How to Make a Game

Intro

Hey, it’s me again, Nick. Back to mindlessly brain dump my thoughts about game dev into the ether.

I recently made a game dev video titled “How to Make a Game” and as of today finally posted it on the Owlface Games YouTube channel.

I will post the video and the script/notes for the video down below in case you would like to watch/read it (bear in mind videos tend to change a fair bit from their initial script as I like to ad-lib).

Anyway, I’d like to talk a little bit about why I made this video, what my intentions are with it and what my thoughts are about it now it’s finally finished.

First off, I made this video because I feel that although the internet is filled with very specific tutorials there isn’t anywhere near as much surface/high level information out there on the topic.

When I say high level I don’t mean advanced (that wasn’t me tooting my own horn or however the saying goes). I mean there aren’t really that many resources out there that take a bird’s eye view on game development.

Also, one of the ways people start making games is just to sort of randomly pick an engine they’ve heard of and start trying to figure it out via tutorials and the like.

Now, while both engines and the quantity of tutorials have improved greatly since I started, I happened to get into game dev this way over a decade ago.

My experience was, for lack of a better word, SHIT.

Some engines are simply terrible to use especially from a beginner’s perspective and a few of them may even be a complete waste of time depending on your goals.

This is why I decided to hopefully save some people the same experience by just pointing people to three different engines depending on their goals.

GameMaker for 2D, Godot for 3D and Unreal for ultra realistic games.

To anyone remotely in the know in the world of indie games these are obvious answers but it’s surprising how people advising people just say things like “it doesn’t matter what engine you use”. While there may be a degree of truth to that, when it comes to beginners, I disagree.

The IDEs differ greatly in some cases and at times can be borderline cryptic. Also some engines are better at certain things and when you’re new to the field you will never know just how hard you are pushing uphill.

I also felt similarly about recommending asset creation tools.

It wasn’t just software and engine choice I spoke about in the video.

I also touch on some fundamentals of design, how to improve and general things to avoid as well as things every aspiring dev needs to hear.

I firmly believe that if I heard some of this advice at the start of my game dev journey I would have progressed as a dev much sooner.

Now the video is done I am generally very happy with it. It addresses everything I wanted to talk about. However, I think I could have taken things a little further when it comes to discussing not using game engines, programming and learning new engines and languages. I think it’s important to teach new devs not to pigeon-hole themselves.

Whether it’s never using a different engine or programming language. You will improve as a dev so much more the more you challenge yourself and work outside of your comfort zone.

I wish I spoke about the importance of curiosity and doing side projects in new tools just because it’s fun to learn new things and how often times those are the experiences you learn from the most.

Anyhoo, perhaps those are good topics for future videos.

Brain dump over for now.

I hope you enjoy the video.

Nick

Video

Script/Notes

Intro

Video games. The ultimate art-form.

Video games have become such an integral part of society that most of us grow up playing games and continue playing them. Carrying our passion all the way into adulthood and even parenthood. And I’m %100 certain that by the time millennials start retiring they’ll be so many pensioners still grinding that they might even get their own esports league.

As someone who grew up in the 90s it really feels like I grew up in this magical time filled with innovation.

Whether it’s the n64 and the playstation bringing 3d to home consoles. Or doom and quake defining the first person genre and changing how pretty much every video game has been made ever since.

But despite all the magic.

There is one big thing I remember from my childhood that is incredibly relavant to todays video.

Everyone dreamed of being a game developer but nobody ever managed to do it.

Why?

There were no game dev courses or degrees. No youtube no chat gpt. And most people didn’t grow up with a computer let alone the internet. Which back then even if you could get online was like watching 10 min slide show every time you loaded a webpage.

But I’m happy to say that today anyone with a computer and the burning desire to make a game can make the dream of being a game developer a reality.

And that’s why this video is called, “How To Make A Game”.

So despite the wealth of human knowledge being at your fingertips the reason I’m making this video is because nowadays process of learning how to make games can be a little overwhelming.

Whether it’s choosing and engine a language what tools to use. There are so many choices it can be difficult to know where to start.

So hopefully I’m going to make that process a little simpler for you guys by first breaking down everything you need to work on to be able to make games and hopefully make them well.

And then I’m also going to narrow down your choices to some great options that are particularly beginner friendly but still completely legit for making top notch games. Breakdown

Alright lets get started.

So we’re gonna start by first breaking down everything you need to learn specific categories.

First up.

• Engines - choose one, learn it and learn it well.

• Asset creation tools - choose a couple.

• How to avoid tutorial hell - this is an under-rated topic because mostly likely just as many people stop learning to early as they do actually get stuck in tutorial hell. And also I love tutorials and I think its great to always be doing a lot of them.

• Game Design and game design tools - separate from game development, explain why

• How to learn game design and how to design games and design them well and not just learn how to make a game.

• The process - from design, to implementation to iteration to completion.

• How to get good - explain how to get good at making games. - make lots of games, you need to go through the whole design and development and shipping process of making games as many times as possible. - mention john romero.

• what to avoid - over ambition, planning on your first game being your magnum opus and a breakout success. Have your first game be on platforms that will hold you back and over complicate things. - its ok to do a big technical ambitious project once you know what you’re doing. Although I still recommend choosing something you can finish.

Engine Choice

• 2d or 3d
• if 2d Game Maker
• if 3d Godot
• if you want to make ultra realistic games learn Unreal

Why? Both of these engines are really beginner friendly, have great documentation lot’s of youtube tutorial and are completely free to just start making games and releasing them.

For game maker you will have to pay a license if you want to sell your games commercially (which I don’t recommend in the beginning) but when you are ready to do that it’s literally just a one off $100 fee to sell pc games.

If you want to make console games it’s gonna cost you a monthly or yearly subscription which is expensive and I only recommend paying that if you’re already making money from your games.

Game Maker is the single best engine I have ever used for making 2D sprite based games. If thats all you’re interested in there are no better options really. Most engines are sort of trying to do everything and all of those extra features are probably just going to confuse things.

But game maker is garbage for 3D. It’s technically possible but it’s way harder to make 3d games in game maker than it is in basically any other engine.

Godot is an amazing choice for making 3d games because its completely free and open source and is just as good an engine as game maker if not better and its still more approachable and easy to use compared to a lot of engines out there.

Both these engines are very beginner friendly and are more intuitive than most of the competition but they aren’t beginners engines. They’re legit. People big successful games that are totally legit in both. So don’t think that you’re limiting yourself by learning these engines because you’re not and once you’ve learnt one engine well you should be very capable of learning another one. Programming laguages

You should know that both godot and game maker do have their own bespoke programming languages and I do think they are both a decent place to start with programming for game dev.

However, gml is more c flavoured than gd script because gd script as python style indentation which is more confusing and less transferable between other languages. Still great for making games in godot of course. But it’s worth knowing that I think you’ll have an easier time learning new programming languages if you start with gml.

And regardless of which you start with if you want learn other programming languages in the future. You definitely should try and get start learning c or c++ or whatever language you want really although I would recommend c. as soon as you can.

But you don’t have to. If all you care about is getting games made you can stick with your engine of choice for a long time. Asset Creation

• Aseprite for pixel art
• blender for 3d
• gimp/photoshop for other stuff

You can make pixel art in gimp if you dont want to buy or compile aseprite so dont worry about that.

I personally still use gimp instead of photoshop so don.t worry about having to pay for that but you are going to need some kind of generic image editor because theres always some sort of additional graphics to make whether its for ui or just like a steam banner or something where knowing gimp or photoshop is going to be essential. How to avoid tutorial hell

Do real projects and finish them then do another, repeat until you don’t a tutorial to start and finish a project. - do game jams, remake an existing game or do an existing game idea with a twist if you’re out of ideas. Game Design and game design tools

separate from game development, explain why. How to learn game design

and how to design games and design them well and not just learn how to make a game. The process

from design, to implementation to iteration, loop iteration to completion. How to get good

explain how to get good at making games. - make lots of games, you need to go through the whole design and development and shipping process of making games as many times as possible. This is easier if you make small games but you don’t have to so long as you follow through although you probably should. - mention john romero. A-Z games. What to avoid

over ambition, planning on your first game being your magnum opus and a breakout success. Have your first game be on platforms that will hold you back and over complicate things. - its ok to do a big technical ambitious project once you know what you’re doing. Although I still recommend choosing something you can finish. Other Things You Should Know / Outro

learn git and git hub as soon as possible, start with the github desktop app.

Don’t use ai to generate assets learn to make you own.

Do use AI as google and a digital teacher to teach you things and help look things up.

For example one really good way to use ai as a beginner. copy a single line of code that you dont understand. Paste in chat gpt and ask it what does this line of code do.

Likewise you could take a chunk of code you wrote yourself. Paste it in and ask. How could this code be written more efficiently. If you use ai appropriately it rapidly increase the speed at which you can learn any programming language. Just make sure you also really read the official documentation too though because there’s no replacement for that.

You don’t HAVE TO use an engine to make a game BUT you definitely should if you’re new to making games or even if you only have one or two games under your belt.

HOWEVER IF you are an experienced software engineer you’ll honestly probably be fine not using an engine although I’d still recommend getting a couple of games under you belt at least with an engine because you need yo learn and go through the whole process as many times as possible.

Regardless thats probably a topic for another video.

This video was obviously more aimed at beginners but I do want this channel to appeal to everyone including beginners and people with more experience so maybe I’ll try and make the next video about something a little more complex.

But what do you guys want. Let me know in the comments. Do you have a specific question whether it’s something you don’t know the answer to or you just wanna hear my take on or is there a specific topic you’d like to see me make a video about whether its more of a guide or maybe just more like think piece or a discussion.

Let me know.

Until then.

Get back to work making games and stop wasting time on youtube.

Oh and sub to the channel, we need 1000 subs to monetise the channel and we’re super far from that so subs are really important right now.

Oh and considering we’re not able to monetise yet if you would like to help out and support this content you can do so at owlfaceface.games/donate where you can be me tea not coffee cos I don’t drink caffeine or you can click the github sponsor button there to.

Anyway

Bye.