"No Learn, Only Make!" and other erroneous thoughts from an over-ambitious beginner
I've been wanting to make a game for ages.
I've tried out a lot of different programs and I've tried learning a lot of different programming languages, and for the longest time it felt like I would never make any progress. Especially after learning that Eric Barone, the creator of Stardew Valley, was already a CompSci graduate when he started making it.
At first I was like, wow! He taught himself to code by making this game! That's incredible! But then I learned the CompSci thing. He already had a solid foundation to work on, and I didn't want to spend the time building a foundation of knowledge. I wanted to make the game!
You know, like that "no take, only throw" meme. No learn, only make!
But that's not quite how that works. So I decided to put that aside for a while.
and thus the hyperfixation wavered, but did not pass...
I took some introductory online courses on C# so I could learn Unity. I messed around with RPG Maker and RPG In a Box. I looked at Godot and was intimidated away because I was pretty firmly entrenched in the No Learn era of my journey. I even tried out some no-code apps (and built a prototype of a little writing motivation tool I'd been thinking about; more on that later), but there were no options that would let me deploy for a reasonable price per month. So.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, I made my Neocities site and finally figured out how to use CSS after I struggled with it in my teen years. With that as a home base, I learned JavaScript so I could finally make WordSprout on my own instead of relying on proprietary platforms. Getting the v 2.0 prototype working was a pretty big win, especially because of all the research I had to cobble together to make it work!
Once I got that into its basic working state, I started learning how to code incremental games, and THAT's what got me back into thinking about making a Proper Game with a Proper Engine and everything.
I absolutely could've gone with JavaScript a la Cookie Clicker—there are frameworks for that—but I'd already looked around at various game engines. And as much as I'm a "Learning From Scratch" advocate, I'm also starting to understand the benefits of not always reinventing the wheel. As long as I can understand how the wheel works, I'm good to go.
learning to swim. i mean code.
Back when I was first looking around, I'd been overwhelmed by almost all of the game engines I'd tried because I was trying to learn too much at once. But each time I tried a new one, I better understood the way they worked. I was just telling a friend earlier today that learning JavaScript and other languages/engines always used to feel overwhelming, like a huge wave crashing down on my head. But having tried out so many things since those early days, now when I jump in to the water, I realize I can swim. I understand what they're talking about.
They all explain the same concepts in slightly different ways, and that is what helps it all click into place. I'm the kind of learner who often needs several examples to understand a concept, or to have it explained in a few different ways. I was unwittingly doing that to myself by trying to learn all these different languages.
Anyway, after the Unity Debacle last month, C# was no longer my main go-to. And after learning that many Unity devs were learning Godot (which supports C# but has a native language, GDScript), I figured I'd give it a second look.
Turns out the documentation is pretty great! So, yeah. That's what I'm working on now. I'm bad at keeping up with blogs, but anytime I feel the incessant need to ramble somewhere, I'll post about how it's going. :)