Software Skills: Godot Game Engine
Recently, I finished a Crash Course for Beginners on Godot. As the website describes, it is a “free, all-in-one, cross-platform game engine that makes it easy for you to create 2D and 3D games.” While the crash course video was 1.4 hours long, all the note-taking, backtracking, and actual information processing took about 10 hours. I have never touched a game engine before nor have I done any coding. In the end, I was able to develop not only a better understanding of the Godot system itself but also a mini-project to show basic features such as enemy AI, character movement, and systems such as health and gold.
What Is Good About The Software?
As the self-description implies, the software is considerably easy to comprehend and learn from the ground-up compared to other game engines such as Unity and Unreal. While something like the Unreal engine boasts the blueprint system and Unity is just plain difficult, Godot has a Node and Scene system. When I first started learning this system, it felt extremely like I was working on something like Adobe Premiere Pro or AfterEffects. Its visual style made it very easy to organize the various scripts that come with the different files and scenes. It even had a function similar to layers in something like Photoshop. It also heavily simplified the coding itself, following a line of code called GDScript which made it so I could grab already made lines of code and place them into the script. From there I can edit it and adjust to however I want. This made understanding coding a whole lot easier. Overall, the learning curve of Godot felt very doable and even had me asking questions of what other code I could add to potentially expand the mini-project I was already making.
What Is Bad About The Software?
To reiterate, I do not have any experience in coding whatsoever. With this in mind, I want to approach Godot from a learning standpoint. The biggest criticism to me was how it was to actually comprehend the GDScript coding system. While it did offer lines of codes to simply drag and drop into my scripts and also offered a directory that gives definitions of all of the functions, there were no relevant examples of what each function could be utilized for. For example, for a newcomer like me when I see a function about creating rng, it is not obvious to me that it could be utilized for creating random placement for items on a level or randomly generating gold gains from picking up an item. (the only reason I know this now is through looking at other YouTube videos of making a game in Godot). As much as it is fun to experiment with the functions, I find it hard to even begin without that initial push to try a potential use for the function.
What Are The Potential Uses For The Software?
I think that the best potential uses for the software is an intro to game development and how the game creation pipeline works. While it may not have the complexity of Unity and Unreal game engines, it boasts a much easier intro to understanding the system. With a smaller learning curve, it becomes to easier to start making a functional game. This is not to discredit the power of Godot’s engine. Multiple popular indie titles achieved mass popularity while using Godot’s game engine. I would highly recommend this to anyone first learning coding and game development, as there are also a ton of videos online that teach the various systems of Godot and game projects to follow.
