To try everything Brilliant has to offer-free-for a full 30 days, visit brilliant.org/MrElipteach/. The first 200 of you will get 20% off Brilliant’s annual premium subscription. Are you stuck in tutorial hell or have been in the past? Share with us what you did to escape!
Here's what I recommend: Copy the tutorial. When you're done, try to add something to it, whether that be sound effects, an animated sprite, another gameplay feature, etc. This will help you experiment with things without having to know how to make the whole game. It'll help you understand why the tutorial did it that way as you tweak it and see what breaks it or doesn't. Eventually you'll have enough pieces figured out to try and make something from scratch, and you'll be on your way out of tutorial hell, and onto stack overflow hell.
Btw Mr Elipteach, I did my first game jam recently and I watched the scratcher shader video like 20 times trying to figure out how to make Splatoon 2D in godot
I kinda agree but I also believe you can still be stuck in hell with that. You might be able to modifiy, but never to come up with your solutions fro mthe ground up. It can be a good step towards being able to build stuff on your own though. Ahah long live SO
To recreate Splatoon in 2D I think you need another approach. You have the splashing and the navigation on the splashes to figure out. While a texture based solution could work, you'd have to be able to use this texture information to navigate, which might be difficult. Another approach could be to use polygons under the hood and the geometry class to do union operation. You'd have access to the polygons where you can go. You might even be able to use these polygons with the navigation server, especially useful if you need to make AI. I have a video on the geometry class if you're interested.
@@mrelipteach Oh I got it to work for my game, but I definitely think there's better ways to do it if I were to go back to it. Polygons would allow me to interact a lot more with the splashes so I like that idea. Compute shaders seems like it would be useful but I don't know much about them yet.
I like this plan : Watch the tutorial without using the tool. Watch the tutorial again while following along and using the tool. See if I can create the tutorial sample without watching the tutorial. There will always be parts that I don't remember so it's ok to go back to the tutorial, I'm just seeing how far I can go. Eventually, I can do the whole tutorial on my own. Can I create something similar to the tutorial on my own? NOW, and only now, go to tutorial part 2 Yes, it takes a long time. The 11 1/2 hour "Ultimate Godot Tutorial" took me over 40 hours to complete. But boy, I really understood the basics of Godot after that.
True, I often hear "make small games". Where the more plausible suggestion should be: "make lots of smaller experiments / prototypes", but focus on the specific feature, don't overengineer it. Once you have a sufficient "bag" of prototypes and know how, you can make a clean slate and build a game from those components (reimplementing them cleanly). Its easier to do experiments outside of complex projects.
Yeah, got in a huge fight on a forum over that. Asked about how to logically progress, got told I needed to forget UE5 and learn to program first, then make Pong, etc. "Small steps" does not mean start by learning assembly so you understand how C works.
I think tutorial hell is important. Learning the vocabulary is just as important as projects. If you don't understand the words they're using in a tutorial then it's worthless to watch a video. I can follow along with a tutorial but if I don't understand whats going on it won't help and I'll be wasting time copy and pasting without actually comprehending whats going on. There are a lot of things that you don't need to do in programming to understand. Humans must understand how to read before they can write well. I feel the same about understanding the basic fundamentals of computer science learning. Watching someone do something to understand why it's done that way is important.
I totally agree with the vocabulary. That's why I had a video idea in my list for a while about creating a glossary video specific to gamedev. Watching someone's code to understand can be valuable but you need two things for that in my opinion. First, he teacher must be explaining WHY, otherwise it'll be very difficult for beginners to understand. Second, you need to be paying close attention to what's going on. I'm not sure it's possible to understand and copy at the same time
This is great advice, thank you. "Don't spend too much time learning how to do something from scratch, because if it takes you that long then you're probably going in the wrong direction." is something I wish I'd known when I first started learning game dev.
Very nice video, I love how you explain all these concepts from a really student-focused perspective. I agree that there is no secret perfect recipe for everyone. Probably going with tutorials mixed with experimenting and trying out your own stuff is the way to go :) For tutorials, I always try to focus on the WHYs and explore other possible solutions, even if it takes more time and effort. Love your experiments by the way. ☺ Cheers!
right now I like making games and solving each problem as it comes because I'm solving and researching things I will actually use, but now that I think of it now I do want to do some experiments with transforms rotations and input ,but the funny thing is most tutorials don't have what I need so I have to solve problems anyway
I think you make great points! If there was a tutorial series that presented the lesson as a puzzle, I wonder if people would learn more from it? Like your example in the game, the presenter could say "hey, how can you create a grappling hook in Godot 4? Think about the different capabilities of Godot and try some things out! respond with comments or your own video!" That would present the viewer with the opportunity to figure things out. Then the presenter could make a follow up with their solution and showcase some viewers solutions as well? Might work better on social media?
I think some tutorial makers did that in the past with their tutorials series. They would invite people to come up with their own solution before the next video. In my experience, it doesn't work, especially with a tutorial series. Beginners following such tutorials are too afraid and incompetent to not follow religiously what's shown on screen. Thus invinting them to experiment on their own is likely to not work, unless they're confident enough to do it.. I see beginners with questions about specific tutorials series every day. They struggle a lot to understand what they "learn" through these tutorials unfortunately. I still think this idea could work, but it would probably need to be done with only a few people, with like a class structure
I believe this would work for people who have some experience already, but once they have that experience, they do this themselves anyways. To a new person, you kind of need to hand hold the way forward (not always but for the majority, you do, so the tutorial makers do). I believe Game Jams cover this aspect quite well. It gives experience developers puzzles to tackle. It is up to the developer to think of solutions, find already answered questions, and adapt. Game Jams are your puzzles. Tutorials are your entry level.
I totally agree, blindly following a tutorial just for the sake of reproducing will give you false confidence. Tutorials are very time saving to avoid starting from the floor down, but the best practice is always trying to understand how and why for each step and add challenges to yourself during that tutorial to memorize the infos ( if he's making a character jump, fpause the video and try to figure out the double jump yourself). And i could be wrong, but the primary thing to max as a skill is programming since for example shaders alone can juice most of the game knowing the engine covers you well (light, animator...), as for the design and sound you can always require freelancers or asset packs but can't hire a programmer without revealing to him your whole gameplay idea and no way to know if his code is optimal
oftentimes i just like to watch tutorials as if they were art timelapses/processes. sometimes they are just fun to watch, plus you might just learn something you didnt know that might help you with other things
This is useful for engine related stuff and maybe some beginner stuff about gamedev mechanics. It won't help you implement a grappling hook or procedural animation or whatever
What’s the difference between reading the documentation and watching a tutorial if you don’t come to the solution on your own either way? Like reading the documentation is great, don’t get me wrong I do it all the time. But that’s usually to assess my options when trying to solve a problem. But if there is like a mini guide in it, it’s the same thing as a tutorial. Granted a lot of the Godot docs isn’t like mini tutorials. But you know I do see them scattered in there
One thing I dislike about game jams is that they glorify the crunch culture. People pull 12h days over weekend to get project done rather than 3 hours afternoons over the course of a week to achieve the same sustainably. They are almost opposite of what you want your dev time to look like. The time in between the coding session is often as important as the time when you are typing code. I therefore don't support game jams. other than that it's a good video.
Don't be discouraged, everyone learns at a different rate. I myself after some time has passed found new stuff, the shaders. They can do amazing stuff I abandoned everything else for the moment...
Can I use clips of this in my game engine? So, I'm working on making my game engine. And in it will be a lot of parts that are to guide gamedevs(mostly me), as I tend to have times where I can't recall skills and stuff(dissociation disorder). It's why my programs are basically more of a book in notes than the program itself. Basically, I want the clip about what part of tutorials to stop and try on my own in the help section. Of course, I'd link to the original video(this) and anything you need me to.
by pure chance i have chosen the same approach as this video before i could see this video. my 'game drafts' (named 'experiments' in this video) channel is 'sosasees fun lab'
He is right, you know? Been following tutorials, getting confused being annoyed etc etc. When you are trying to follow a tutorial don't copy the content, instead try getting the idea behind of what it is you are watching and experiment. It will help you lots, gone from being afraid to touch my player controller to being able to build a noise generator in an evening
Yes, you can totally avoid it. Just not make a tutorial, period. If the game journos can't figure your game out, that's simply too bad (actual gamers will definitely figure them out, tutorial or no tutorial).
To try everything Brilliant has to offer-free-for a full 30 days, visit brilliant.org/MrElipteach/.
The first 200 of you will get 20% off Brilliant’s annual premium subscription.
Are you stuck in tutorial hell or have been in the past? Share with us what you did to escape!
Watching a tutorial right now on how not to watch tutorials. Excited!
yas and then the first instruction of this Tutorial about not watching tutorials was to watch tutorials on the foundations :D XD
Here's what I recommend: Copy the tutorial. When you're done, try to add something to it, whether that be sound effects, an animated sprite, another gameplay feature, etc.
This will help you experiment with things without having to know how to make the whole game. It'll help you understand why the tutorial did it that way as you tweak it and see what breaks it or doesn't.
Eventually you'll have enough pieces figured out to try and make something from scratch, and you'll be on your way out of tutorial hell, and onto stack overflow hell.
Btw Mr Elipteach, I did my first game jam recently and I watched the scratcher shader video like 20 times trying to figure out how to make Splatoon 2D in godot
I kinda agree but I also believe you can still be stuck in hell with that. You might be able to modifiy, but never to come up with your solutions fro mthe ground up. It can be a good step towards being able to build stuff on your own though.
Ahah long live SO
To recreate Splatoon in 2D I think you need another approach. You have the splashing and the navigation on the splashes to figure out. While a texture based solution could work, you'd have to be able to use this texture information to navigate, which might be difficult.
Another approach could be to use polygons under the hood and the geometry class to do union operation. You'd have access to the polygons where you can go. You might even be able to use these polygons with the navigation server, especially useful if you need to make AI. I have a video on the geometry class if you're interested.
@@mrelipteach Oh I got it to work for my game, but I definitely think there's better ways to do it if I were to go back to it.
Polygons would allow me to interact a lot more with the splashes so I like that idea.
Compute shaders seems like it would be useful but I don't know much about them yet.
I like this plan :
Watch the tutorial without using the tool.
Watch the tutorial again while following along and using the tool.
See if I can create the tutorial sample without watching the tutorial.
There will always be parts that I don't remember so it's ok to go back to the tutorial, I'm just seeing how far I can go.
Eventually, I can do the whole tutorial on my own.
Can I create something similar to the tutorial on my own?
NOW, and only now, go to tutorial part 2
Yes, it takes a long time. The 11 1/2 hour "Ultimate Godot Tutorial" took me over 40 hours to complete. But boy, I really understood the basics of Godot after that.
True, I often hear "make small games". Where the more plausible suggestion should be: "make lots of smaller experiments / prototypes", but focus on the specific feature, don't overengineer it. Once you have a sufficient "bag" of prototypes and know how, you can make a clean slate and build a game from those components (reimplementing them cleanly).
Its easier to do experiments outside of complex projects.
Yeah, got in a huge fight on a forum over that. Asked about how to logically progress, got told I needed to forget UE5 and learn to program first, then make Pong, etc. "Small steps" does not mean start by learning assembly so you understand how C works.
I think tutorial hell is important. Learning the vocabulary is just as important as projects. If you don't understand the words they're using in a tutorial then it's worthless to watch a video. I can follow along with a tutorial but if I don't understand whats going on it won't help and I'll be wasting time copy and pasting without actually comprehending whats going on.
There are a lot of things that you don't need to do in programming to understand. Humans must understand how to read before they can write well. I feel the same about understanding the basic fundamentals of computer science learning. Watching someone do something to understand why it's done that way is important.
I totally agree with the vocabulary. That's why I had a video idea in my list for a while about creating a glossary video specific to gamedev.
Watching someone's code to understand can be valuable but you need two things for that in my opinion. First, he teacher must be explaining WHY, otherwise it'll be very difficult for beginners to understand. Second, you need to be paying close attention to what's going on. I'm not sure it's possible to understand and copy at the same time
@@mrelipteach fo sho bro. I hated trying to learn html and css on code academy. A glossary would be great for the most common objects in godot
This is great advice, thank you. "Don't spend too much time learning how to do something from scratch, because if it takes you that long then you're probably going in the wrong direction." is something I wish I'd known when I first started learning game dev.
This is a very good perspective, curiosity and experience go a long way for me when making games and I feel like I never stop learning. Cheers!
Well said!
Very nice video, I love how you explain all these concepts from a really student-focused perspective.
I agree that there is no secret perfect recipe for everyone. Probably going with tutorials mixed with experimenting and trying out your own stuff is the way to go :)
For tutorials, I always try to focus on the WHYs and explore other possible solutions, even if it takes more time and effort.
Love your experiments by the way. ☺
Cheers!
started to get into gamedev roughly a week ago
algorythm already tells me to not get stuck in tutorial hell
I'm slightly concerned
right now I like making games and solving each problem as it comes
because I'm solving and researching things I will actually use, but now that I think of it now I do want to do some experiments with transforms rotations and input
,but the funny thing is most tutorials don't have what I need so I have to solve problems anyway
I think you make great points! If there was a tutorial series that presented the lesson as a puzzle, I wonder if people would learn more from it? Like your example in the game, the presenter could say "hey, how can you create a grappling hook in Godot 4? Think about the different capabilities of Godot and try some things out! respond with comments or your own video!" That would present the viewer with the opportunity to figure things out. Then the presenter could make a follow up with their solution and showcase some viewers solutions as well? Might work better on social media?
I think some tutorial makers did that in the past with their tutorials series. They would invite people to come up with their own solution before the next video. In my experience, it doesn't work, especially with a tutorial series. Beginners following such tutorials are too afraid and incompetent to not follow religiously what's shown on screen. Thus invinting them to experiment on their own is likely to not work, unless they're confident enough to do it.. I see beginners with questions about specific tutorials series every day. They struggle a lot to understand what they "learn" through these tutorials unfortunately.
I still think this idea could work, but it would probably need to be done with only a few people, with like a class structure
I believe this would work for people who have some experience already, but once they have that experience, they do this themselves anyways. To a new person, you kind of need to hand hold the way forward (not always but for the majority, you do, so the tutorial makers do). I believe Game Jams cover this aspect quite well. It gives experience developers puzzles to tackle. It is up to the developer to think of solutions, find already answered questions, and adapt. Game Jams are your puzzles. Tutorials are your entry level.
I totally agree, blindly following a tutorial just for the sake of reproducing will give you false confidence.
Tutorials are very time saving to avoid starting from the floor down, but the best practice is always trying to understand how and why for each step and add challenges to yourself during that tutorial to memorize the infos ( if he's making a character jump, fpause the video and try to figure out the double jump yourself).
And i could be wrong, but the primary thing to max as a skill is programming since for example shaders alone can juice most of the game knowing the engine covers you well (light, animator...), as for the design and sound you can always require freelancers or asset packs but can't hire a programmer without revealing to him your whole gameplay idea and no way to know if his code is optimal
oftentimes i just like to watch tutorials as if they were art timelapses/processes. sometimes they are just fun to watch, plus you might just learn something you didnt know that might help you with other things
I disagree, reading the documentation is the #1 most important tool. So many people just dont realize the solution is to read the fucking manual.
This is useful for engine related stuff and maybe some beginner stuff about gamedev mechanics. It won't help you implement a grappling hook or procedural animation or whatever
What’s the difference between reading the documentation and watching a tutorial if you don’t come to the solution on your own either way? Like reading the documentation is great, don’t get me wrong I do it all the time. But that’s usually to assess my options when trying to solve a problem. But if there is like a mini guide in it, it’s the same thing as a tutorial. Granted a lot of the Godot docs isn’t like mini tutorials. But you know I do see them scattered in there
One thing I dislike about game jams is that they glorify the crunch culture. People pull 12h days over weekend to get project done rather than 3 hours afternoons over the course of a week to achieve the same sustainably. They are almost opposite of what you want your dev time to look like. The time in between the coding session is often as important as the time when you are typing code. I therefore don't support game jams. other than that it's a good video.
Oh yeah 100%. I've been quilty of that many time, even when I specifically wanted to avoid crunch.
Never avoid, enjoy it, embrace it, then you will see the light😆
Don't be discouraged, everyone learns at a different rate. I myself after some time has passed found new stuff, the shaders. They can do amazing stuff
I abandoned everything else for the moment...
Can I use clips of this in my game engine?
So, I'm working on making my game engine. And in it will be a lot of parts that are to guide gamedevs(mostly me), as I tend to have times where I can't recall skills and stuff(dissociation disorder). It's why my programs are basically more of a book in notes than the program itself.
Basically, I want the clip about what part of tutorials to stop and try on my own in the help section. Of course, I'd link to the original video(this) and anything you need me to.
Yeah sure, I think it's ok :)
by pure chance
i have chosen the same approach as this video
before i could see this video.
my 'game drafts' (named 'experiments' in this video) channel is 'sosasees fun lab'
He is right, you know? Been following tutorials, getting confused being annoyed etc etc. When you are trying to follow a tutorial don't copy the content, instead try getting the idea behind of what it is you are watching and experiment. It will help you lots, gone from being afraid to touch my player controller to being able to build a noise generator in an evening
actually there aren't enough tutorials for godot in the first place so it is impossible to stuck in a tutorial hell.😂
That is my opinion atleast
There are a lot of tutorials for Godot. More than enough to get stuck in tutorial hell for awhile.
Yes, you can totally avoid it. Just not make a tutorial, period. If the game journos can't figure your game out, that's simply too bad (actual gamers will definitely figure them out, tutorial or no tutorial).
Somebody didn't watch the video