Developing, Episode 1

Sorry I'm late to the comment party but I just wanted to say that: Mark, maybe you should also become a motivational speaker! I want to give this video a thousand likes <3 :D

Piotr Tadeusz Rafalski

Personally i hope you don’t feel any pressure to make a tutorial series. As you mentioned, there's millions out there, and I feel like it would add a lot of strain onto the main task of learning game dev yourself. I'm a little curious if you feel like your media and motion design background is helping you grasp game dev concepts. Like i know when i saw the rotating lock game just now, I was like, "Hey, that's just transforming with an anchor point!"

Will Kommor

This video is a really fantastic resource. I teach Intro to Game Programming and one major issue we have is just getting students to understand the importance of this approach to learning.Much as we can tell them they often do not listen. They do however listen to people from the industry so this video will be extremely useful in engaging with more students. Thanks as always for such fantastic videos

Rayn Olsen

To help you with guides, I HIGHLY recommend GameDevGuide https://www.youtube.com/c/GameDevGuide. He's a small channel but he has guides on very useful tools and features. He is intermediate-advanced, though, but I figured I'd shout him out anyway.

Jonathan Miller

I think the difference between the two presented learning approaches is that one is slowly building up a mental model of the the problem domain, while the other one is high level cargo culting. I too very much prefer the former and it’s always fun to poke at edge cases to verify your own understanding.

Florian

That good feeling you're talking about when you prove that you've learned something is the reason I'm always "chasing the dragon" and jumping into areas of development I'm unfamiliar with. It really is just the best feeling.

Sean Noonan

Great video! This mirrors a lot of my experience with trying to learn to program - picking up a coding book and going through it did nothing, trying to solve problems that I cared about* was the only way to really learn. One thing I thought about was how years ago we talked a lot about games being clones (e.g. FPS'es were Doom clones), and I think we lose a bit by not talking about this anymore. It's good be fine to copy and refine other games' mechanics, and we should be more open to thinking this way. It's especially great while learning. *Math and physics things. I like things like quaternions!

Paul

I have a concentration in game dev, but I never really thought I would make use of it because the classes felt so generic. But I've also been playing indie games more lately and It's got me thinking stuff like "wow, I can probably make some of that in Unity" (think Totally Accurate Battle Grounds, Gunfire Reborn, Human: Fall Flat). Seeing videos like this is nice because it helps to see a similar perspective for people really interested in game development, but aren't sure how to even start. I am excited to see your progression!

Prototyping will be the focus of the next episode, so we shall see!

Game Maker's Toolkit

Your section about learning style really put into words what I've always experienced myself. I, too, attempted to figure out Unity by doing these tutorials and I had the same exact experience. Unlike you, at that point I just gave up lol.

I think the insight you provide into your own learning process can be very valuable for others. Thanks for sharing that! I'm curious on your process of breaking an idea down to a prototype. I've learned to cut my starting ideas in half, 7 to 10 times, so the prototype is roughly 1/100th to 1/1000th the scope of the original, while making sure I keep something that still excites me to build it. I don't see a lot of tutorials on this process, despite how crucial it's been for me. What has been your experience?

I really appreciate your willingness to be vulnerable when sharing your gamedev journey. It's encouraging to see how you found your way through your struggles. And I really like how you broke down your process of learning Unity. It's easy to forget how to learn new things, and I think this will be valuable for many people who are on their own learning journeys.

Daniel F. Hanson