New to Game design

SolarconSix

Hello all,

I will start studying Game development in September, and know that they will teach me how to work in Maya and GameMaker, among other. I don't have too much knowledge and experience with designing games. Except my Adobe knowledge and video production and graphic editing experience, I tried couple of programs like Visionaire, and watched tutorials for GameMaker, Stencil and the like. I'm more interested in Unity tbh.

I guess GameMaker and similar programes are maybe better for platforms like Html, Android, iOS etc, but can you make a 'decent' 3d game with it?

So... I'm wondering are GameMaker and Maya any good? Will I be able to easily progress from GameMaker to Unity? And what about its programming language? I think is has one of its own, right?

RedXIV

I mean this from the bottom of my heart. Start small. Make pong. I know unity looks very enticing to start with but if you have never made a game before, don't start with a 3D game. You will be completely put off when you realise how much work is involved.

Try pong, then move onto something easier with gamemaker. Try to finish your games too. Making games is much easier than finishing them

And welcome to the club!

mob_test

Breakout is a good follow up to pong, try that next

SpoonTheGreater

I've made Breakout more times than I'd like to admit

Torakx

I started with Unity through college. Then spent a couple of weeks doing work experience with GameMaker.
After learning C# the gameMaker language was easy enough to pick up and if you went from GameMaker to Unity, you would already have a lot of the basics if you carried on with Unitys JavaScript language.
C# is a little bit awkward compared to Javascript, but it's more useful generally I think.

Learning one programming language really teaches you the foundations with using logic to solve problems, in the structure of the code.
The syntax is usually not that big of an issue after learning one.

Going through college will be a great way to get that first Breakout/Pong type game covered and some experience with team projects for games.

At the same time I couldn't put a price on motivation and commitment.
There are people who are talented enough to teach themselves and succeed. If you know you really want to go 3d, then maybe you should just go for it.
I am doing that myself despite most Irish investors and colleges pushing the mobile/ HTML5 platforms.
However I think a game dev course is well worth it. Just the experience and connections alone make it worth while. And it helped me to see a clearer path into what I am doing now.
I haven't succeeded yet though
Still new blood to the game dev scene haha