Godot can run on fairly low end stuff, just use the opengl based renderer. The official Godot docs are actually pretty dang good nowadays. Join a game jam asap https://godotwildjam.com/ you'll probably find a team willing to take a newbie. You'll learn a lot. Good luck!
this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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Programming
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Godot should work, as some have suggested.
Failing that, I would strongly recommend you become a little more familiar with coding so you can take a look at multimedia libraries such as SDL, Allegro and SFML.
Even if Godot works for you (it really should, I use it with my laptop with 16 gigs of ram but no dedicated graphics), you will absolutely need to be comfortable with coding to write your game scripts (basically your game's behavior) in GDScript, Godot's scripting language.
You can do everything except 3d rendering in SDL alone relatively easily. You can still do 3d rendering in SDL but you have to be a graphics rendering expert to get anywhere near efficient acceptable performance.
I'd say stay away from open source software from now. I love Foss but it's almost never beginner friendly. You should start with a commercial engine like unity which is free for personal use. Bro code on YouTube has a really good course on C#. You will need to learn how to code for games. And you will need to learn c# for unity. The good thing is that c# is an amazing beginner programming language, it won't hold your hand to a fault like python but you also won't shoot yourself in the foot like with c++. C# is also quite similar to Java so a lot of what you learn will carry over, well that's actually true for almost all c like languages. After you feel comfortable writing simple console applications on c# you should start looking for unity tutorials. Again unity is free for personal use so no need to worry about cost. You can do 2d and 3d games and also android games. So get on it. Don't be too hard on yourself, coding is a skill that you train same with game development. If you feel demotivated just remember that coding is telling a highly processed rock how to think and that basically makes you a modern day wizard
I've been thinking about making a text based game with Yarn Spinner as a total beginner myself. Chatgpt giving me immediate code on request has bolstered my confidence to branch out as well.
ive also been wanting to make a text based game or use chatgpt, but what is yarn spinner?
I linked their site in my post. It's a foss game engine which has been used in a few charming indie games I really liked.
love
like love2d? how would i even get started or make levels? and such
there is hump.gamestate that helps a lot with scenes
Hit their message board and wiki. Love's community is pretty patient with beginners. You can also look into any of the tutorials listed on awesome-love2D.
As for level-making, love has a library for loading maps made in Tiled. Or you can go old-school and stuff a grid of ASCII characters in a file then map them to graphical tiles.
Depending on what you want to make, there's a few different options:
For old-school SNES-era-styled RPGs, RPG Maker is a viable coding-lite option.
For visual novels, Ren'Py is pretty easy to pick up.
For mobile games, Corona is pretty slick (and free).
For general purpose 2D game development, Gamemaker Studio offers a drag-and-drop, "coding-lite" option as well as actual written code, Godot is a powerful engine but complex to learn, and Unity is a popular engine that, while not really optimized for 2D, can function as a 2D game engine, with the downside of being a bit overkill, and being very unfriendly to folks unfamiliar with writing code.
ren'py and game maker interest me can you tell me more about them, are they free, how do i start, and feel free to share whatever. i think visaul novels are cool but i cant draw jack and they look hard to make and mos thave cut scenes or menus or just detail.
Ren'py uses Python (which is an easy to learn language), and has a lot of built-in functions that are specifically geared towards visual novels - text boxes, character portraits, that sort of thing. You can find a pretty good quick-start tutorial here. Ren'py is 100% free.
Gamemaker Studio is a very beginner-friendly (while still very powerful) option; it allows for a much wider range of projects (as it isn't geared towards one specific genre, like Ren'py). It's "free"; it uses a subscription model, but there's a free "demo" version that (unless something has changed) you can use forever; the only substantial limitation is that you can't compile a final game build with it... if you get to the point where you have something that's finished and ready to publish, you can subscribe for 1 month to their premium license, compile your game, and cancel it. It has options for actual programming, or a "drag and drop" interface, where you're basically building your game logic using ready-made "blocks" that you input data into to tell the engine what to do. It's pretty intuitive and a good place to start. There's a wide range of tutorials here.
Definitely give Godot a chance. GDScript is simple enough (and well documented), but you can also switch to C# afterwards.
If you like RPGs, RPGMaker is actually nice to work with and has enough capabilities to let your creativity flow.