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Game making for an absolute beginner

A topic by onceuponadream created May 27, 2020 Views: 485 Replies: 6
Viewing posts 1 to 3

Lately I've really had the urge again to get into game development, but I must admit that I don't really have a good idea where to start. I'm currently experimenting with Twine, which I'm really enjoying so far, however I would love to learn to make games outside of just interactive fiction. Are there any programs/engines/software out there that are good for a complete and absolute beginner who also has no coding abilities? 

Moderator(+1)

They all promise that, and they all break their promise. Starting with Twine. 😉 If you made anything with it that involves more than simple links, you've been coding, even if you don't realize it right now. So just learn to code.

That said, Ren'Py is a way to grow into making more advanced games while working in a way not too different from Twine. Look into it first.

Thanks for the recommendation. Do you have any advice as to where to begin to learn coding? I remember I once tried to learn coding when I was in high school just for fun but I retained absolutely nothing and found it very confusing haha.

Moderator(+1)

It's been too long since I've been a beginner, and things have changed. Maybe the official Python tutorial, or the Invent With Python books? But since you're using Twine already, learn the more advanced features of your preferred story format, like loops, conditionals, variables, arrays... that alone is going to teach you a lot. SugarCube markup in particular is as powerful as any programming language, but I think Harlowe isn't far behind.

Thank you for the advice!

(+2)

I agree with all of the above recommendations, but I'll just throw another one out there: I was just recently playing with Ink, which you might like and find easy to get into if you like Twine, and it has a plugin to the Unity game engine, so that's a path to diving into a full-fledged gamedev environment.

(+1)

Oh, that looks very interesting, thanks for the recommendation, I'll be sure to give it a look!