What Game Engine Should I Start With? 

I've started exactly the same way!

I agree! The first option seems nice to learn the basics. Learned those with RPG Maker. GDevelop seems like the next best step up.

so you don't recommend starting with gamemaker then?

@@mauree1618 I do, I am just saying I started off easy, so should everyone else. Though, I am not aware of the current state of GameMaker (It may have gotten advance after all these years), I believe you can download the previous versions. GameMaker 8.1 that is. Good point to start. Most of it is free.

@@mauree1618 I do recommend it. I was just pointing out how I started and I did start right. Although, I am not aware of the current state of GameMaker or how advanced it is right now. But I believe you can download the GameMaker 8.1 which was very easy to use. And it was the right place to start, for me at least.

i think by far the biggest plus about unity is versatility and flexibility. You can start creating basically any type of game in it without worrying about roadblocks, platform support etc. Although as soon as it went IPO, i stopped using it, foreseeing what would become of it.

Sounds like godot but with out the cons.

Once you made a non-Unity C# project, you'll notice that Unity C# is pretty weird. No nuget for importing C# libraries - you'll have to paste in the dll files, Unity packages gives you the C# files, editing csproj files are not viable, Unity assemblies are pretty strange too, Unity C# version is pretty much always outdated.

Reason I can't switch from Unity: 1. Can make both 2D or 3D. Unreal bad at 2D, Godot bad at 3D. None of them has good Ads Service like Ad Mob, Unity Ads, AppLovin etc. 2. I use chat GPT 24/7. I Don't make a single C# script by my self, cause Ai is fast. Can't do that with Blueprints, C++ is more complicated. Can be done in Godot, but it has lack of feature(Don't even have a trail renderer in the latest version.) 3. Unity care about performeance. Unreal Don't care about GPU or whatever, Epic thinks everyone has a 4090. Lumen makes no sense to me, most of the Indies are unaware about this and uses Lumen and Volumetric Clouds like it’s nothing. Most Unreal Indie games are badly optimized. For Godot 4, I would say, even Unity 2020 LTS has more feature than that. [Finally, Unity has the largest Asset Store and most of the Assets can be pirated with multiple Pirated websites🫣. I pirated tons of assets, and they worth like about 10,000 $, maybe I didn’t count]

@@hiperfx892 I just hope if you make a game with unity they don't end up making you pay them more then your game makes you. A very real concern given how they want to change the terms on their users.

Coming from Godot, where I could jump right in, Unity's initial workflow of loading, compiling, and running felt slow, especially when I first started in college. However, the reality of the job market is that most opportunities require experience with Unity or Unreal Engine.

​@@waydawntif you tried decompiling more complex Godot projects (e.g. Sandfire and Road to Vostok), you know, that opening Godot in real production conditions also takes significant amount of time.

Same exact reason why I like Construct 2's events, unfortunately Construct 3 went a different direction than all of the competition with the aggressive subscription pricing. And now I have to compare game engines to start with.

how does one use GDevelop without touching code? are components literally code? surely there aren't enough components to never touch code

I agree completely. Engine paralysis is very much a thing and it's almost always counterproductive. There have been tons of large budget games killed by this (Duke Nukem Forever is a classic example) as well as countless personal projects. Ive actually been tempted to do a video on this topic actually.

@@gamefromscratch Yeah please do, it just baffles me that we're still talking about it to this day, people should know that picking a game engine is a decision that should be made, no stalling, no what about this and that. Pick an engine and get going, you rarely need to look back, even after Unity's massive implosion it hardly made people who actually make games to change the engine, only folks who keep asking which engine should I use are the ones switching on a whim and never finishing a game. They argue and never commit: Unreal keep getting more and more performance intensive, I need a 4090 to run it... No you don't, you can get a 4060 laptop for like $1300 and it handles any project on UE5 which ease. Unity is trying to bankrupt me, ya well they tried and they walked it backwards, and now under the new runtime fee thing they're giving users with "Personal license" more room to work with, $200k vs the previous $100k ceiling, and after that you get Unity Pro for like $2k/year and you get a new ceiling up to $1M/year, after that you pay 2.5% or less... None of this new structure is designed to bankrupt indie devs, after all according to Steam 95% of Steam games never made $5k in their lifetime, so highly unlikely a new dev will make $200K or $1M, and if they do they pay very little in comparison. Just pick something and get going, you'll be fine... Getting stuck at step 0 in not a good idea xD

@@gamefromscratchI honestly would love to see a video on this topic! I’m currently going through engine paralysis on top of program language paralysis lol. I just can’t seem to stick to one thing and thus I don’t progress as a result :/

Link for further reading?

@@AL-lh2ht oh man i've been trying to post links but google is supressing them, but it's an easy find, "Software Design Document" and the classic how to. In short it's the blueprints for your software: What are you making it for, Who are you making it for, what are the elements and functions it has, use cases, etc. It might look like a heavy read but before putting your ideas into code, shaping them in a design documents is the real first step.

He only has time for one piece of garbage at a time

@@lpnp9477 sheeeeeeeeesh

@@lpnp9477 lol 🤣

Probably UE since it offers excellent out-of-the-box 3D, plus the marketplace has free assets intended for your very use case.

@@Uncle_Fred Great, thank you. On the other side, Unreal seems to have a pretty steep learning curve. Do you know of any approach, to get into it quickly?

All big 3 use the same hierarchy + components architecture. Since you know c++, unreal won't be a problem. Since you know c++, Unitys c# won't be a problem. Since you know Python, Godot Script language won't be a problem. So the only question is: How much space is on your hard-drive? 😅

@@sealsharp LOL, thank you. I guess my hard-drive is big enough for all three big engines at the same time, and several more. Just my mental capacity might be a bit overwhelmed with that.

@@christofdonat2702 Unreal is 120GB+ while Godot is 170MB with no installation. For a lot of laptop users that is a decision helper. 😁

Any one wanting to start with unity please do research for unity, before you have to learn a different game engine.

Any one choosing unity please do research into it first, so you won't have to learn a new game engine.

Modeling is the hard part unless you're talented in that. Whether you do it first or last. Coding alos is for those with the talent to code. I code 3rd Person script, but cannot model a box.

Erm, what game dev company is going to hire someone whose experience with their engine of choice amounts to "I tried to write a game with it but it didn't work for me"?

​@@GoodRiddanceToToryFilth There are plenty of good games barely making a return on investments out there, the maket is saturated. Besides, game companies hire juniors fresh from college?

That assumes finding a job & building work-skills is one of the priorities. If it is, then yeah, I agree - go with Unity/C#, or Unreal, but only if you're actually gonna code in C++. But a lot of folks really are hobbyists, even if they don't admit it 😅

@@GoodRiddanceToToryFilth It's not necessarily game dev. Unreal is in A LOT of non game industries now, from film to interior design. So much so that they actually changed how their licensing works with non game dev industries (they weren't making money from them because they weren't selling anything). I come from working in A/V and many jobs now want some kind of 3D program experience. (Though the HR bots that create the jobs don't know the difference between blender and unreal, apparently) and being able to add UE to your resume is helpful.

You know I've never actually used Dreams.

Whats that?

Use UEFN if you want to go that way.

​@@thawne4235 It's a game engine, exclusive to PS4

@@gamefromscratch dreams is a ps4 where you can create anything

Then make games in Console with ASCII art

​@@meida_oficial agreed.. that's the first step.. I mean, now days a game-engines makes it easy to create beautiful games, but, that doesnt mean its ok to go straight making a game before even have a descent programming base first..

But its good to have graphical options, writing command line programs might not keep everyone motivated. I learned on a Commodore 64, which is kind of game engine. Also c might be too hard for noobs.

@@Boxing_Gamer I don't think so, C is not a hard language for noobs.. Is the easiest low level language.. Yeah, many people may prefer to learn programming in a visual way, which is ok.. but if the goal is to make descent games visual scripting is not enough..

@@lehisluguer9300 problem is pointers only, which is why basic is better to start with.

Road to Vostok and Sandfire knock plenty of 3D Unity games into a cocked hat. When it comes to how good a game is, 95% of it is down to the developer(s), 5% is down to the engine. If you don't believe me, ask yourself this: Cities Skylines 2 being an unplayable POS - is that the devs' fault or Unity's fault?

​@@GoodRiddanceToToryFilth huh? I was talking about the "Computer to run the engine"

Breathes in Macromedia Flash and ActionScript 1.0, young fellow!

@@sicfxmusic Macromedia is owned by Adobe.

Squints in BASIC and Java Applets 😂

@@Wbfuhn Not when I used it back in the day.

@@sicfxmusic I remember taking web design in high school and they were all Macromedia back in 2006-07. Would have bought Flash if I had the money. Didn't know where to look for pirated copies either.

That sounds great! Could you explain, wha you mean with basic 3D? I was looking for GameMaker and GDevelop for 2.5D and 3D. But I am not sure if one of them or both can turn my vision into reality. I really like the GameMaker Studio.

Hello, do you work on 2d or 3d? Your pupper jumper looks fun.

@@naobawahengbam6696 3d, seems easier for me

@@naobawahengbam6696 Thanks, I actually started and still work in 3D, both in Blender and Unity. I prefer 3D cause it's simpler for me.

Yeah unreal is a pain for mobile, epic really needs to work on simplifying the mobile stuff.

Unity really isn't a safe choice though. I guess if you want to work for a big game studio that doesn't care about the additional fees unity keeps adding after.

@@thomasparker7305 that's a good point, Thomas

What fee bro? Even with the last controversy runtime few it's still good, like if your game already got 200rb download and 200rb dollar revenue, and you think unity is greedy because asking to their fair share, you need to look at mirror, who's greedy ​@@thomasparker7305

Is learning C# and starting with MonoGame franework a good beginner option as an aspiring game designer for if I want to use engines like Unity or Stride in the future? This is solely for hobby work and for potential collaborations or indie teams later on if I'm passionate enough Either way I'm feeling like I'm gonna choose Unity for more advanced projects and experiment with Stride on the side in the future. I also think I may not need an engine for a while, because using MonoGame may be enough to scratch the itch.

I was also thinking about after doing MakeCode Arcade, I'd look into LUA/Love2D, then possibly jump into C#/MonoGame after

Crytek is struggling from what I heard, the last engine update was over a year or two ago and since then it’s been radio silence. It also isn’t very designer friendly which sucks because even if you know programming the point of an engine is to make a lot of stuff GUI based so you are not constantly doing everything in a IDE.

It became Amazon Lumberyard, which is now Open 3D Engine (O3DE)

@@m0n0ct0 no amazon bought cry engine 3 and turned it to lumberyard , crytek made new cry engine 5 and they worked on many updates and suddenly they stopped everything

as much as I love suggesting unreal, I wouldn't suggest it for a newbie for that exact reason... all of my success choosing unreal came from the small experience I had with java messing around with runescape private servers... If I didn't already understand the basic concepts of programming I would be so lost and at the end of the day my foundational knowledge would have just been feelings and guesses making it impossible to extrapolate anything which is required when reading loose documentation and disparate tutorials

Your approach wouldn't work as a curriculum, both for pedagogical & psychological reasons. Students, of any generation, need to see some kind of tangible results, fairly early on. They need to feel like they're making progress, and the instructors need to have progress to assess. Even if it's a cohort- or capstone-style program, where you essentially make one giant project throughout (alone or as a team), there need to be smaller iterations to serve as milestones. And whether it's HS or college, it should really be setup where students who change disciplines will still be able to have a portfolio of their WIP. One of the big points of failure for many would-be indies is hitting that point where the "easy wins" (e.g. tutorials) no longer apply, and you have to put in lengthy work without much visible, appreciable progress. It's even worse for students.

And Unity, unlike Godot, has rich asset library.

Do you speak from experience? What makes you think so?

What pc you have? So you can say Better Performance?

no

Why is that

@@DagnirRen Because they're an idiot that has never made a game or ever will.

@@DagnirRen because they're an idiot that has never made a game or ever will.

@@DagnirRen because they don't know what they are talking.

Please explain what you mean

​@@DagnirRen he's calling them child predators I think

Why you're both scared of word "pedophile"?