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Teach me.

A topic by BF created Nov 02, 2022 Views: 260 Replies: 9
Viewing posts 1 to 5
(1 edit) (+1)(-1)

Hi Game Jammers! I just wanted to tell you that this Jam is great but there's 1 problem, idk how to code, so Game Jammers, if your there, please teach me how to code, thank you.

So yeah when you find this topic you'll probably want to teach me on Discord tho I don't have Discord so yea pls teach me in reply's.

there's a wealth of youtube tutorials that walk you through every step of the way, for whatever game engine you want to use. probably easier than asking for someone to teach you to code on a forum post

Oh yeah I forgot lol sry.

tho is there a way to code on itch.io rather than a game engine?

no. itch is just a place to post already existing things. There's no development environment built into itch. An engine is a program that handles a lot of the nuts-and-bolts required to create a game  (like, for example, displaying images to the screen, handling basic physics calculations, that sort of thing), and often organizes things in a way that logically make sense when creating games. So unless you feel like writing your own engine during a game jam (would not recommend), you'll probably need an engine. But you don't need to go for one of those beefy heavy-duty ones like Unity or Unreal if you don't want to (or don't have the disk space lol)

Scratch (here) is probably the most well-known starter programming environment. No typing code required, you just drag and drop logic elements, and there is lots of documentation and tutorials on how to use it. It's got an in-browser version these days, so you don't have to download any software. 

Construct (here) is more powerful but also has drag-and-drop logic so no knowledge of programming necessary. Also has a browser version :) 

Another reply mentioned pico-8, which is also a browser engine with a basic logic handler that's pretty easy to pick up.

There are plenty more, but these are a good place to start looking

I downloaded Unity Hub and the Unity Editor is still downloading. I'm going to make a Just Shapes & Beats game in it and post it in my GMTK Beat Jam so yea.

Ok now I deleted Unity cause it was taking FOREVER for the editor to install.

There is a fantacy console called PICO 8 that is dedicated for making retro games. It uses Lua and is super simple.

There is an educational version that you can run in a browser: https://www.pico-8-edu.com/

And Lazy Devs has a bunch of tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/c/LazyDevs/videos

Honestly, just using JavaScript is nice, there are some libraries like p5.js that make JavaScript nice and convenient for game development. Lua is a somewhat simple language, and Python is pretty beginner friendly.