>Want to learn how to like make game
>Don't want to time sink into a shitty engine that will get deprecated in a few years
>Ask /agdg/
>"DUDE YOU NEED TO USE UNREAL"
>"DUDE YOU NEED TO USE A FRAMEWORK LIKE MONOGAME IT'S BETTER"
>"DUDE DON'T USE MONOGAME THE DOCUMENTATIONS SUCK, USE LIBGDX"
>"DUDE USE BEVY IT'S GONNA BE THE BEST NEW ENGINE"
>"DUDE JUST USE GODOT IT'S THE BEST NEW ENGINE"
>"DUDE GODOT IS UNSTABLE, USE STRIDE INSTEAD"
I am so fricking confused.
Good games have been made in literally every mainstream engine
Just start doing something. Make something small and shitty then make it bigger and better.
Such is the nature of basically all online discussion. Hard seconding : think about what game(s) you want to make, briefly look up the strengths of the big engines you come across, and start doing.
Anyone who ever made anything worth a shit just did it. When the founding fathers created USA, do you think they went around asking "ummmm how do I found a country pls pls"? No they didn't, they just did it.
OP, what kind of game are you trying to make? Commercial? Hobby? Are you more interested in the art side of gamedev (game design, asset creation, etc.) or the technical side of gamedev (engine development, systems programming, etc.)? Try to find answers to these questions and they should help direct you along the right path for your needs.
The engine isnt gonna make or break your shit
Itll be years before you make anything worth while and most skills are tranferable just get on it
don't worry about "learning the engine"
you need to learn the actual fundamental skills before you concern yourself with learning specific contextual skills, pick anything, make a small game in it, start to finish, a playable game.
then make a bigger game
once you have made a few games you can start to actually start to think about engines or larger scale projects
if you have 0 interest in making a smaller game then make vertical slices of what you want in a game, just really basic smaller stripped down subsections of what you want
>you need to learn the actual fundamental skills before you concern yourself with learning specific contextual skills, pick anything, make a small game in it, start to finish, a playable game.
>then make a bigger game
>licenses don't matter you will never make more than a minimum wage job, and when you do, the engine takes less than steam so it doesn't even matter since 30% will be taken either way.
these. just pick anything and start devving.
yep.
if you want 2d, anything you use is fine.
licenses don't matter you will never make more than a minimum wage job, and when you do, the engine takes less than steam so it doesn't even matter since 30% will be taken either way.
It's an expression of creativity, there are games of all types made in all kinds of engines. Figure out what you want to make first, then figure out what engine you'd be best making it on
It's either Godot or Unreal, everything else is a meme answer.
Unreal is probably an overkill for your babby's first game.
Godot is the worlds biggest meme. Its like recommending Gimp to people instead of photoshop
What engine do you prefer?
I got burnt like this with XNA when MS drop support for it I managed to move everything to mono but still MS not even once.
Learn GameMaker you'll get things done without being overwhelmed by more advanced stuff.
Literally use basic unreal, blueprint project. It doesn't get easier than that.
I've been working in the industry for a few years now. Currently working as a Senior Gameplay Programmer at a well known AAA studio.
Whenever I run into a problem like this I find it's best to ask myself "Why can't I make this decision?".
In your case my guess is that you don't know enough to judge any technology available, and you wouldn't even know what to judge it on.
Outside of someone giving you an explicit answer and guiding you through the process you will have to make the choice on your own. If you can find a mentor I highly recommend it.
However, here is some general advice that I like to give anyone trying to get into making games.
1. Decide if you want to toy around with making a game as a hobby or if you want to try and learn how to make games professionally
2. If it's the former. Pick an engine that looks cool or fun and just start. You'll learn so much from just starting. Even just downloading the engine and getting the demo running. My recommendation is Unity. They aren't going anywhere and if you somehow make something good enough that they want to get their grubby hands on I'm sure you'd be more stoked your game was making 200k in revenue than anything else. But don't worry about failing, stopping, or succeeding just have fun.
3. If it's the latter and you want to learn to make games professionally you'll need to figure out what your interested in.
Graphics? Start with building a renderer. You'll learn to push pixels to the screen in various ways.
Gameplay Programming? Make a SMALL game. My favourite suggestion is to pick a simple Minigame from Mario Party and just copy it as a single player experience. You'll have exact specifications, and just need to execute on creating it. You'll have to work with models, create game objects, components, and most importantly learn what all of those things are.
Game Design? Honestly, just make a pen and paper prototype and then find others looking to hone there skills to implement it.
Animation? Modelling? VFX? SFX? Those all have their own pipelines with large lists of tutorials you can find
The most important thing, at least in my experience, is starting to figure out what you need to figure out. That won't happen with just spinning your wheels on which engine to choose. That questions is a trap for all would be new game devs. Try your best to avoid it.
Good luck!
>the duality of Ganker
>OP didnt even start doing anything
>b***h about things being hard on Ganker
OP asked what's the best engine for beginners and got bombarded with autists shilling their favorite engines. If all he does is wanting to make 2d games then it doesn't matter, he should pick whatever makes him feel comfortable.
just use unity since it's the most versatile beginner friendly engine with lots of resources. you can pivot to another engine once you get enough experience.
Factorio was made with Allegro.
Stardew Valley was made with XNA, which is superseded by Monogame.
Banished was made with SDL.
You don't need Unreal or Unity. Their huge feature sets are just bloat and burdensome interface shit you have to think about and work around as a solo dev. Video games are all about moving shit around on a screen, so figure out how to do that with simple ingredients before designing and building your magnum opus. The simplest, most proven and well-documented ingredients are SDL and BGFX. If you learn those, you can do anything.
>not running custom version of those engines
el oh el ngmi noob
>custom version
Built by whom and in how many years?
More importantly, do (You) know what's in it?
>t. enginedev tard that probably doesn't even know how to write decent shaders
Any moron can write decent shaders. Modders even do it for free.
>Any moron can write decent shaders
If this were the case, there wouldn't be a Unity or Unreal Engine "look" to all those indie games.
You also need to be an artgay to make cohesive shaders.
>t. conceited artgay nobody wants to hire
Shovelware Unity and Unreal games look the way they do because the default shaders are, to quote this dumbass
, "decent".
shut the frick up cris. nobody gives a shit about your ai generated workflows.
Are you homosexuals seriously still obsessed over that autistic ESL artshitter?
You're proving my point. Even with an generalist engine, you'll still need to learn how to implement shaders and post-processing to make decent looking games.
Enginedevgays never get to this step so they wouldn't know.
>You're proving my point.
If the default is "good enough", it becomes "temp" which means it never gets replaced.
Thanks for proving my point that you don't know jack shit about gamedev or creative processes in general.
>If the default is "good enough", it becomes "temp" which means it never gets replaced.
How is this any different when developing shaders in your "custom game engine"? I think you're skipping a few hundred enginedev steps, anon.
That isn't exclusive to deving with a generalized engine. Of course if you get lazy with your graphics, your graphics will be bad. What kind of wise point are you trying to make with that redundant statement?
>"custom game engine"
Who are you quoting?
>Of course if you get lazy with your graphics, your graphics will be bad.
Solo dev is all about time management, and when you have anything "decent", you wont personally revise it. Laziness isn't even an option.
You sure make a lot of stupid assumptions for someone pretending to work on any project. If you're not a legit moron, you're trolling as a charlatan.
>Who are you quoting?
OP argued that using a low level framework would help you learn everything you need. This isn't the case, because you still need to learn high level stuff like shaders.
I'm not sure why you decided this was an argument about time management. It's not.
>Solo dev is all about time management, and when you have anything "decent", you wont personally revise it. Laziness isn't even an option.
I still don't know what you are trying to imply here. If some dipshit wants to use default shaders in Unity, that doesn't make Unity inferior to somebody's first custom opengl engine.
Solodev isn't time management, nor is it always professional. Most people will do solodev as a hobby and will take as long as they need to polish their skills before they go pro.
Devs who are have gone pro will have probably achieved an optimal time balance regarding asset creation.
Again, what the frick are you trying to argue here?
>Any moron can write decent shaders.
I wish, anon...
I agree with this anon but
why use SDL whan you have raylib
It really doesn't matter what you start with. What matters is that you start. There's never been more resources to help you get started. No matter which engine you pick just start following some tutorials, make a few small games, and you'll be fine. And I would stay off /agdg/ because its sadly a husk of its former self.
>And I would stay off /agdg/ because its sadly a husk of its former self.
Ganker isn't any better. just turn on image only mode so you can look at progress posts and ignore the crabs.
Thought the thumbnail was a guy with a big nose and a really long open mouth.
I can see it
Pfahahaha, we got another one!
You want the truth? You don't actually have the motivation to make a game. You just like the idea of doing it but lack the commitment so you'll make threads like this to justify your inaction.
If you are new to game development, the engine you choose does not fricking matter. This cannot be stressed enough. Just pick one and go. It doesn't matter if it's fricking rpg maker. Just start.
If you don't know enough to have an opinion on game engines, pick the most accessible one to you and just go. These opinions come from experience and you wont really notice the difference without the context of one. You wont notice how fricking slow unreal's editor is because you don't know how quick the others are. You wont notice all the frankensteined systems in unity because you don't know what a system is. You wont notice the raycasting inefficiency of godot because you don't even know what they're for.
Your first few games wont be your Big Project anyway.
Your first priority is babbys first tutorials. So I'll make it easy for you:
>unreal
>unity
>godot
>game maker? Maybe? It has been years
What you pick from that list is unimportant. Just as long as you pick something and start as soon as you can. The best time to plant a tree is yesterday and all that.
You'll start getting opinions only after you start and then you can dunk on analysis paralyses procrastinators with the rest of us.
OP, we need to know: will you heed our advice and actually go out there and do something? Or was this just another useless "HELP ME!" thread?
Unfortunately I was stuck on the delema of choice for too long. Then I decided to just settle for Unity. I was aware of the Ironsource merger but it had some features I wanted and the exporting to console was a plus. After the whole Unity ordeal, I started engine hopping again. Trying Unreal 5, but disliking the bloat, filesize, shader studder issues. And so now I'm willing to give Godot another shot. It's a flawed engine, the people in charge make questionable decisions, but not as bad as unity, and the user base has just gotten an increase of support
Any good tutorial for godot 4?
I just finished this one yesterday. It's quite long as you can see, but the pacing is great and the explanations are really clear even if you're starting from scratch.
just pick something and learn it. Ideally something with a healthy and friendly community that will support your learning. Start with something easy like Scratch, or Roblox, or Fortnite tools.