a game. Depending on the why you can use different paths to get there faster.
What a great realistic and informative video. I have not even taken the first step but you have helped inspire me to at least try it out for a bit.
Concise and without bloat. Much appreciated.
Wow, I'm currently trying to finally create my first game and you have no idea how much you helped me and my friends with this video! You won another subscriber :D
Great vid, a lot of useful info, great pace and no beating around the bush. This helped me a lot. Thank you!
thank you so much as I'm trying to get into game development and im gonna admit im stuck in tutorial hell so its really helpful this vidoe
Gdevelop is a separate engine, Godot's native scripting is called gdscript
Absolutely killing it! Fantastic VID! 🔥😍
I don't think open source means less stable than proprietary though? You also quoted blender which is open source for example. As for godot, it's growing fast so it might also lead to professional opportunities as well soon enough.
If anything open source is more stable. No surprises, bugs reported openly, patches can be made easily.
It really depends. Godot is kind of at a rapid development phase, where new features are going to be coming in hot, which could break compatibility. At least for me, coming from an enterprise background, open source is great, but projects sometimes get into a phase of development where there are too many hands in the kitchen and not enough oversight/control. It's by no means a universal problem, and open source makes it easy to get older builds, but things can spiral out of control fast if the core team doesn't run a tight ship.
The whole stability aspect of open source is a common myth started by commercial software companies, along with things like the license from the software being tied to the assets you make with the product. The latter is allegedly used by Autodesk to prevent people from using Blender in schools and places like that.
Small note, Game maker studio is free to use, but if you want to publish and make money from your game you have to pay a one time fee of 100 dollars and if you want to export to console you need the enterprise subscription. So it's a very viable option if you want to make 2d games.
I thought GMS went paid service? I was gonna use that engine, but I overheard they went that direction and switched to Unity/Godot.
@@markguyton2868 yeah they switched recently to this one time fee if you want to publish, and subscription for console.
They were sub-based for a while but it seems they've since changed to a one-time payment if you stay to web, mobile, and PC-based releases. If you want to release to consoles (Switch, Xbox, PS5) then you pay a subscription per month/year in order to compile your game for those which seems to run about $79/month or $799/year. I personally like this set-up. @@markguyton2868
I'm planning to use GameMaker Studio for 2D based games and if I ever look towards 3D games I'd probably pick Unreal Engine, as it stands now.
@@markguyton2868from my understanding they went to a subscription model briefly and then reverted the decision, with the money you invested toward your subscription able to be applied to the updated one-time payment.
@@markguyton2868 its back to normal baby
Thanks for sharing this advice. Lots of good information here that I hadn't considered or wasn't aware of (like the engine costs).
I actually really liked recreating popular games like flappy bird because it made me learn about things that I wouldn't have necessarily thought about or something regular tutorials don't teach, like object pooling. I was blown away with how something so important could just fly over my head and I would've had no idea about it otherwise.
Congratulations
You're the first person I've seen mention Open Game Art
5:09 oh wow that's me
You are right lad
Awesome vid - thank you for all the great tips 😊❤
This is the video I was looking for. TY
Thank you for taking the time to make this video! Do you know of any resources to find projects/ get connected to mentors?
Most useful video I've ever watched in my life, thanks
thank you sir. this gave me the motivation to attempt to learn make a game.
Such a good video & amazing advice!
this helped a lot, the info about unity especially made me change my idea, i was going to change engine and use Unreal by learning C++ but since i now understand how the new pricing will work i don't see that happening any time soon and i will stick to unity, thanks!
Thank you for this.
Solid video. Thank you.
Just an addition to 3:47 Godot also has Multiplayer support out of the box. And at version 4 i have never faced with any issue regarding being stable. So I do not think you have done your research well regarding Godot, but that's to be expected as you are mainly Unity developer.
Thanks it was really helpfull ❤
Thank you!
I'm in game development for years now, but the last months less and less, I'm going to start learning and using Godot (from Unity), which is why I watched this vid, but I think this video is very helpful, a lot of good tips and advice 💪
I find this fair. They provide you with a free tool to succeed. Once you make over 200k you can afford what the tool costs. I also have an unpopular opinion on AAA game pricing. I think $70 is still the most bang for your buck in entertainment. I can buy 142 games for the orice of one week at Disney lol.
true
I’ve never programmed or done anything in the game dev world ever. I’m not super smart leaner or really quick leaner but I think with some dedication I could really put my foot in the video game scene I have great ideas it’s a matter of if I’m really ready for this. If anyone wants my back please say something positive to me to keep me motivated! Thanks everyone.
This is great. One thing I would add about the engine choice (as someone who uses both Godot and Unity) is console exports.
For 2D this used to be the one thing that held me back from Godot since it didn't have official support for exporting to Switch, Xbox and PS5 (at least not without a lot of expensive customisation of the engine or getting an expensive consultant to do it). This was due to complications with licensing and the open source nature of Godot.
That's going to change pretty quick with W4 Games, who recently announced relatively competitive pricing for console exports with Godot 4. W4 is the incorporated side of Godot, backed by the founder and does not have the same issues with licensing. Their model is priced like pre-Unity 6 but cheaper.
excellent advice g
As someone who started on Unity by using Udemy classes and UA-cam, then later switched to Unreal Engine, Unreal Engine was way easier for me, and not because I knew all that much. The tools were just better.
Awesome video, thanks
Happy new year, i think im gonna try to do something this year, i wonder if someone already made a roguelike monopoly yet lol.
As an artist, someone who makes his living with art, I would like to tell you - there is a full copyright exemption on unreleased works. This means that if you're studying and you're not publishing your projects anywhere, you can use any asset you want from anywhere. You should focus on the learning. There are things you can learn in the pursuit of assets - places where you can find good stock assets, or learning how to rip games apart, both are skills that can be interesting ;)
thanks bro (been in Tutoriol hell for a long time)
Such a great video, commenting for the algorithm
W
I like how you said breaking things into small googlable chunks
Thanks!
incredible video
Doing game jams, especially such short ones where you only have 2 days (especially if you have to work at the same time), just sounds a good way to be hyper stressed lol
Just to potentially get slaughtered at the end 😂 no thanks
I feel it's a great way to learn in a hurry and realize what truly is necessary in the initial prototyping stages. Clever solutions can be found under pressure when you have to take every shortcut imaginable.
But if you fail to complete a game that's fine too. It'll teach you your limitations at the time and what you might need to work on as far as productivity goes.
Don't be afraid of failure.
I just got my first laptop yesterday. The most coding I’ve ever done is scratch😂. So far I’ve made a moving cube with wasd in unity.
Nice video! Love you content btw. Just one side note. The Godot’s own language is not gdevelop, but actually GDscript.
Lol yea I realized my mistake after the fact. Whoops! I googled it and apparently Gdevelop is another engine I'd never heard of, so no idea why that got stuck in my head. Thanks!
Iv picked Unreal Engine and C++. Currently have a project where i'm learning the engine and its features. Recently I'v stopped watching Tutorials on how things are done and started doing my own way on the C++ side.
Iv also picked Unreal and how has the c + + been going?
@@DylanWasTaken_ Great. Learning curve was hard to adjust too but iv gotten the hang of it. It does help having some experience with programming with C++.
But practice does make perfect ur won't know everything but u can learn as u go or learn what u want then go. That how iv taken my approach to game development
I've also just recently done the same! It's going to be a long ride but hopefully a rewarding one.
@@P3ga73 it will be a long ride but a fun one one the less. GL on ur journey m8
2024 is the year i release my game on early access. After learning Houdini and implementing it, learning marvelous designer and mixer, time to let the results speak for themselves and so far the graphics are great on my game
What game engine you use for your game?
@@flamart9703 unreal engine 5 and i use C++
Thank you
Thanks a lot.
>they are not open source so they're more stable
I have not laughed that hard in my entire life, thank you lol
tbh godot is extremely unstable, I experienced way more bugs in a couple months of using godot compared to 6 years of unity.
@@NihongoWakannai you can't generalize ALL open source software to be less stable than their counterparts, because it's often the reverse - open source being more stable due to people who experience the bugs actually reporting the bugs, or better, fixing the issues themselves.
@@YouHaveTrouble you're right, it's not unstable BECAUSE it's open source.
been in tutorial hell for years! I am using unity and just building!
7:37 can't believe you forgot about the hit classic frogger
I’v used gamemaker for a 3 yrs now but i recently tried unity to make 3D
Great video
Closed Source != More Stable
Thank you for the help!!
I'd like to start making videogames but i need a new pc. I would prefer buying a laptop, maybe in the future a desktop pc.
What do you suggest me to look at ??
Do you have any specific details that i should look for?
Consider that i would mostly make 2d games, nothing too serious at the moment, and eventually move to something 3d
First very simple game. Got it
Correction on Unity pricing, once you get to $200K you need to get Pro. However Runtime Fee only kicks in per game once that game reaches both $1M in Revenue (for last 12 months) and 1M downloanloads. Only once all criteria are satisfied, then and only then does the Runtime Fee kick in and you then self report your revenue and pick either pay per download or revenue share (whichever is cheaper)
I'm one week into my journey. Have about a dozen ideas. Focusing on one, want to go through the motions. I am (normally) a "Backend Engineer" by day. I'm plenty strong in the programming front.
My primary goals are:
1. I want to be able to say I've delivered a game.
2. Something to add to my resume - there's several game adjacent companies I'm interested in. They all require some game engine experience.
3. Some minor income would be nice.
I started with unity and ran into so much bloat and errors. Now I use Godot and absolutely love it. It just makes sense, and it is so clean
Thank you Sasquatch, very clear and precise. I appreciate it
Good information and looking over the main essential to give beginner a foot hold. But May I also add 2 other game engines. You also gamer maker studio and gdevelop, with gdevelop being more visual script friendly and have a strong community base tutorials and help. And game maker studio will be another good game engine where developers can transition from visual scripting to hard coding. And with many tutorials for both visual scripting and hard coding with gml. Developers could have an easy time. Awesome video glad to see this.
I have never thought about making a game or I plan to now (mostly cuz idk how to code) but i still watched the whole video
"They're not open source so they are more stable" holy non-sequitur batman!
4 minutes in it was confirmed, had a strong feeling this was a unity guy lol
For 2D assets you mentioned Photoshop which is a paid subscription, Aseprite is a one time 15 dollar fee. Only good if you’re planning on pixel art but still an option.
You can also download their source code and compile it for free
There also alternatives like Piskel and Pixelorama. Pixelorama being made with Godot.
Not to add to the confusion but as I understand it Unity doesnt charge the up to 2.5% fee for revenue under 1 million $ for PRO users. So the expected path is make between 200k and 1 million get the pro license. Make over that then get the pro license and pay per install unless its a free to play mobile game because thats really the only way the install fee is going to be greater than the 2.5%.
Great video, I wonder if you have any thoughts on using AI assistance tools in 2024. Either for coding help or art generation
I really want to join a "Loodum-darey" game jam
Godot recently brought back its revamped version of Visual Scripting.
the most soul crushing thing to learning online is to be in tutorial hell with no clear goal for which to strive for. "i want to learn how to make a game" is insanely wide and difficult compared to "i want to make flappy birds" at least in my experience. then again i usually quit out of boredom after a few days so what do i know lol
I'm just like you. I want to make a 3D game, but I feel lost every time I search for UA-cam, I find that the subject has become very difficult and complicated. 👎
I’ve been following the 20 games challenge by SDG Games and it’s been really helpful.
Essentially it has you remaking games starting out with pong and eventually making more and more complex games but in manageable timeframes. I’m learning a lot from it and it’s a fantastic way to learn.
Missed a great chance to mention Procreat for making 2D assets.
I only want to program as a hobby and to make something for my daughters to use. Every time I settle on an app, I'm pulled into game dev with videos like this then I wanna make a game and I really don't know what to do :( I don't live and breath coding, I just dabble now and then which makes the decision even harder.
Unreal and Unity (as well as some others) have visual scripting which you, as a hobbyist, might find to be what you need. It's like "drag and drop coding".
If they’re old enough, you can try to include your daughters into the process by programming in Scratch. GDevelop is a more complex version that uses similar visual scripting.
Don't make it harder than it needs to be. Just pick Unity or Unreal. Find a tutorial for beginners that makes an entire game in a reasonable time (like a 2 to 4 hours tutorial). Complete the tutorial. Now find another one.
That allows you to actually create a fully functioning game, even if it's just a simple tutorial game. You can expand on what you made or start from scratch after that.
Personally I picked Unreal because I like the visual style of creating the game (using Unreal Blueprints).
@@slandshark Yeah I think that's probably the best advice tbh. Now I'm over my sickness, I'm going to jump into one I found the other day! Thank you :)
@@BadRPGPlayerGlad you are feeling better!
I'm a total noob as well at the moment, but ended up creating a kind of roadmap for learning that I'm going to stick with (based on the suggestion of various other successful indie devs). It looks like this:
1) Watch and complete 1 to 3 tutorials on how to make an entire game (This is where I started, almost done with it: /watch?v=zt13VcimeyI ) . Make sure they are different genres of games and not longer than 3'ish hours for the tutorial video. Then move to step 2 below.
2) Create 3 to 5 extremely simple games, just copy from existing games. Like recreating tetris or pacman or pong, etc. Try to make each game a different genre if possible.
3) Now you can work on your own idea/game from scratch. But the big caveat is to make sure it's a simple game. This is where a lot of game devs fail, they try to make their big dream game right from scratch and burn out after awhile. So instead make a small'ish game, and be careful of feature creep.
The next stuff I'm write is more about the step by step approach you should take when making your own ideas/games, more stuff I gathered from other game devs.
1) Get the absolute basics of the game mechanics down for just 1 level or '15 minutes of gameplay' of your game. Don't worry about graphics, AI, animations, etc. They can all be bare bones stuff just so it works at a basic level. And don't try and build the entire game, just focus on 1 level or 15 minutes of gameplay.
2) Test your game in this state, play it, have friends play it, etc. Ask the question: Is this game fun even without all the fluffy/fancy graphics/animations/audio/etc? Is the core gameplay loop interesting? Does it have a good 'hook'? Once you've found and created an idea that is fun even without all the fancy stuff then move onto step 3.
3) Now take that single level or '15 minutes of gameplay' section of your game and polish it so it's dang near perfect. Don't worry about the rest of the game, just focus on that 15 minutes or 1 level of your game. Polish the sound, animations, graphics, game mechanics (you don't need to include ALL the game mechanics, only what's necessary for that 15 minutes), get it all done as best you possibly can.
4) You've basically just created your demo/showcase. That's what you can use for putting on your steam store page or sending to game journalists...or send to publishers to help get funding, whatever your goal is. You now have a completed section of your game. Show people the quality they can expect from the rest of the game. This is what will get people to wishlist your game when they see it for the first time.
5) Now build out the rest of your game using your polished 15 minutes as the template. It should be much easier now to simple copy/paste what's you've made and apply it to other levels, etc (I'm generalizing here, but you get the idea). You can also now add in any other gameplay mechanics that are relevant for the rest of your game.
A lot of devs get stuck trying to polish 100% of their entire game before showing it off...which means they are very likely to burn or now always be in a 'it's not good enough' state and nobody will ever learn of the game. I honestly think that's where Sasquatch B Studios is stuck.
I also took some advice from a youtuber who's made almost an entire MMO in 1 year. This is my daily routine right now, keep in mind I'm a father of 4 (oldest is 10 and youngest is 1), husband, and have a full time career...so my time is limited. I'm not expecting to get a lot done every day and I will not compare my progress/speed to others who can focus on game dev all day long. Keeping that in mind makes it less stressful for me.
1) No Zero Days! Every single day I'm doing SOMETHING towards completing my games/tutorials or whatever I'm working on related to game dev.
2) Post a dev blog (I'm using wordpress) every single day, even if you got almost nothing done, post about it anyway. This allows me to look back and see that I'm actually making progress and that every day I'm one step ahead of the previous day.
3) Backup my code changes (I use Github) AND update my project management tasks every single day. This helps keep me on track and focus without getting sidetracked. I'm using github projects to keep track of tasks, but will likely switch to Trello in the near future.
I hope the advice helps! It's the advice I'm following right now. I'd love to see what you create once you get into it. Please let me know!
To clarify, using assets that you paid for the rights to use commercially isn't stealing. You don't need to make your own art for your game release.
I bet y'all would like "The biggest lie in video games" by the game dev youtuber AIA. He goes through some of what he has experienced in his own project
im more hands on rather than the listening or reading guides that only talk about the basics until i fall asleep.
I would love some more advanced stuff not specifically for Unity. How are your games Samurado and Veil of Maya going?
Samurado is coming along nicely! I'm really stoked about it!
Curious but what font did you use for your thumbnail? If you don't mind telling me?
this is just for future me: Note I was in "tutorial hell", I should get to Game Jam stage and do a few more mini projects first.
cool video)
"there aren't opensource so they are more stable" How the [...] did you connect those things?
i picked Unreal Engine cause the field that im aiming for but i might switch tho
Forgot about Affinity software for 2D art, it has a lifetime buy.
This video should be the default answer when someone asks: How to game develop..
I truly feel that Game Maker should’ve been on the list as well as a fourth (free) alternative. Just because of their visual scripting and the way everything is set up is so streamlined. Getting objects to interact is incredibly simple and can be done in minutes if you know what you’re doing. But I’m huge proponent of Godot and only an intermediate solo game dev
I also need to mention I can import things from procreate (free, but iPad exclusive) extremely easy I can drop it straight to my email and put in my godot under 1 minute after completing the drawing.
I just wanna make 2D games, but since I have no coding experience I think I will start with making card games.
The one big issue with Godot is the lack porting to consoles. This is due to copyright issues and stuff smarter people can explain but it pretty much forces you to remake your game in an engine that supports consoles or pay to get it done. I still plan on doing my next project in Godot but it bums me out a bit that my nephew won't be able to play it on his switch.
From what I hear Godot console support is coming. Its gonna support xbox, ps and switch
I started with Unity 10 years ago, and I really struggle with trying to use another engine, just because I'm so used to Unity, so the others are so weird to me.
If I was to do it all over again, and knew what I know now, I would have 100% chosen to use Unreal Engine instead.
could you make a video about game maker studio 2? idk if you have
2:30 That's not entirely true because Unity added an extra clause behind everyone's back before the tax change which allows them to retroactively apply changes starting from Unity 2023, meaning you don't have to necessarily be tied to Unity 6 for those to happen.
3:46 Unity is famous for being unstable and not having a single finalized feature, as all of their stuff is either in alpha or deprecated.
4:37 Unreal's Blueprints are way more powerful than Unity's visual scripting because Blueprints are essentially C++ code under the hood and Unreal allows you to use both C++ and Blueprints if you want. And since Unreal exposes all the engine code for you, you have way more options down to making your own plugins and modifying how the engine works for your project.
8:07 And this is one place where Unity is superior. Their documentation is excellent and they have a ton of in-house learning material and courses which used to be paid, but were made all free during and after the pandemic.
Yeah, makes sense, though I probably wouldn't enter a game jam simply because I know I would never reach any set deadline... also I'm not the best at spur of the moment idea making.
I'm saying this from past experience with deadlines, not necessarily fear, but then again talking to anyone is not a forte of mine.
*me who has no inrest in develoing games*''very intresting and usefull knowlage to add to my brain''
this channel gonna blow up someday
Rockstar: creates physics engine better than real life
Me: How does my player keep jumping up?