career in development.

dafunkymonke

Im currently trying to find a way to help myself become a actual developer. I have some experience with hardware and software, but not enough as a career. Im extremely proficient in physical electronics, though its not a career that gives enough money to be at least middle class. Is there any kind of classes or way i can be more proficient in this without college? I know that places like harvard and some colleges post their classes online, but im looking for moreso intermediate, or even better, things that could be used on a resume

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what kind of developer do you want to be?

dafunkymonke

@poyo I would like to be a gaming developer, though it is a bit unrealistic. So optimally anything that could make 60k yearly at least lol

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@dafunkymonke not at all unrealistic! I know that you saw my newest topic, so if you haven't looked at the entire website I'd strongly advise you to, it has alot of examples of how everyone can be a game developer.

about the money part, idrk how it is in your region but 60k+ should be pretty doable both as employed and indie dev.

a free and good engine i'd recommend is Godot, it's opensource and really good for beginners with little to no experience, if you decide to give it a try and want to learn GDScript heres a good website for that: https://gdquest.itch.io/learn-godot-gdscript/

dafunkymonke

@poyo Thats extremely helpful, thank you, ive heard that godots language is similar to python, though i didnt know it was open-source, so im sure if i learn enough, and possibly have some personal projects in my possession it'll help. Id definitely like to join a gaming corporation like hi-rez or another team like blizzard (post bobby kotick)

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there are also a lot of free and good art software (for example pixilart.com is a good one I've found)
or you can invest 20$ (or whatever your currency is) and buy aseprite.com which is one of many peoples favorite

inkscape.org or krita.org is some free art software for non-pixelart sprites and they are open-source too

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@dafunkymonke the syntax of gdscript is very similar to pythons and it's also fairly easy to read like python, and godot also supports C++ and C#, they are also interchangable in one project, you can write one script in C# another in gescript and another in C++ and even call a script in C# through a script in gdscript, same with C++ and since godot is open-source you can download community projects from sites like github that makes godot support other coding languages like python, ruby, rust etc.

I'd advise you to off start as a indie dev and do some smaller projects since that gives you more experience and it's more likely that a company will hire you, (and who knows? maybe you end up starting your own company) just be careful what company you join as some companys like to treat devs badly like you prob already know.

If you want to do a bigger project but don't have the money, kickstarter is great for that, the team for crowsworn (a hollow knight inspired game) got 1 mio from kickstarter which is way above the funding goal, but if you start as a indie dev be sure to have another way to get money as being an unknown indie dev isn't really profitable.

hope it's not too long to read 0-0

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this might also be useful for you: https://godot.community/

VGMoose

You can definitely do this! I went to school for Computer Science, and I can recommend that in terms of a future career.

But also, it'd be immensely helpful to start experimenting on your own making small games either with Python, Godot, random javascript websites, "helper" apps like Game Maker, or even something like TI-BASIC programs if you have a TI-84 calculator. By the time I got to higher education, I already had a good amount of experience from playing around, and that really helped learn more complicated concepts later.

For Godot specifically, I can recommend looking at some of the starter templates, and challenging yourself to change some things like, the character jump height, or firing speed, etc.