25 Game Dev Tips for Beginners (Tips & Tricks)

Check out ‪@Goodgis‬ amazing video: • 25 Game Dev Tips for B...
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► What I believe: • What I Believe
00:00 Intro
00:14 Clean Code Isn't That Important
00:30 Begin Marketing Before You Start Your Game
01:00 Unity Vs. Unreal Doesn't Matter
01:10 Focus On Your First and Last Level
01:32 Get To The Point With Your Trailer
01:43 Strive To Understand Player Psychology
01:54 Don't Compete With AAA
02:07 Sound Is Half Of Your Game
02:25 Get Feedback From Your Audience ASAP
02:38 Take A Course
03:34 Take A Break
03:46 Release 2 Crappy Games
04:05 Surround Yourself With Successful Game Devs
04:20 Utilize Color Despite Your Talent
04:36 Join A Game Dev Community
04:44 Don't Think About "Gameplay Length"
05:07 Every Game Dev Feels Overwhelmed
05:37 Don't Let Game Devs Make You Feel Stupid
06:05 Multiplayer Is Profitable
06:19 Focus On Streamability
06:40 Use Assets
06:58 Prototype First
07:14 Give Yourself An Hourly Rate
07:42 Focus On A Solid Hook
08:01 Finish A Polished Demo

[@thomasbrush]

Any other tips I missed??? ► Learn how to become a full time game dev, free: www.fulltimegamedev.com/opt-in-how-to-make-six-figures ► Enroll in my 3D workshop, free!: www.fulltimegamedev.com/opt-in-15-minute-3D-game ► Make your game instantly beautiful with my free workbook: www.fulltimegamedev.com/opt-in-instant-beauty-color-workbook ► Get my 2D game kit, free: www.fulltimegamedev.com/opt-in-2D-game-kit ► Join my 2D character workshop, free: www.fulltimegamedev.com/opt-in-2d-character-art-workshop ► Wishlist Twisted Tower: store.steampowered.com/app/1575990/Twisted_Tower/ ► Learn how to make money as a KZbinr: www.fulltimegamedev.com/opt-in-indie-game-income-workshop

[@Serx95]

Can i have a chat with you personally??? 😶

[@igd9435]

@@Serx95 you should mail him

[@thomasbrush]

@@Serx95 what’s up I can try and answer here

[@Serx95]

@@thomasbrush Thanks for your response, i am student currently learning game designing by a paid course, so i have learn well that 6mnth time period and perform well to get placed... So iam kind ah need your advise on that about game designing..... Thankyou

[@thecharliewhiskey]

As soon as my Christmas shopping is done, I'll be buying the course as a gift to myself 🤝 Looking forward to it!

[@Goodgis]

Hey, thanks for the love! :D

[@penguiz.]

GOODGIS hi

[@Pixel_Entriment24]

"Game engine don't make a good game , dedicated game developers did " I like this quote !!!

[@thomasbrush]

-Thomas Brush, 2022

[@Pixel_Entriment24]

@@thomasbrush yeah , I forgot that lol

[@eteriumgames6723]

Expecially for an indie game developer since he will never be able to use all the potential of a very powerfull engine.

[@Pixel_Entriment24]

@@eteriumgames6723 sure , you must just pick up what you need , for example shader graph , If you know how to master it you can do a crazy thing with it

[@DylanDev14]

Best quote I've heard in a while

[@Kyjor_]

“Think of games as toys instead of interactive films.” I don’t know if you got that from somewhere else, but that is an amazing quote. I feel like most people see it as the latter

[@zappy7393]

The main developer of Mario, Shigeru Miyamoto said this quote.

[@Kyjor_]

@@zappy7393 Gotcha, thanks!

[@theresnothinghere59]

that's the major problem with the entire game industry right now

[@captainnoyaux]

the 5' part of being overwhelmed is true for everyone being stressed/anxious, (indies and indie game devs are more prone to that due to the nature of their work). Generally you have to learn to enjoy the process especially when it is hard, and telling yourself "I'm OK" is part of making yourself enjoying the process

[@LucasStraub]

Hey Thomas, here is some critique about the 25 tips (constructive ones I hope, I love your videos, and this is not to discourage in any way). First, I feel a lot of those tips are for indie game development due to how they are explained, even tho, there are topics I disagree with: 1. Clean code is super important, even if you are an indie game dev, you often will add features and fix bugs and the less your code is clean, the harder it will be to maintain. And if you later get yourself a partnership, if your code is not clean, it will demand a lot of your time to help other parts work with it. 4. Agree about the first level and disagree about the last. The first level is essential to retain users by hooking them into your game. But the last... A a lot of players will not finish your game, even if they play your game a lot, and preferred to have an enjoyable middle game than an end because it will players will play the most. 16, 19, and 20. These are really dependent on what you want your game to be, and what are your objectives with the project. Sure a viral/streamable game can make a hit, or it can be replayable lots of times, but it doesn't grant the game success or even if is a good game. Actually, I think these three are the most contradicting with your games, Pinstripe and Neversong are personal story-driven games that work super fine and don't have those three aspects. I see that Father became Happy Hotel from this change of mindset and I actually interested to see how it will turn out.

[@ThunderPlayStudios]

maybe he is talking about "beginners"

[@rexistreves]

I'm actually appreciating your recent series of indie game development videos. A couple of months ago I started my "journey" but it was abruptlly interrupted by my first "real" job, which is office work, so you get the deal. I'm willing to start again from scratch because in the way my said "journey" was before, I wouldn't achieve much. It was and still is very hard to me, because I've always had a crippiling difficulty learning things all by myself, but I'm aware I need to start somewhere or It's gonna be office work for the rest of my life. Anyways, thanks for these videos and I'm looking foward to watch more.

[@TheRealCzechmark]

I love these tips, as they help me stop overthinking and just focus on what is important. And these tips sound important!

[@PrescottLawani]

Good stuff, Thomas! I definitely made some beginner mistakes with my first game. I'm glad I learned so much making it, and I will finish it by February 9, 2023, but there are somethings that I wish I considered when I started this first game.

[@jeanMvang]

Thank you so much for your videos! I am using your videos to draft a gameplan to release my first crappy game :) by 2023. Thank you so much for helping me rediscover my first passion!!

[@goehlergamedev]

1. I think the argument for clean code is not about efficiency - but readability. And readability is by and large something that will benefit yourself. While coding, you'll spend 70% of your time reading code. Mostly your own. So use clean code to make your own life easier 😊

[@scheve1994]

100% Agreed. During my last job I got lectured about this, as I regularly worked in blueprints as a level designer. I got taught to add very clear comments whenever you leave some dirty code behind, ideally this comment should explain what your snippet is about with just a glance. This might look like the following: "10/06/2023 [Name] - Hacky implementation, doesn't support replication"

[@carloaquino8337]

"Every game dev feels overwhelmed," about to join several game jams this month and am scared about the outcome but heck I'm doing it!

[@casadogaspar]

Good advice overall, but as a software developer I must say this Clean Code is not about performance, it's about code readability and maintenance. So do all your can to write clean code for yourself in the future, so he can make updates and improvements on your legacy code easily. Trust me, sometimes I want to punch myself in the face when I look at code I wrote years ago.

[@reedemer589]

I'm thinking of releasing a game soon so you and your channel are awesome help

[@MonhooGameDevlogs]

Nice tips, thanks I will try on my games 😁

[@ElectroGamesYT]

Great video

[@MarquitoPerro]

I didn't know about the twitch integration. Well, I only watch youtube. Thanks for the tips.

[@Andy_S79]

I have a question. How you are managing your time? You are pumping out videos like bullets off a machine gun, making a game, and take care of your family.

[@user-re9jc7mx3z]

Все советы очень полезны и жизненны. Спасибо за ролик.

[@notagain3732]

I love learning

[@elliottk68va]

Your videos are great! Just curious, how much time and detail do you put into your GDD?

[@numaanjaved]

Thank you for your content reminder, I am learning from an online course, and yet I am working on my social media attention and retention, I am very weak at it so struggling, working on email module of my own website.

[@matheustavares4597]

I liked your content, but I'm not able to buy it, now, so I need to wait until I get some money and get started! By now, I'm still working on my game.

[@DJaycerOfficial]

As a beginner in high school, I'm currently just making a text-based version of my game. This will be the pre alpha demo of my dream game which I will probably leave alone until I figure out more about how to make an image move on a screen using code. I have plans for a few horror games (One isn't really horror, more like luigi's mansion) which I will start with the basis of fairly soon.

[@commenter5994]

hows it going

[@DJaycerOfficial]

@@commenter5994 considering it was six months ago when I had a super-bias towards python, I have gotten pretty far. Official development started on September 2, and I’m pretty close to being finished with setting everything up. So far, there is a menu with all of its functions (inventory, etc.) and the battle system, which will be pretty fun to continue making. It is a pretty big game though, so doing all of this myself is pretty time consuming, especially when you barely have any experience making video games. The horror games mentioned most likely won’t be made yet, however they are still going to be made as they relate to lore of everything. So if you ever see “the elementals” somewhere, you should play it. It is going to be the best thing I ever make.

[@Cinetiste]

In any art, we may learn from models. If I may, even a bit late, you may try with an engine that would let you take a little template of a character moving in a little environment, as a model to see how it works, change little things to be more familiar with it.

[@DJaycerOfficial]

@@Cinetiste dang here we are a whole year later. I’ve done some pretty wild stuff for one person such as creating an infinitely expandable crafting system and looping through an array of an array of structs to tell the game which effect should be applied given the current combination of effects. I’ve even created my own damage formulae, made a quick time input system, improved the QTE system, and made my own changes to different tutorials online to better fit with my game. So thanks for the help, but I don’t think I really need it right now. In fact the biggest problem right now in my game is saving/loading and making sure that that doesn’t crash during battle or when saving twice or when saving/loading the game.

[@Liam-vb3xo]

I don't really get why people say things like "it's your brain you can control it", you ARE your brain. You aren't controlling your brain as much as your controlling your thoughts.

[@UnturnedValve76]

Him saying I’m ok we’ll I say it is what it is

[@Jhohanc14]

Hey Thomas! I already had full time game dev, will you make black friday offer for 2d and 3d art pro?? Cheers my friend and thank you

[@theok4994]

What are the advantages and disadvantages of crowdfunding?

[@la_prima]

Hi! I hope you are doing well with father. I have an important question. What is the most important thing in the topic of marketing? or are there any red lines? Could you please make a video about it?

[@thomasbrush]

Market early, build an audience that you can contact when the game is ready.

[@sertoonss]

#21 I think... And what if I wanna make it to make experience as 3d artist? Is it ok?

[@ReleeSquirrel]

I noticed that Goodgis is into Godot, but you didn't mention it at all, and I'm not sure I've ever heard you mention or acknowledge Godot. Many folks list Unity, Unreal, and Godot together as the top three, though it's usually the less of the three. Do you not like it?

[@Zander_Schilling]

Okay I keep seeing people talking about creating basic prototypes of stuff to see if it's good, but what do you do if your game idea is a horror where a lot of the horror comes from visual and story elements rather than direct gameplay?

[@Cinetiste]

...you may avoid doing an horror game to begin... notably because it is too scary... 😬 ...and you would loose the children... 😳 ... and me... 😏

[@oliefb]

3:50 is it possible to skip this part? i've tried to make some crappy games in the past but to be honest they just took me time and they lead me to nowhere, i never was able to finish them the only game that is close to being finish is my first project, which i'm super proud of. For a first game it's super fun.

[@d.r1775]

no, you must do bad and crappy games for experience, try to make a game from zero to publish. there's some part of game dev that offtenly novice devs ignore, just like the distribution, optimization, localization and others. I learned that developing from zero to google play store. And second, you learn how to actually finish something. Usually the solo devs only develop the core gameplay loop and forget the rest,just like intuitive UX menus, monetization. I learned that a eyecatch icon is more important that a good core loop. Do it, try to finish a crappy game and try to love all the proccess.

[@oliefb]

@@d.r1775 my problem is getting ideas, that just the big one

[@d.r1775]

@@oliefb I had the same problem before. for that, try to clone a bunch of games that you played before, not all the game just the core mechanics and try to add other things.

[@oliefb]

@@d.r1775 Interesting, i'm gonna try to do that

[@danisvanson50]

How to market ur game on social media when u got no game to show (still an idea or still in development mode) and how to build a community? This is very like very hard

[@MrOmega-cz9yo]

I have recently retired, and I am looking into making games as a serious hobby. I am saddened by #18 in that there are developers who would discourage other devs. However, I wonder how many of these "game devs" are just trolling wankers who are trying to feel better about themselves. For #22, I would recommend the YT channel Extra Credits series on making your first game, which expands on this point. My 2c worth.

[@DARK_AMBIGUOUS]

I have a tip. Make your game available in different languages, that means if your game can be played in 20 different languages, it will be available to 20X the amount of people

[@tiloksaha7961]

clean code is really important, the features will keep on getting added as time goes on, if you have a clean code it will be easier to "maintain" and "manage" you code even after adding stuff maybe after 2 months of coding, the main purpose of clean code is that the program shouldn't break easily, if you write spaghetti code it will scale badly and debugging/maintaining the code will give you a headache, but if you treat your code like an art and keep it clean by following the clean code principles, anyone would love to continue their passion for making the game and "completing" the game that they wanna create, your #1 advice is simply wrong, no matter whether you work in a team or not, you should write clean codes

[@cesar6447]

but if you know what the things you wrote are supposed t obe doing, you probably dont need to be reminded, and a bad code and a not clean code are 2 different things

[@igd9435]

frankly asking is 2:38 really a tip

[@thomasbrush]

it’s definitely an ad read lol 🤑 also a great tip. Should be seriously considered - wish I’d done it when I started.

[@Ultimate_GameDev]

can someone be succesfull only knowing playmaker? I dont know coding.

[@pup4301]

So the goal is to destroy the hotel?

[@thomassynths]

Counterpoint - Clean Code Is More Important Than You Think: Software engineering is all about managing complexity. Writing code you struggle read back a month later is no good. Your argument seems to conflate clean code with efficient code. These are very different beasts. I find it amusing that you often promote workspace cleanliness but in software land... gloves are off :)

[@TheShelfman]

The audio and video were incredibly out of sync, but nevertheless, great tips!

[@fauxshowyo]

social media audience...uh...yeah...about that

[@KozelPraiseGOELRO]

Well, this is for commercial game devs. I still doing this as hobby, just to learn and make non-profitable games. Still helpful in this case, but not as much as a "real" dev.

[@ToweringTimoth]

0:28 guess the genders.

[@hadeus6522]

first

[@billlee1821]

Number 10 being take a course, when you're selling courses... 🤔 that's an unfollow from me, buddy. Good luck the the rest of your mid(at best)-tier indie "gems". Sheesh.

[@nitras.design]

The guy is laughable. I am honestly very concerned about all the sheep that blindly follow his money trap. Sad to see a talented "game developer" spend more time on selling a course than on actually making a profitable game.

[@penguiz.]

you pronounsed goodgis wrong

[@Roscoestudio]

cool video but you shilling courses for 50% off is... Neh

[@nishant619]

There is absolutely ZERO reason to have messy code in ANYTHING related to software, let alone in Game Development. Even if you are the only one coding your game, even if your game sold a million copies, there is just no justification for messy code. Imagine working on "Level 1" of your Indie Game with really messy code, you finish your game, you play-test it and find there's a bug on "Level 1", and you go back into the code that makes up "Level 1". In the time that has passed from finishing "Level 1" to you testing your game, I guarantee you that you will feel lost when digging through the code. All because it's messy and you didn't prioritize cleaning it up to begin with. If you feel rushed to complete your game, or you feel you don't have time to brush up on your code before an upcoming deadline, that's an indication of poor planning. Your code is the LAST thing that should suffer because of this. With that being said, I completely realize that the Video Game industry's norm as a whole (maybe not so much with Indie Games) is to rush products and release it even when the product is not completed. In those cases, the code quality is what suffers. As a result, you get instances like Cyberpunk or the new Pokemon game. Again, not Indie Games, but it serves as a reminder for all of us to not rush things and make sure EVERY aspect of our product is refined.

[@hallo0hoi]

There are a lot of shades of gray between "absolute clean code all the way" and "unmaintainable dumpster fire". For a small indie game, being somewhere in the middle is good enough. In general, if you keep concerns separated in a way that enables replaceability without the card house collapsing on itself, you can fix anything when issues pop up. (the "replaceability over modifiability" wisdom of pragmatic engineering.) You aren't going to develop it for decades (and if you end up doing that you really should have the budget to refactor it anyway).

[@jarednickerl7894]

If your game sells well with the messiest code in the world, who cares? There's no prize for being anal about how beautiful your code is... All that matters is that it serves its purpose.

[@nishant619]

​@@jarednickerl7894 This is the exact type of thinking that justifies crunch culture in the gaming industry. The new Pokemon game, the new Call of Duty, and Cyberpunk all have 2 things in common: they broke sales record, and they had game-breaking bugs. These games sold well for sure. But at what cost? The devs for all three of these games have been complaining about crunch culture for a while now. They constantly have to commit overtime hours just to release something that isn't finished due to a deadline that's been put in place by higher-ups. More often than not, it is the code quality that suffers during crunch time. There are compromises made to the code which shouldn't be made and, in the end, you release a product that is not finished. The consumers complained about how terrible these games played at launch too. If you read the reviews, you'll see many people sharing the same sentiment. Based on this, I bet at least 90% of Thomas Brush's audience cares about the code being clean. Simply because it means better games to play for them. Its literally in their best interest to care. The mere fact that we are discussing this automatically means we care. There DEFINITELY are prizes for being anal about beautiful code: your game functions well, you can go back to your game and EASILY make any change you want without worrying about breaking something elsewhere in your game, self-fulfillment that you didn't compromise on the code, and many other things. They aren't materialistic prizes, but they are self-fulfillment prizes. Again, let the games that released with bugs riddled everywhere serve as a reminder that clean code matters.

[@hallo0hoi]

@@nishant619 I think you're confusing 'maintainable' with 'has the correct behavior'. I've seen lots of unmaintainable pieces of shit in my career that behave exactly as specified (and also quite some well designed code that doesn't). Making code bug free is at least as much of a case of good Q&A and just spending the hours on polishing as it is of code quality. There is no direct relation to how clean code is and if it behaves as intended; one is a purely technical endeavor, they other one of its application. I think we can be fairly sure that those big studio's practice clean code, have competent architects and review processes in place. But still they create crap under stress, which is much more likely down to having no time for proper Q&A and bug fixes. Or, the validation if their code behaves as they expect it to, which again, is something different from its cleanness.

[@nishant619]

@@hallo0hoi Unmaintainable pieces of shit that behave exactly as specified are STILL unmaintainable pieces of shit. If there is ever a reason to go back to that style of code to make ANY type of change, you will (at the very least) have a difficult time making that change without breaking something else. Very rarely do you have to go back to your code to change something at the END of the development cycle. Changes to code are (or should be) constantly happening. Throughout all stages of developing your game. Why not make it easier on yourself by continuously being aware of the cleanliness of your code? It will make the game development process a much easier one. I completely agree on QA being an extremely important part of the process for sure. Why not make their job easier? Or in this case, harder since their job description is to try their hardest to break our game? QA only touches code once the devs have finished their work on that particular code. Clean code is, among other things, the difference between a change to the code being easy or hard for a dev to make. Even if the code doesn't meet certain requirements, or even ALL the requirements, you will still have a much easier time making all the right changes on clean code that DOESN'T function well than shitty code that DOES function well. We get oil changes for our car (or at least, we should) every 5000-15,000 miles (depending on the car). EVEN though our car 'has the correct behaviour', we still get that oil change right? Why? Because our car won't break down as frequently and, therefore, save us money on car repairs further down the road.