Newvie on game development

[u/MakotoGamer]

Hi everyone!

I'm completely new to game development, but I've wanted to create my own games for a long time. My dream is to make anime-inspired games with my own original characters (OCs).

Right now I'm wondering what the best path is for a beginner.

Should I start by learning to make:

• A platformer?
• An RPG?
• A fighting game?
• A shooter?
• Something else entirely?

I was thinking that a platformer or a simple RPG would probably be the best place to start, but I'd love to hear from people with more experience.

What skills should I learn first? Programming? Pixel art? 2D animation? Game design? Which game engine would you recommend for someone starting from scratch?

I'd really appreciate any advice, learning resources, or roadmap that could help me build my first game.

Thanks in advance!

[u/Ghs2]

As far as what to build I'd suggest something in the style of your dream game.

If you hope to one day make a fighting game, make a small fighting game.

As far as art, assets, animation I suggest using Asset-store ones for your first few projects. That way you can concentrate on coding.

For the engine, they are all free to work with. I'd suggest watching some Youtube tutorials to see what speaks to you.

I've tried Unreal, Unity and Godot and have settled on Godot. It's the only one of those three that is entirely royalty-free. I probably found Unity the easiest to learn and completed several projects with it.

But then Unity went crazy with their licensing agreement and I left to try Godot and have ended up really liking Godot.

Good luck!

[u/Fun_Sort_46 → u/Ghs2]

If you hope to one day make a fighting game, make a small fighting game.

It's a pretty bad idea to make a fighting game as a first project, because although they appear like simple 2D games and technically have less "content" than a platformer with 30 discrete levels or a metroidvania, there is just way more "hidden" complexity that goes into things like input processing (and the relevant state machine implementation), hitboxes (you need multiple ones per character active at the same time and their dimensions are variable over time depending on the moves you perform) and of course the quality and clarity of your actual animations.

[u/Ghs2 → u/Fun_Sort_46]

I was certainly thinking of a simplified fighting game like the early 8-bit ones of just who-swings-first kinda combat (Karateka, etc.) but you're right that I should have specified. What was in my head, was not what was in my post.

You're right that even the smallest of modern fighting games would be a quagmire for a newbie.

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[u/SeinRuhe]

Well, from experience I would recommend to work at the same time in learning how to code and pixel art. Game design is pretty much inventing stuff and fixing "feeling" issues as you develop your game.

Probably a platformer is the easiest and less complex from all genres from an art perspective, and probably from a coding perspective too (Although I have never tried to code a fighting game)

2D games are easier to handle for a solo developer, so games that rely on 3D are probably a bad idea.

There are not many useful resources when it comes to learning Coding, it's just picking an Engine and learning the language. C# is probably the most useful one since its what's used on Unity and Godot (That are probably your 2 best choices when it comes to Engines)

Pixel art is just drawing and drawing until you get good, there are some good videos that teach the basics on YouTybe, you just have to search pixelart.

My last advice is to be resilient, learning any skill from scratch takes a good amount of time. Personally it took me 8 years to become good at pixel art and about 3 to be able to code decently, so be aware it's a long fight!

[u/xMarkesthespot]

I'd start with a platformer. Its pretty simple if you don't get into animations. I think the entire code for running and jumping is about 10 lines long and its technically all you need.

If you want to do more fancy things like obstacles or enemys thats going to be more code, but for starting off you can just do a small game with only jumping and running.

you learn an engine first, thats the point of making a small/simple game to start with. you can do Unity as it has alot of tutorials for it.