Asklemmy

I don't see any other comments, not sure if it's my instance acting up. But, anyways, I started with godot (I'm still learning myself) and I don't regret it.

At first I felt like I would rather be learning unreal or unity since it would be more useful in the business world, has better graphics and such. But I'm having a blast learning godot and I honestly have high hopes for the future regarding godot. The new demos look amazing and there are some people on YouTube with insane graphic demos on Godot. Really surprising stuff.

Plus, as you said, open source is great. Only downside to godot is that since a major new release came out recently, a lot of the tutorials and guided are a bit outdated. You can still kinda follow along with some basic logic and ingenuity though.

Good luck!

What's your coding background? Like any languages specifically?

I'm not a game dev but I teach computer science so I've looked into game dev as a way to spark student interest. Godot is also the one I've heard recommended most frequently, but it seems like it helps to have some knowledge of design tools. And of course you'll be learning their proprietary language.

I've played around with PyGame before, which is a library for the Python language. It was easy to start with and great for small projects. You're probably not going to be making a commercial product with it (although there are one or two commercial games made with PyGame) but you'll learn more about programing than you will with a complete have engine like Godot or Unreal.

I'll also put in a plug for Love since you mentioned Lua. Never used it but I hear great things.

I've worked a bit in serious gaming before, as back-end developer. Normally, you choose an engine that suits the needs (and resources) of the game you're making, and then you'll still do tons of scripting and possibly changes to the engine. In some cases, you might be forced by circumstances to use a certain engine, then you'll do even more alteration. In other cases, you might make your own engine, which is the most time consuning and complex but gives the best match with your aspirations for the game. It's made to measure after all. Either way, without coding it'll be impossible to make a game.

Since you have no experience coding, start small. I've seen many people with big dreams but little experience starting on a big project thinking their great engine-of-choice will carry them, and it just never works out. Do something simple like Pong to learn, then slowely go more complex each time you made something work. You can follow tutorials, but make sure you understand what you're doing, don't blindly copy-paste. Once you understand what you're doing, switching between (scripting) languages isn't too hard anymore.

I don't know what your aspirations are, but realise that fancy AAA games aren't something you'll teach yourself as a hobby project over night. 3D adds a lot of complexity, wanting to be able to make your own shaders and engine changes even more so. Game AI can also get quite complex, depending on how far you want to take it. Big games have a whole team of people specialising at different things for a reason, doing that all alone is hard. But for a hobby project without time limit it can be fun!

Take it one step at a time and have fun with it. Especially when it's a hobby, not your job. And remember, liking games and being a game dev are two very different things! I've seen a lot of people wanting to become game devs because they like games. And that's ok, as long as you're interested in the technical side of it. Because it is quite technical, games are some of the hardest things to program. You'll be doing a lot of math and stuff. So if you just like playing them, maybe ask yourself if development really what you want to do. But if you like the technical side, have patients and are willing to learn. Go for it! But start small and take it one step at a time.

It's hard to give more specific advice really. As with the engine choice, it all depends on whát kinda game you're making and what your aspirations are.