Is this a thing because ive been trying to get into gamedev but i cant code at all and ive been trying for so long now but i just cant. I know theres godot but there visual scripting makes so sense and can be strange at times.
ive seen people create games with ai but i feel like that kinda ruins the point of gamedev. Im not even sure why i want to make a game but i just do for some reason.
by chance do you have any suggestions or things you would like to add.
Honestly, I think biting the bullet and trying your hand at coding will be worth your time. Visual scripting typically fall into two camps: code but it is visual (in this case it is just slower, more cumbersome and harder to read) or limiting (this may be fine depending on your needs, but you may also outgrow it). A middleground could be coding where the vast majority is done for you. For example in Godot, there are many nodes that are fully built and just need your custom settings. There are even freely available nodes in the asset store if you need more. Then, if you need some behaviour that does not yet exist, you just code that little part, which will be a great learning experience in of itself.
My biggest tip though, regardless of the approach you take, is keep it simple. Your first game should be ridiculously simple. For example, the first game I made was a 2d scroller spaceship shooter where there were only asteroids as “enemies”. I could then add onto that to test my coding skills, and eventually it was fairly fun, even if it had simple roots.
GDevelop fits your question 100% in my opinion.
ive heard mixed things about gdevelop, what are your thoughts about it?
Like i heard there is a paywall of sorts, but idk.
Well, for me it was a bit to focused on visual programming, as I actually do know quite some programming languages and feel more comfortable with a full language.
But it has great tutorials, everything you create is yours, the full engine is Foss and it is very capable. I think it is the ideal engine for beginners, I remember thinking that I wished it was around when I was just starting out :).
The only paid stuff is if you want to use their online services (for hosting your game or leaderboards) and some assets are also for sale I guess (but this is the same in almost any other engine, e.g. unity asset store or Unreal). So no paywall in my opinion, again, the full engine is MIT licensed.
It could be an XY problem, to make a game you would need a coding skills. I would consider joining a team in a game jam as an artist if you have 2d or 3d skills or as a sound guy if you like making music. A short deadline would make for lack of long term motivation. Other people would help you out in things where you lack necessary skills. Designing a board game could be a good alternative. If you like writing, making a gamebook would also be a possibility.
UPBGE is a free and open source game engine (it’s a fork of Blender) and has node-based game logic built in. From what I understand, you can get really far with using only nodes. Maybe even your entire game, I’m not sure.
Not sure if there’s any (good) visual scripting solutions for Godot, because otherwise that would be a pretty good option!
Turns out they had one but discontinued it since it wasn’t being used at all. Shame, but understandable.
What are you trying to make? I’m not aware of anything open source.
I think short of using rpgmaker (not open source) or something like it (that makes a very specific kind of game and you are really just plugging in content) you aren’t going to get very far into game development with no coding at all.
Unity (again not open source) allows you to do a lot without coding, but by the time you learn how to use Unity you may as well follow their provided education/classes and learn to code while you’re at it.
What are you trying to make?
I would like to make something like a visual novel, a point and click adventure, text based game, or something like that but i may be dreaming too big. so what your saying is unity is probably my best bet?
also what about ai for coding/learning code?
Unity is not the easiest engine to learn by a long shot, I was really just using it as an example because they have a very good (and free) “learn to code in Unity” program.
It sounds like others have given some better starting points for you to look at for what you are looking to do, Unity seems a bit overkill.
It’s more for CYOA-like games, but Twine is pretty good and has a graph-like editor. Of course, if you want to do anything more complicated than “if (choice) go (page)”, you might need some code. But for the basics it works without.
For visual novels Ren’Py seems popular. It does need coding but it’s pretty simple and has a tutorial.
