Beginners Guide to Game Design Tools (Unity, Unreal)?

Both Unity and Unreal are free for personal use (and for professional to a certain degree).

I preferred back when there were elaborate modding tools to learn how it worked, but those are not as common anymore, sadly.

Yes Unity and Unreal are free. Of those, I would advise Unity as it is a bit more beginner friendly (and lighter on your computer). You can find good tutorials and forums everywhere. They're very bare bones on content that you can use though; you have to import all the models and textures (that's how they make money, from asset stores, luckily there's a lot of free stuff you can play around with as well).

If you want any kind of interaction, you're going to have to code stuff though. Unreal has the slight advantage here as it is visual programming (though it's a slight advantage because blueprints aren't the easiest to use), with Unity you'll have to program in C#. If this turns out to be too difficult there are excellent plugins like Playmaker and Bolt that you can buy in the asset store that give you visual programming too.

I use Unity almost daily, but you gotta learn how to code. Character Controllers and premade stuff only get you so far! ;)

Game Maker is also super fun, I like it a lot, I usually dabble in it in my free time. It's limited to 2D/faux-3D though.

Ugh Im in the same boat .. I always wanted to play around in unity or urneal but I dont even know where to start to learn how to code a game

I just followed along with unity's free space shooter tutorial on the website, came with the assets you need to do it as well. Definitely recommend and was easy enough to follow along. It was made for an older version of unity however so there's a couple outdated things but they give you the new commands in a PDF on the same page as the tuts

There are some great courses on Udemy (sign up, look at the courses logged in, return in 1-2 days for a 95% discount making a course like 10 bucks, don't buy them at full price they have constant sales essentially). They are usually 30-50h of video content easily and take you through multiple projects.

Unity and GameMaker are lots of fun to mess around in and aren't that intense on your PC or laptop. And there's plenty of tutorials/resources for both online.

I'm personally following Blender Guru (Blender is a free 3D modeling software) tutorials on YouTube as a complete beginner and am having fun with it!

Unity has a ton of good official beginner tutorials. Otherwise I'd recommend you buy a beginner course on udemy.com for about 10 bucks, suuuper worth it, it's ridiculous not to do it.

Also, visit our indie game dev thread here on era for a lot tips and tricks.

Minamu said:

Unity has a ton of good official beginner tutorials. Otherwise I'd recommend you buy a beginner course on udemy.com for about 10 bucks, suuuper worth it, it's ridiculous not to do it.

Also, visit our indie game dev thread here on era for a lot tips and tricks.

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I'm always terrified to go into the Indie Dev thread, mainly because I have nothing to show for myself.

Gabbo said:

I'm always terrified to go into the Indie Dev thread, mainly because I have nothing to show for myself.

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Don't feel like that, everyone is super friendly :) And the OP alone should have a lot of neat links and info in and of itself.

Unity has a huge amount of tutorials available for free online, and they're mostly still relevant to the newest editions.
Going through the official tutorials step by step isn't a bad idea.

I'd suggest do Roll-A-Ball to learn the basics of the editor, and then going through the Scripting tutorials, then trying to do extend the roll-a-ball into something a bit more complicated with what you've learned, like adding powerups or something.
But its up to you really on what you want to learn - if you want to work in 2D no point learning about 3D stuff, and vice versa.

Online learning platforms like Udemy and TeamTreehouse have great guides, and I'm sure you can find good stuff over on Pluralsight or Linkedin Learning too. Most/all of these have free trials too so you've got nothing to lose, and Treehouse, Pluralsight and Linkedin Learning all have paths you can follow, so you don't get lost in the many different courses.

For unity, check out cat like coding for a great intro to unity, programming shaders etc.

https://catlikecoding.com/unity/tutorials/

I also get a lot of tutorials from incredible patreon users, so that might be a great place to check out as well in addition to udemy like Minamu mentioned.

I'd recommend Unity, it's come a long way since it's 4.x cycle and there are LOADS of tutorials online. Start with udemy and go from there.

Also if you know Java, you petpre much know C#

Also for non Game Dev, Unity is used a lot for enterprise apps. Worked on A LOT of prototyping apps for big name companies and I'm currently supporting P&G with Unity Dev. It's a great field to be in right now imo

https://unity3d.com/fr/learn/beginner-tutorials
https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/GettingStarted

Personally if I was going to pay money for a Unity tutorial, I'd get the one that ends up with an accredited certification.

Assuming you're just going to be mucking about, Unity and UE4 are free to use (although publishing commercial games is an entirely different story)

If it's your first time using any sort of game engine, I think Unity is the better pick here. UE4's Blueprints are awesome but learning to use C# really helps you develop the fundamentals (plus web dev if you're into that). IMO, the best way to learn is to just jump into a project and get stuck in. Keep at it and you'll come to enjoy it.

Brackeys is a really good Unity-focused channel who makes a wide range of tutorials
https://www.youtube.com/user/Brackeys

If you're looking for something a lot more UE4 orientated, I'd actually check out the live training videos on the official Unreal Engine YT
https://www.youtube.com/user/UnrealDevelopmentKit

I'm more familiar with UE4 than Unity so if you have any questions, feel free to DM me or check out the UE forums, we're friendly :)

Other than that, it's worth downloading a 3D modelling suite of some sort. Blender is free and open-source (tha GOAT) but if you're a student, you can check out Maya LT for free.

EDIT: If you're serious about learning environment art, Thiago Klafke (Senior Envionment Artist at Blizzard) has made these wonderful tutorials that you should check out. While you have to pay for them, the concepts you learn like modular environment design, PBR, normal maps, trim sheets, tiling textures and so on are extremely useful in the long run should you choose to pursue environment art.

His site is under renovation at the moment but you can find the tutorials here
https://gumroad.com/unreal4environments

SOLDIER said:

If I may inquire further, for those who have actual jobs in the game dev business, what would you say are the bare minimum qualifications in order to be considered to work with a company like Nintendo or Insomniac, as a game or software developer or something along those lines?

Nintendo has job postings for admin assistant and customer service, but I don't think those would be positions that would have me move to a whole other state.

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Well Nintendo's mobile division andse to use Unity, console seems UE4 based. As for getting a job I know people sometimes start out as QA and work their way up.

SOLDIER said:

QA still sounds like the bottom nightmare position, based on stories I've heard from the Super Best Friends.

Not to say that those currently working in QA are wasting their time or anything. I just think that I personally would hate it.

Also, you bring up a bitter point that I'm willing to admit: I am notoriously indecisive, and I constantly second-guess myself. The problem with so many technology-based things I could learn online is that I'm paralyzed with choice (this even happens when going through my games or Netflix options). I will focus on learning one thing, but then wonder if it'll benefit me in the long run, and I often quit before I've really gotten into it.

I wish there was a way I could discipline myself, but also smartly combine learning tools that will benefit me regardless of which areas I want to pursue career-wise. In other words, learning things about Unity that would immediately give me a leg up on Unreal. Learning specific coding languages that would benefit me in both Unity and Unreal but leave me open to take a Web Developer job, if I prefer going that route.

I get so worried about putting all my eggs in one basket, but also about spreading them too far. Sorry if this topic's getting too psychological for some of you, but I would love nothing more than to have a "daily game plan", kind of like how people have dailies in an MMO or otherwise.

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So I'm pretty indecisive myself actually, when learning programming in Unity I actually made a personal Trello board of goals hahaha. Making a goal REALLY helps though

I would check out Game Maker Studio if you're looking for something pretty easy to pick up get going with. There are some good Udemy courses to get you started (never pay more than $10 for a course on Udemy, look for coupons). Game Maker is pretty much 2D only, but there are some fantastic games out there made using it, like Hyper Light Drifter and Undertale.

Edit: Also, I'm talking purely on the idea that you're approaching this as a hobbyist. If you want to actually get a job with a studio, you're going to need to build up some sort of portfolio, either art, or programming experience, or game design. I'm an artist in the industry so I can't speak too much from a programmer's or design perspective. I think when it comes to programming they usually look for a formal education of some sort, and a strong understanding of a common programming language or two. And for design, you'll want to have a portfolio or demonstration of your design skills, such as designing levels or narrative or general mechanics.

I'd recommend you start as a hobbyist, and see what sparks your interest the most as you go through some tutorials!

SOLDIER said:

May I ask what Trello is? I also wouldn't mind hearing your own techniques to narrow down goals, as I've clearly been unable to come up with a proven system that works.

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it's like digital version of kanban board, you use them to track and manage a project



i don't use this personally as i feel like it encourages a much more rigid workflow but it might come in handy for you idk

it's free if you're using it by yourself

As someone who struggled to learn programming and had an interest in game design I would recommend checking out GameDev.tv. They're just Udemy courses but the person who started it is really good at teaching in a way that keeps you engaged and feeling like you're making progress.

I think you should temper some of your ideas and try to come up with small projects to help you move through the process of learning. You acknowledge that it may be an issue but really putting together some solid small project ideas will help you replace those bigger ones. Any time you hit a wall you don't want to compare it to your big ideas because it will make overcoming it even harder.

If anyone knows any good Gamemaker courses, please direct me towards it. I started one but It goes straight into programming into Game Maker's language and I'm already lost from the first lines of code.

Annoying Old Party Man said:

If anyone knows any good Gamemaker courses, please direct me towards it. I started one but It goes straight into programming into Game Maker's language and I'm already lost from the first lines of code.

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It involves a lot of coding as well, but Shaun Spalding does a really good job at explaining things and takes his time. He has a lot of videos on YouTube about everything you need to know to make the next Game Maker masterpiece. So maybe you could give it one more shot. :)

Annoying Old Party Man said:

If anyone knows any good Gamemaker courses, please direct me towards it. I started one but It goes straight into programming into Game Maker's language and I'm already lost from the first lines of code.

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I had programming experience before going in but Tom Francis's "Making a Game with no Experience" is what I recommend.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUtKzyIe0aB2HjpmBhnsHpK7ig0z7ohWw

If any of you guys live in a city that offers game dev classes that's my number one recommendation. I find self - teaching really difficult, but I found a night school that does regular game dev courses. So I go to school after work to do my game dev. It keeps me in check.

Don't focus on a single tool. Try to make something and find tools to make it. Find solutions to problems you encounter. Don't worry about completing stuff while you learn; prototyping and failing is part of the process.

This is assuming you have some base level of knowledge with coding and software in general.

Personally I think people overstate how hard Unreal is to learn. Blueprint is very easy to pick up and I'd imagine it'd be intuitive for those who don't have much experience programming.

If you're dead-set on making a 3D game, I'd suggest at least dabbling in both. If you're open to a 2D game, definitely try out Game Maker.

If you do try and like UE4, this is a pretty good udemy course for ten bucks that takes you through a little bit of everything and has you putting together two surprisingly beefy games: https://www.udemy.com/unreale4/learn/v4/t/lecture/6784534?start=0

This is pretty good advice, more broadly:

Kyuur said:

Don't focus on a single tool. Try to make something and find tools to make it. Find solutions to problems you encounter. Don't worry about completing stuff while you learn; prototyping and failing is part of the process.

This is assuming you have some base level of knowledge with coding and software in general.

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There's a visual scripting tool coming to Unity 2019, with a lot of UI improvment. I think it's the right time to jump in for a beginner!


I did some tutorials for basic Unity games this year, and it's pretty easy to understand, even without coding background. I want to go further, but I don't have enough time to dive in for now. Most of my free time was on art and 3d. 2019 will be for the game engine!

Honestly, just install Unity and go through the official tutorials. They cover mostly all the basics and will keep you entertained for like a month.

Once you do that and have a better idea of what game development consists off, take a step back and choose a small game you would try to recreate from scratch.

There you go, life plan for the next 3 months set.

You will only learn what you love by trying. As a very famous poet poet once said, "just do it"

SOLDIER said:

For the people who were mentioning coding in this thread, I was wondering if they had any thoughts on this site: https://www.freecodecamp.org/

As free options it seemed like the best one for learning, but if there's something better out there I'd like to know about it (as well as which languages are best to learn first, as it pertains to the game dev tools).

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Take this with a grain of salt as I am a complete noob myself, go Unity and C#, crunch through tutorials online (Brackeys etc). To learn a programming language is to learn the fundamentals and the basics are very very similar across all languages... however, do not learn C/C++. Those are mid/low level languages that require you to learn memory management among some other technicalities that can be quite daunting. That stuff is it's own little story and automated (garbage collected) in higher languages like C# so you can focus on other stuff. If you want to make your own performance tools or build your own engine, then you have a reason to learn C++. And learning one language gives you a pretty good understanding of the basics of all languages.

Watch some advice from non gaming programmers like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onS0mZAYTsI

And watch a ton of GDC videos on all kinds of gamin related stuff.

I mean, if you have zero programming knowledge, I wouldn't even worry about Unity until you get the basics down first.

I taught myself programming with this:

https://www.py4e.com/

It's Python and it's not something that will be used in either Unity or Unreal, but Phython is terrific to learn because it's like C#, but without any of the more complex syntax. You can just stumble your way through learning the logic and structure of how programming fundamentally works.

When I shifted to C# (which is incredibly similar to Phython), I found this to be a very good course:

http://www.csharpcourse.com/

Neither one of these should take very long to get through (if you really apply yourself and have the aptitude).

Once you've got a good grasp of the basics, everything else is fairly simple and just requires you to constantly challenge yourself with actual programming activities (and watching good youtube videos on finer techniques/etc).

EDIT: You can read/watch all the stuff you want. You're really not going to learn anything if this is all you're doing (and just typing along with it). In programming you learn by doing/failing/and deconstructing why you failed. It's the deconstruction of your failure that teaches you the lessons you'll never forget.

Also, there's no teacher you're trying to bamboozle. It all builds on top of each other. So if there's something you don't truly understand and grasp, keep pounding at it until you do. Saying "it's good enough" and skipping to the next section is just going to bury you when it gets incorporated into more complex concepts.

Tain said:

Personally I think people overstate how hard Unreal is to learn. Blueprint is very easy to pick up and I'd imagine it'd be intuitive for those who don't have much experience programming.

If you're dead-set on making a 3D game, I'd suggest at least dabbling in both. If you're open to a 2D game, definitely try out Game Maker.

If you do try and like UE4, this is a pretty good udemy course for ten bucks that takes you through a little bit of everything and has you putting together two surprisingly beefy games: https://www.udemy.com/unreale4/learn/v4/t/lecture/6784534?start=0

This is pretty good advice, more broadly:

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Gonna echo this. Maybe I'm biased since I use UE4 at work, but I wouldn't write off UE4 as impossible just yet. Blueprints are pretty intuitive and are pretty powerful. Would say it's definitely worth it to at least poke around in both UE4 and Unity before you decide which one you want to focus on.

This could be anecdotal, but it seems like a lot of indies still go Unity while a lot of AAA studios tend to go Unreal (if they don't roll their own engine, that is), so if you're entertaining the idea of pursuing a job at a bigger studio, it definitely wouldn't hurt to have touched Unreal before, even if you start with Unity for now.


For coding, going to echo what some other people have said, doing C# with Unity will get you the fundamentals (though Unity programming does have its quirks, as any engine does) and a lot of that will carry over to C++ if you decide to get into that. (If you want to eventually actually program in Unreal (which you can also do for free if just messing around) then C++ is the language used there. It's pretty cool to just have the entire source code for the engine and editor, to be able to customize as you need, or see what it's doing under the hood, unlike the black box that is Unity or just using the Unreal editor. But this is definitely a more advanced option.)

I'd also suggest Game Maker 2 - it's 2D, so you're not messing with 3D space, has a nice set of built-in tools for everything from drag and drop coding to tileset editors and animated sprite drawing. My son and I make small games in it all the time... well OK I make the game and he feeds me ideas / concepts for 18 stage bosses and such. =)

The coding language is unique (kinda java / C-ish hybrid), but the fundamentals you learn in structure and syntax are applicable to any other engine and follow C conventions. You don't have pointers, but they give you all kinds of ways to abstractly reference structures and objects.

Like the other two engines, there's tons of youtube tutorials on game maker so you can learn how to make whatever it is you're trying to make.

Of the Unity / Unreal choice, in my experience I find Unity easier for new people to pick up. Blueprints in Unreal are a great addition, but sometimes you have to work backwards in your thinking of code in order to build what you want, especially as you're learning; feels like a tool that was primarily built for artists to animate states with rather than designers to build logic with.

I'm only basing this on my experience, but I had a horrible time with GameMaker. My day job is programming. And I think GameMaker's tools are actually a detriment to you, if you want to move onto any real kind of programming some day. Additionally, their forums at the time (this was about 3 years ago) were extremely toxic. The Moderators were horrible to newbies.

I really enjoy Unity, though. Strong development community and plenty of resources and tools out there to get you started. It will also have less limitations than GameMaker.

I used this Udemy course to get up to speed on Unity: https://www.udemy.com/devslopes-unity3d/

What's GameMaker like vs. Unity? I have a couple years of experience with Unity but I've forgotten a lot, so I wouldn't mind trying something new.

Firstly, congrats on taking the initiative to dig deeper into game dev! I also want to preface by saying that there's no one perfect way to start, it differs person-to-person, so if a particular approach to learning super isn't working try approaching it from a different angle.

Speaking from my own personal experience, I tend to give the advice of just jumping to a mainstream engine/toolset/language. I found in my experience that once I got into using C#, XNA(R.I.P.), and Unity my previous experiences using more structured beginner tools and engines became fairly useless to me. Unity and Unreal are both great places to start. I tend to suggest Unity for two reasons:

1) It's an engine that does 2D very well, and it's worth starting in 2D for simplicity

2) If you're interested in getting into the industry at large, getting some degree of a grasp on programming languages is useful, and C# (which Unity uses) is gonna be more useful/powerful than the Visual Scripting of Unreal's Blueprint, and easier to grasp than C++ which is Unreal's other option.

For a starting understanding of programming (just the basics really) I'd say you should just try to learn directly on their own, from something like Code Academy ( https://www.codecademy.com/ ). Once you have a solid grasp on using variables, if-statements, for-loops, and such, try to follow a game tutorial to completion. That way you can pick up the right way to make a lot of elements of a game without worrying you're setting something up in a way that will come back to haunt you in 2 weeks.

Once you feel pretty comfortable with the foundations of programming and have a tutorial or two under your belt, then it's just about making a game. Make your first couple games super basic, just to test your grasp of mechanics and implementations. A single level platformer, or a basic match-three. The first few attempts are usually super flawed if not outright failures and that's super okay, that's just how the early process tends to go. Don't aim for any kind of dream-game early on.

Making game is about the joy of building stuff, so always make sure you're following your passions here, that's what the whole industry lives on.

also, I don't know how applicable this is career-wise if you're looking to join a bigger studio, but over the years I've spent making my first mostly-solo commercial game I've had to learn a LOT on the art side and one of the more unexpected results of this is how much of a raw motivating factor it's been to see a holistic experience come together. Being able to build things end-to-end and see your logic driving your art to create something that (roughly) captures what you had in your head all that time ago is one of the most satisfying things I've experienced and definitely has helped me stick with the project.

I figure if I ever do work in a big team, it can't hurt to have a better idea of what all those artists you work with have to put up with. :)

Tain said:

also, I don't know how applicable this is career-wise if you're looking to join a bigger studio, but over the years I've spent making my first mostly-solo commercial game I've had to learn a LOT on the art side and I one of the more unexpected results of this is how much of a raw motivating factor it's been to see a holistic experience come together. Being able to build things end-to-end and see your logic driving your art to create something that (roughly) captures what you had in your head all that time ago is one of the most satisfying things I've experienced and definitely has helped me stick with the project.

I figure if I ever do work in a big team, it can't hurt to have a better idea of what all those artists you work with have to put up with. :)

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I've had the exact opposite experience, I've been involved in visual art pretty much my entire life, and while I made games in undergrad I avoided coding whenever I had the chance, and it's still not something I enjoy. As much as I'd like to make games, if I do it'll likely be very simple mechanically less I get someone to help.

SOLDIER said:

Well that leads me back to my previous question: how important is learning how to draw when it comes to working on the art side of a videogame?

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critical for a concept artist, irrelevant to a high poly mesh sculptor, somewhat useful to a UI designer.

SOLDIER said:

Well that leads me back to my previous question: how important is learning how to draw when it comes to working on the art side of a videogame?

I know that sounds like a potentially dumb question, but I've spent almost my whole life having a "look" of something in my head when I conceive something. If I'm imagining a dream game which features a kung-fu lady fighting demons from hell, I know exactly how the lady and the demons would look and how the fights would play out. The actual mechanics or story? Not so much.

But here's the problem: every time I've tried to force myself to put a pencil to paper and actually LEARN how to draw something, I tense up. I literally freeze in my tracks, my brain goes to mush, and I quit. I quit so hard. I've tried to follow a couple of guides recommended by folks, even the very basic shit ("just sketch out a figure in two minutes, don't think about it!") is a struggle for me.

But it's something I still think about going back to, because I feel that I might be squandering some latent potential within me. At the very least I'd like to try.

With that in mind, I'm wondering if these game dev toolkits would help me to discover if concept art is a bigger passion for me, or if it's entirely code-based stuff.

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Being creative and inspired is seperate from your technical ability to actually execute your vision. If you want to draw well you need to practice, of course it's going to feel like shit at first because you won't know what you're doing. Try to let go of whatever expectations you have of yourself and just focus on learning, you have to build confidence over time. When I went from scribbling shapes to shading and perspective it wasn't an easy transition but I let the hope that I'd be able to realize my visions motivate me.