How to ACTUALLY get into Gamedev 

One thing that I’d recommend for people who are stuck in tutorial hell is to choose a tutorial series and after every episode, try coding something on your own that’s related to, but slightly more complex than what they did in the video. For example if they implemented a one-frame jump animation in the video, try implementing one with multiple frames by yourself. This is still a pretty approachable method, but it’ll help you build up a wider toolkit for when you’re ready to work more on your own!

copying is an excellent way to learn things, so be unafraid to copy what's going to happen is you will want to make small changes so you start experimenting with what you copied and boom you start learning that way. dissecting, swapping, experimenting, putting things back together is learning and it all starts because you're a copycat :)

I think the first project should always be something simple and classic like pong / snake / tile breaker, so you have a fixed scope and know what needs to be done. Finishing something small and clearly defined will teach you so much and give you both a concrete image of the development process and motivation for doing your own ideas as you know you can finish a game. Do not get stuck in a loop of side projects that never get finished.

From the introduction I can tell you get it. I’m not asking someone to teach me game dev in 15 minutes, I want to learn what are effective strategies to learn as well as good lessons learned so that I can avoid those mistakes or at the very least, recognize them when they happen to quickly adjust. Love it

I escaped Tutorial hell and ended up in No idea wasteland. Here lies dosens of projects with single game mechanics, some design docs with broad descriptions of big games, some ruins reminding me of finished game jams and big empty nothing ahead. I just have no idea how to finish my first commertial project.

A good way to avoid the tutorial hell problem (or any problem at all) is to think about what you can do with your current knowledge instead of trying to make something that you have absolutely zero idea how to make. When I first made the prototype of Project Froggo I didn't search for a million tutorials on how to code grappling hook because I want to make this specific feature so much. I made it because I was bored at my math class and suddenly realized I can use trigonometry to make characters move in any direction. Based on that, I realized that I can probably utilze this to make some form of grappling hook mechanic.

The thing about a lot of tutorials that I've noticed (depending on the engine) is that it can be pretty difficult to find a good tutorial that actually explains what they're doing instead of just telling you what to type and moving too fast for you to understand. Also a lot of them are either really outdated, or the uploader just decides to vanish into the shadow realm halfway through the series. Pretty frustrating if you ask me.

I was stuck in tutorial hell for about 2.5 years and I’ve finally started making my own stuff without needing tutorials! I just needed to pause the video after a while and predict what code will be used to fix a problem and take notes for later

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="330">5:30</a> Visual scripting is also an option, I started learning unreal engine really quickly because of its blueprints. Visual scripting means you get these blocks of code that you can connect together to get whatever result you want. It may seem weird but it's actually really powerful.

Thanks so much man. I'm just getting interested in the building blocks of game development right now, but I haven't been sure how to really get started, especially when it comes to coding. So having some options to actually start with will be a big help!

Your video is worthy of its title. I'm learning through deep dives on individual features. Very slow, but... Recently impressed myself by making a surface/ground check OnCollision script from scratch. Officially out of tutorial hell \o/

Hey, thanks guy. Your reminders that you need to actually explore and play around with things on your own was needed. Your recommendation of making a Snake clone was also very good, I did it just because of this. I didn't know how to manage the snakes body at first, I thought about just looking it up but your advice got through to me and I worked it out on my own. It really is all about breaking something down into simpler concepts

Great video bro, I'm so happy that I'm not the only one getting responses like this in discord

A friend and I are currently working on our first game. In order to avoid the tutorial issue, I taught myself how to use the software and look things up as I go if I can’t find out how to do it myself. Although it may take longer, I retain way more information now.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="315">5:15</a> that whole game ??!!! Man you're awesome ! I came to game development with the inspiration of you and hope I do well. I started with c++ but I went python (coz I thought it was cool) and am currently learning the language. Nice video !

Good shit. You managed to cram a lot of useful advice and takes into 14 minutes of content. Much appreciated.

I really want to get into game development, and for my Design Technology class we got to make a game on Scratch. I don't recommend Scratch as platform but it was really cool to use because I felt like I was learning stuff. Your advice is amazing, not just for game dev. Following tutorials and then adding your own twists or making something more complicated from what you learned from the tutorial is a great way to get out of tutorial hell. Competing in stuff like game jams really puts your work out there and it adds new perspectives as other people look at your work. If you want to improve at other things like writing or drawing, I would suggest entering small writing or drawing competitions or even just posting your work online to improve Fantastic video!

I haven't got stuck in tutorial hell yet simply because I see something happen and my brain immediately goes "Nah, imma do my own thing."

This is pretty good advice broken down very well done. thank you for putting this video together.

Excellent guideline, thank you!

Ty so much i know this video is a old one however i find your insights very helpful and encouraging to continue to learn

Awesome video! I was thinking about getting into game development as a hobby, but had no idea where to start. Now I do!

Really great video, I am in the process myself and I agree with you at every point. The tip for 0% fee website at the end is also great!

Great video. I actually understand where to go now after being stuck on tutorials

Wow man how much humility in this man! characteristics of a real artist.

There’s a really good tutorial series I found somewhere about making a colony survival game in godot, think rimworld, and the only reason I think it’s so good is that despite it being so slow, and going over maybe 10-20 lines of code in 5 minutes, he actually goes in depth to explain how or why what works, and how it interacts with the rest of the code Most tutorials I’ve seen for game development just try to put as much code in as possible, and just barely go over how it works, or just show you it and not tell you about it.

I was kinda stuck in tutorial hell for a little bit but got out fast by making my own game and using 100 different tutorials to tell me how to do it. This made me learn what all the different things were actually doing and not just copy the code line for line.

Thank you bro this is a good mix of optimistic and realistic 👍

Amazing video really inspirational thank you for this. Helped a lot

Tutorial hell beginner here. Your explanation about breaking featured actions down into basic actions, to complete any or almost any task, finally clicked with me. Lol thank you! Subscribed!

Just wanted to say thanks for the video, I knew most of this, but I keep doubting myself and seeing others' perspective really motivates me. I am pursuing Software Development but want to do games on the side as a learning experience and a way to express my creativity.

Thanks man, very useful!

I just finished my first game jam this week. It was extremely hard and I had to pull an all nighter the last day, but I got something that I was proud of at the end.

Stop watching videos like this and get busy coding. You are procrastinating, and so am I.

Fantastic video! This is the best I've seen on the topic. I definitely agree that game jams are a great way into game development.

This was very helpful. Thank you.

Nice video. I find I push to learn the finer details when I work on games I care about.

Thank you for this!

I asked server on discord on if I should use C++ or game dev. Many people say its hard, you cant do it, go for easy. I cant decided. You motivate me to go with what I want. Earned a sub, thanks

Thank you so much Before this I was determined to sell my first project. WAtching your video gives me some understanding on making tiny projects to learn

Great vid mate

Nice video! I just got out of what I now call the first circle of tutorial hell and im actually learning a lot, like I started following a script of plataformer movement from the craft games page and im actually being able to do it, very good video

thanks for the video!

Great video!

"Tutorial hell" well, I'm happy I ascaped it really soon. and the main cause for it was *LASERS* when I started I wanted a turret that shot lasers and the last thing I thought is that I would be doing some trigonometry and find out that lasers are just a strip of like 6 pixels... yup, just 6 pixels, you then use a program (an iteration) to put them row after row and create the laser and that's how they stop once hitting a wall. and well the tutorial explained only how to make the player shoot it, not turrets, and well lets just say I had to spend 5 days figuring out. 1) let turret shoot laser 2) make laser align with turret barrel 3) make laser stop with barrel and not follow player 4) Make laser start at the position of the turret that fired it, instead of all going to the same turret. 5) somehow all laser used the same direction to hit player not counting for where they where so if a laser was above player it would shoot down, and if another was under the player it shot down as well. 6) give turret an animation before shooting player 7) stop laser from instantly deleting a player on hit 8) for the love of god why do I have to do trigonometry (wasn't actually hard I'm just dumb) and well yeah it was quite the journey, and since I had only me and the game engine manual I had to figure it out by my self, and it was a nice experience... now I will forever look with admiration any game that has a laser in it

Thank you soo much for this

Hey. I just wanted to thank you for your videos. I watched this video two years ago, and it inspired me to make a RU-vid video in a similar format. I never expected much to come of it, but that video ended up doing very well for me, much better than anything else I made. Sometimes just talking over footage over your own game is good enough.

I'm so glad that I found out you live stream

I’m working on my first game in gamemaker studio 2, and so far the language has been extremely easy to learn. They have functions for almost everything, so you don’t need to do a lot of math. The main problem I’ve had to deal with though is whether or not I’m doing things in the most efficient way possible. It always seems like there is a better way to do stuff

I started game development about two months ago. I downloaded Unity and have been following a tutorial on RU-vid and I'm on course to developing my first game.

Awesome videos thanks 👍🏼👍

Love this man

I think I realized what I was missing on a previous attempt is just a graphics API that I'm happy with that I can play with esoteric ideas quickly. Since all engines have unsurmountable limitations one way or another I wasn't going to bother learning one because I am sure I would be limited. Previously I started with ideas and had to write a whole graphics API around it tatbarely implements the idea which was very frustrating, because when the next idea comes along, you start from scratch. That's why I got stuck, just not enough motivation to redo the graphics every time.

Ok so I am currently going through tutorial hell and a problem that I noticed I had was that sometimes I didn't really understand what I was writing. So, what I have started doing is writing down the function of each line of code and dissecting what makes them work. After I started doing this I found that I am able to use what I learn in the tutorials outside of the tutorial project.

The thing that helped me the most is after following a tutorial, I would go back and remake the entire project from memory the best I could and add try to add in some extra stuff. I would also try to make a project without a tutorial first, then watch the tutorial to see how someone with more experience solved the same issues. It allowed me to learn multiple ways of doing things as well as seeing which methods are generally more effective for solving certain issues. When following tutorials, the goal shouldn't be to finish the tutorial, but to learn the essential tools and methods for creating things.

I took the easy route when making my first few games with Unity. Now I realize I don't know much about game development, this video specifically answers my question on what I should be doing. I think I am taking this next few months to develop with pygames. Also you said something about people Lua, the first code I learned was Lua and c++ for Roblox. Lua is probably the most counterintuitive coding language for learning crossover.

Great video

absolutely love this vid. it helped a bunch. i do want to point out that at one point during the "what do you do once you realize you are in tutorial hell" you said to watch more tutorials lol i feel like that is kind of backwards from the initial message

I got stuck in tutorial hell for 2 years, finally got a good set of videos to learn lua and can do simple stuff already!

I've participated in a few game jams (Two for Pokémon fangames, one for Gameboy Homebrew) and am gonna be doing another one in about a week for dungeon-crawlers (Which is 9 days long, the shortest I'll have ever done), and yeah, they're a really good way of actually being able to release something. Everything I've ever actually made available to the public has been because of game jams, so I consider them a pretty important part of the process. Obviously you don't *have* to do them to be a game dev, but it *really* helps.

I enjoyed this video!

Yo quick music tip. High and low notes, make patterns that you enjoy, and record them to loop. Use different instruments they have unique sounds but also different high low notes to make deeper patterns. Music is simple, you just have to sit there a listen to all the sounds and which one goes great with one another. That's the long part. Learning Scales has a base, and make a fun pattern with different scales is easy.

You convinced me for game jams thanks man

Always have a close end goal when starting out. I myself have gotten stuck on a game wanting to add more and getting frustrated when i can't fit it in.

Very good video ty.

I’ve heard about a website called code wars and you have to solve problems with code so it’s a great way to tests what you learned and what you are best at after a tutorial and be able to practice whenever

Thank you so much

I've been in tutorial hell. I was really just copying code. In the end I had a game but I had no idea how it worked and I had no idea how to add new features. I've started learning code again a week ago and I already know more then I did back then.

I tried learning Godot, but my computer was so slow it always kept me waiting for it.

One thing I’ve done to learn quickly is not to copy at all but clone the repo of a small project and understand every aspect of the code, every line every module, why it’s there how it’s used. You can really learn quickly best practices and good design. Only copy code you understand or else when it breaks you won’t know why.

okay for the first thing to learn about game development and dealing with tutorial hell I would state that you follow this pattern: 1. find out what information you need to learn to have a Minimum Viable Product of the field (in game Dev it probably would be information about collisions, sprites, animation, scripting, rendering the screen, camera placement, raycasting, Artificial Intelligence, input, and physics) 2. learn the jargon and terms (this is so you know whats going on within the program or field of study and are not confused) [also some are above for game Dev] 3. find sources that teach in this field (gdquest kidscancode & hearbeast is good for godot engine and there also is davidepesce at his website of the same name. there is also GMTK for game design) 4. read the sources and see whether they help you learn what you need to learn and if not, either tuck them away or throw them out. 5. organize the notes and work on your knowledge so that you can reuse the knowledge learned in a modular plug and play way the second thing is to test new ways of re-using the knowledge you already know, in dynamics that are not commonly tied together with said new way of using the code. [as stated in the video] the third thing is to look at references... and not just the code, look at game trailers (with real gameplay) and ask what was most likely the decision they made that allowed that to work. Hope this helps and you have a great day & Safe Travels!

My best advice is to build a library of code! Whenever that code you being trying to make finally works, save the code. For example I have a folder with tons more subfolders for different types of code. That way you don’t have to keep coding in basic things like player movement. You can literally just drag and drop and have simple things like that work instantly. More workflow advice than anything

Cheers super good info there thanks and for me i try to code in c# doing some games i really like to play or the character is who i really like so that my interest keeps on going even i hit into problems so its kinda fun for me to code :D

oh man i’m so glad i found this channel.

I think you hit the nail on the head by stressing the importance of "play". Following tutorials is great to get a lay of the land but you should not be afraid to off and explore on your own.

Nice vid

Early projects that I do to learn any game engine: 2d Puzzle game, 3d shooter, a mobile game of some sort (like clash of clans or pick the lock), rogue lite, and anything else that peaks my interest (complex math + card game)

Thank god you are here omg. Im a programmer and i have 0 clue about pixel art, music ect...

good stuff! Loved the part where u smak a clock lol

Hey I was just looking at your code you have a file named particles, inside it what is particles_ type?, is it the filename with the images, I have tried to do the same but it gives me key error( I have a file named light with images)

I followed a 2d flappy birds tutorial as my first game and managed to add an offscreen death barrier but spent 6 hours trying to make the game stop when you hit a pipe 😂 I’ve started following a 3D tutorial in hopes I can try and combine things I’ve learned from the 2 and make a basic game for myself

thank you

I don’t know if you’re still trying to figure out good ways to get better at composition, but actively listening to music is one of the best (if not THE best) ways to improve your compositions. What I mean by “actively listening” to music is solely focusing on the music itself, trying to break it down and get an idea of what’s actually happening. I am not too familiar with common video game music structure, so I will use common radio music structure (and then jazz structure, for an alternative) to explain how you might break a song down. (This part is not completely necessary to read in order to understand what I recommend practicing) Most radio music will have a common way to break the structure down into three different types of parts: the verse (usually calmer), which is represented by A; the chorus (the climax(es)), which is represented by B; and the bridge (an optional piece of structure used as a new direction for the song. A change from the other parts, and is usually used later in the song), which is represented by C. Some common arrangements of these parts are ABACB, ABCB, and ABAB, for context on how these are usually used. Jazz will usually have a head (similar to a verse, and usually used as the start and end to a song) and solos time (not the official name. To grossly sum it up, during this section, people will take solos, and those who aren’t are playing nothing or playing softer backing music to the soloist), while occasionally using a bridge and or intro (jazz almost always exits with the head, so it’s uncommon to see an outro). Jazz structure is usually the head, followed by solo time, followed by the head out, with an intro and/or bridge appearing sometimes. (You can start reading again if you skipped the last part:) To improve your video game music composition, you can take more basic tracks and try to find a structure to them that seems to be common. You might need to do this for quite a few songs to get a good understanding. After you find a common structure(s), you can dissect more complicated pieces to get ideas for how you can make more unique, stylized music for your game. I am not a professional composer (I take more to musicianship. What I write is more of the radio song type of music, which is vastly different in the necessary skills needed when compared to more complex composition like styles (i.e. video game stuff)), so don’t completely rely on this, and take it all with a grain of salt, but I hope it might help.

I did not know that collecting items in a game had anything to do with collision. Thank you for giving that example.

So would it be smart to start with something like Pygame to get use to coding or would it be best to just go straight for a engine?

I’m only in high school but you inspire me to start pursuing programming as a whole and learning python through game dev. Thank you so much tho

Unrelated question: you online resources are you using for learning music? I've been learning music recently but can't seem to find "good" resources.

im making my first game (it's a visual novel, so isn't that hard) but your video really helped me, thanks✨✨

The best advice for people that want to code in general, make you own game engine, I don’t mean this by making an engine with a UI nor anything of that matter. I am saying like a, programmers engine, an engine based on code and not on a UI. And it’s fun to not use a graphics API at first. It’s harder, but it teaches you MUCH MORE!

I'm learning how to code and I made my first game with Love 2d (a 2d game engine that uses Lua). There's short Udemy courses that walk you through building games with Love 2d (which I would recommend). I made my first game and it was an excellent intro to game development.

Thanks, I've been in a bit of a rut around the first projects area. I tried to jump in with a big idea and I can design/program, but asset creation has been a big wall. I nearly joined a game jam hoping to get some more experience with the broader process and this has reassured me that's a good idea.

TUTORIAL HELL! YEAH THAT'S WHAT I GOT STUCK IN!!! Like I have no idea how to implement mechanics I actually want because I don't know how to search for instructions. I haven't figured out the lower level things and I have no idea how to escape

the game looks awesome btw

Best video in whole RU-vid 😊

what is the name of the site (he talks about it at the end, about <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="808">13:28</a>)? I could no listen it right, is it "hio"?

Where can I download ur game from background? it looks so amazing 🎉

Absolute G

when you petted the clock - ::yep instant subscriber::

Good tutorial! I'm sure this will help a lot of people. P.S. You know, I never thought about joining a game jam. I've seen it before though.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="420">7:00</a> is this the laptop you use for game dev and everything to make your game? And what’s it called?