Before the humble bundle came out, I bought the GameDev.tv “complete” Godot course - I had a good early bird discount since I’ve used them for Unity.
Over the past few years, I have completed the 2D, 3D, and several of the RPG intermediate courses for unity as well as a Blender course so was super excited for this new one!
And then was super disappointed.
I start with the 2D course every time and this one was…hollow. Super empty. Maybe a quarter of the content as the Unity course with a lot of basic things missing and some really bad practice promoted. I did the whole course on 1.25x speed and still had to skip through a lot of waffle.
I’m now doing courses for free on Youtube and have learnt far, far more.
It really is a shame as I’m a fan of GameDev.tv, but they really missed the mark with the Godot offering.
EDIT: clarity
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I bought a gamedev.TV course on kickstarter and found the content to be pretty unimpressive but the marketing and community to be cultish. I was personally disappointed but some of the class acted like it was the bee’s knees.
My gut check when I see pricing like this is that its a scam!
I think free to access educational materials make a lot of sense for products like Godot, do you have any you would recommend?
Edit: I used some GDQuest content back in the early 3.x days and found it pretty good. I haven’t been able to do much lately so I haven’t seen his recent stuff but this looks like it would be worth a look for anyone getting started.
The unity courses got revamped about 2 years back and I really enjoyed them and made some pretty fun and cool games!
100% agree the pricing is clearly a marketing scam, especially when they have a humble bundle every month.
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I’ve bought the $1 tier to get into shaders and I sort of agree. I took the Unity 2D course when I was starting out game development and it was excellent, really gave you everything you need to know to understand and learn how to make real games.
I’m 75% through the shader course (which is fairly short, like ~2 hours long) and it’s just okay. It gives you a decent introduction on how shaders work, teach you a few simple effects like distortion and dissolving and color swapping, then you’re on your own. I didn’t feel like I learned enough to be confident making my own shaders and I still only have a surface level understanding of it. Not great for a paid course, I’m starting to think that’s the reason it was only $1 in the bundle.
I still 100% recommend their 2D unity course but it seems like how good the course is depends on the instructor. Rick is the best instructor they have, the new ones aren’t cutting it. Maybe I should make my own tutorials because a lot of Godot offerings currently are lacking.
Honestly, go for it! There is definitely space for the knowledge to be shared - especially in the beginner+ -> Intermediate space.
I used this tutorial for shaders: https://learnopengl.com/Lighting/Colors
This one also has useful stuff about how lighting works: http://www.opengl-tutorial.org/beginners-tutorials/tutorial-8-basic-shading/
These are both about OpenGL, but the theory is the same regardless of the environment.
Thanks for the heads up. Shaders so far are like dark magic from the underground to me, so I was interested in this course. If you find some other source of good Shader tutorial/video/course, please let us know!
That’s a real bummer :-( . I use the Firebelley course on Udemy and I love it. I have little reference except all the free tutorial context, but I feel this tutorial is in depth, explains clearly and at a nice speed. Also like the guys voice but that will be pretty personal.
Only other paid course in Godot I took was a book for Godot 3.4, I liked it but updating the code to Godot 4 took too much time. I see Mr. Bradfield has updated his book to Godot 4 though!
Actually started looking around for Godot lessons the same time last year because I checked out the courses in the Humble Sale and they didn’t inspire me, so I went out to see if there was any paid course that did :-).
I’m slowly realising one of the joys of FOSS is the community driven aspect means free or ko-fi funded courses tend to be really good.
That’s true! As an addition, I can recommend going over to the Godot discord. Sometimes reactions can be a bit annoyed or they will misjudge noobish questions for lazy questions but most of the time there one or two around that want to help! Sidenote: helping someone else with their project can be super fun and educational.
I have a natural aversion to Discord. I use Slack all day at work, why would I want to use it in my spare time, you know?
I’m willing to give them some wiggle room because Godot is still new (new as in, nobody was using it until literally last year when Unity did us all a solid) and they need to get with trends, and fast.
I’m doing their early access shader class (because I suck at shaders and I don’t have much time for it) so we’ll see how it shakes out. In most other things, I’m already well beyond the tuts and am mostly scraping YouTube and the Godot Docs.
If someone asked me to recommend Godot tutorials, I’d pick GDQuest every time. I’ve been with Nathan since day one, and he’s been involved with Godot about as long.
brackeys incoming soon : D
I’m curious what details you felt are missing? And what really bad practice did they promote?
I have no experience with their 2D course but I have been enjoying the 2.5D C# course so far. Admittedly I’m only about half way through it so probably too early for a proper opinion, but I’ve learned a lot about using the engine and C# interactions to build scalable mechanics. Not to say the course is perfect, I’ve hit some annoying issues I’ve had to solve myself that apparently didn’t effect the instructor but it’s more cohesive than anything I’ve found in public.
This is a good summary on the forum about it being very surface level for a “Complete 2D course”: https://community.gamedev.tv/t/pretty-disappointed-with-the-scope-of-complete-godot-4-game-developer-2d/232289
The Unity courses felt more like an educational experience, taking you through more concepts in a really clear manner where you do feel like you understand what you’re doing. There are more projects that are tailored to demonstrate concepts which are clearly outlined and shown why you are writing this code in this manner, potential alternatives (and opinions on which to use) and the logic behind C#. By the last project, I found myself totally customising the platformer. I added a robust weapons system, different enemies, and a scoring system.
The Godot course is much, much shorter and the things the instructor chooses to focus on feels more like basic maths/general logic instead of why you’re typing what you’re typing. I tried modifying the last project (only 3 projects long and not exactly complex) and simply didn’t have the tools to add an effective singleton (which is only ever mentioned once, right at the end, never by name, and only in the context of having continuous music).
If you want to learn about Godot shaders, you can try these video tutorials.
I am really not liking the pace myself, but I do have a programming background. I am watching at 2x speed just.
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