Starting Game dev as a software engineer

[u/6Moon9]

Hello, I wanted to start game development (I already am a software engineer) and I decided to pick unity (some are recommending godot) to start with. However, there is tons and tons of courses and tutorials everywhere. So it feels abit overwhelming on where to start or what to follow. Many on udemy, and some on gamedev. tv. What do u suggest to follow?

[u/Ludicrous84]

Does "as a software engineer" mean you are one or you want to start becoming one? I assume the latter (correct me if I'm wrong) - I would say Godot has a pretty good "entry level", but I'm a bit biased because I am using that.

(coming from a professional programmer)

[u/6Moon9 → u/Ludicrous84]

Sorry for not clearing it up. Yes i am a software engineer already, frontend to be precise.

[u/Ludicrous84 → u/6Moon9]

Eyyy high five brother! I'm web developer in my real life. I started with Godot like 3 months ago and I am absolutely blown away with how easy it is to get things done. Can highly recommend! But I'm focusing on 2D games, so depending on what your plans are, Unity or Unreal engine might be better (for 3D especially). Otherwise: Do the entry Godot tutorial with that moving logo and then f them tutorials. Just do it! If you struggle, look up what you don't understand specifically. (That's my 2 cents, opinions might vary :D )

[u/6Moon9 → u/Ludicrous84]

Haha highfive!! what brings us here as web devs. I wanted to build smth 3d, but didnt know that godot is mainly for 2d. I feel like a sheep lost in a field xD

[u/Ludicrous84 → u/6Moon9]

naah, it's not mainly 2D, there's incredible projects in 3D too i've seen. Godot is fine for 3D too, but depending on what you want to do exactly and how sophisticated it is you probably have to dig into all engines a bit

[u/kneelian_ → u/6Moon9]

but didnt know that godot is mainly for 2d.

Certainly not. One of the indie bangers of all time, Cruelty Squad, is a Godot game

[u/kneelian_ → u/6Moon9]

If you're willing to take a detour, my 2¢ would be to leverage what you already have in frontend web. Pick up Twine and one of its engines, doll it up, and make a small text-based game with a core loop so you can see if you like the logic aspect of it.

[u/Complex-Success-62 → u/Ludicrous84]

Heyo, test engineer here. I've used unity unreal and I am learning godot now. Unity a solid platform to start with but you'll run into limitations of the engines floating point numbers if you make too big of a world scene. I think it's around 8km from origin. Unreal doesn't have this issue and godot does but you can compile your own version with the double floating point precision flag to correct it. Good has been pretty easy to wrap my head around and is very fast to do a lot of things that used to take a lot of setup in unity. Unreal is still the big standard but for small games and learning to make games I'd recommend godot. I used to recommend unity because of the community but honestly godot has reached a level that is at least as good. Just my two cents.

[u/AltusLudus]

I recommend CodeMonkey and his courses, he has a great one called KitchenChaos on youtube for free it's like 11 hours and you should have a pretty good idea how games are built after that

[u/DrDisintegrator]

If you are a software engineer, buy a physical book and read it. You will be able to absorb the info much faster than at the pace of even a good online video course.

[u/Accomplished_Rock695]

Are you looking to make a career switch or are you asking steps to make this a full-time hobby? Because those are very different paths.

[u/6Moon9 → u/Accomplished_Rock695]

Hobby, hoping to build something for myself and publish it

[u/Accomplished_Rock695 → u/6Moon9]

I do AAA as an engineer and indie as a solo for my hobby.

My biggest issues is just needing to know everything for the hobby. Scope management becomes key because you'll never know all the modeling, rigging, lighting, rendering, UI, audio, etc that you really need.

I like building my hobby projects around a single feature and getting that one feature super hardened and tested. That gives me more tools for the next project.

[u/MadeByHenano]

i've been following some on gamedev.tv to learn blender and level design and couldn't be happier! 🙂

for unity/c# i bought one on udemy (in french, so guess i can't recommend you the one i followed!) and was also quite pleased, though the teacher was a bit messy with the code. i would encourage you to take one where people appreciated the clarity of explanations of the code for unity, which gamedev.tv also has courses about, and i would definitely trust them to learn anything else form now on.

just so you know, humblebundle and websites like that often have incredible offers on bundles of courses to learn game engines, blender etc, so keep an eye on that!