FrozenFlameInt

Second Blog Post.

It's been a little over a year since I first started coding in Game Maker, and I'm now of the opinion that overall, learning a programming language isn't too difficult, as long as you're resourceful and driven. It's kind of like trying to learn a second spoken language (which I've tried 2-3 times now with Japanese), where you've gotta REALLY want to learn it in order to make it happen. However, I think that programming can be particularly tricky for some people, in that you've gotta get to that point where you don't have to ask yourself "do I want to -play- video games, or do I want to -make- video games"-- you have to instinctively gravitate towards wanting to make them. And sometimes it's easier said than done. For example, since the release of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild, I've put around 130 hours into that game. That's 130 hours I could have put into the game I'm working on! Wow....

That said, I still believe that playing video games during the heat of development/learning is incredibly important. I mean, for one thing, gaming is likely the reason many people, like myself, become designers, right? And secondly, playing other people's games can obviously be fun, exhilarating, relaxing, and inspirational. When we play other people's games whether they come from the "AAA" or "indie" space, we, as designers, potentially walk away from those experiences feeling rejuvenated, chock-full of ideas for experiments we want to conduct in our own projects. And yes, I realize that we don't always have an infinite amount of time for iteration, expansion, and experimentation during development. If all goes according to plan, we reach a point of content lock, or maybe an "alpha"-state, where the core of the game is built and we're not suddenly going to make it so every surface in the entire game is flawlessly scale-able, just because 'Breath of The Wild' is blowing our minds, right?!

So here's the thing-- balance is key. It has to be. However, the perfect balance is going to be different for everyone. I may have put 130 hours into BotW, which is arguably a lot of time, but ultimately I still have over 700 hours in my current project, and a couple thousand hours into learning GML overall. And whatever that ratio of playing games/creating games is, it seems to be working for me. I guess we each have to identify what our goals are, and what our time-frame is for achieving those goals, and once those parameters are in place we're able to determine whether we've achieved the balance we've been looking for. At least that's the idea. I don't want to make it sound like I have all the answers.

I want to top off this post by name-dropping/leaving some links to a few of the tutorial/content creators who helped get me started with all of this. These are YouTubers who's videos helped me learn to code/inspired me throughout the past year. Learning how to code has been one of the coolest/most fun adventures I've ever gone on, and I still have A TON left to learn. Realistically the learning process will never end; nor should it. So if you're reading this, and you want to learn how to code, and you're not entirely sure where to start, I suggest checking out the links below, and maybe checking out Game Maker, Unity, or one of the other free game engines out there. Get your feet wet, play around, have fun, and see what comes of it. Maybe you'll discover that you enjoy making games even more than you like playing them, and that balance comes naturally.

In no particular order:

HeartBeast: Youtube.com

GM Wolf: Youtube.com

Shaun Spalding Youtube.com

Let's Learn Game Maker: Studio Youtube.com

Cheers!

-Matt

Twitter.com

Twitch.tv