Hi, I’m planning to get into Defold (I have to finish a project in Gamemaker), but I can’t find fairly recent video tutorial aimed at beginners without downloading extensions. I mean where everything is written before your eyes with some brief explanations.
I have some basic C++, html, php knowledge that helped to get into Gamemaker and it felt natural. I have no experience with other languages.
I found only tutorial series from Gamesfromscratch but it’s from 2016, but that’s out-of-date.
Well, actually there is one extension that is useful for Gamemaker’s users - DefKit
But if you want to start from scratch without downloading extensions I could recommend you the Frog Tutorial and also many other tutorials on Defold’s Getting Started site:
It’s always where any newcomers should start 
and with any problem (except of course searching already answered questions on the forum) always ask here, because there are Defold’s team members and a very helpful community 
4 Likes
We have quite a few videos on our YouTube Channel but they don’t really cover the hands on experience of using Defold. I will sync with @Oleg_The_Evangelist and well record some really basic tutorials, similar to the things we have on the Examples page.
5 Likes
Thanks, @Pawel and @britzl, for nice replies!
I found the frog tutorial but I was hesitant to get into it since it’s almost 4 years old. Maybe I’ll give it a watch to get at least familiar with the use of language.
1 Like
pinkie promise on the basic tutorials, @britzl
@NeZvers while we’re on it, can you think of 10 minute video episodes you’d like to watch?
Like some practical solutions to your immediate problems?
i.e.
- How to make a menu button?
- How to make a basic touch input?
- How to make camera follow my character?
Because it is very-very hard for us to understand what are the “basic tutorials”, because we know how to use Defold and we don’t feel anymore what are the struggles to walk the first mile with Defold. Soooo please tell us what to do =]
7 Likes
@Oleg_The_Evangelist, amazing to hear that!
Some ideas from top of my head:
-Top down shooter mock-up (input/ move player/ spawn bullet/ destroy spawned enemy);
-State machine for changing animation;
-Dynamic/ addaptive scaling for pixel perfect resolution (think pixel art - camera/ viewport/ game window) and follow player
GUI - HP / points / time; I heard you have something like GUI template system.
-*Platformer basic movement physics (acceleration/ jump/ collide with wall).
I heard you have box2d but what other collision detection options there are?
Like I have done in gamemaker - collision grid (2D array or alternative data structure) containing index (int symbolizing block or slope).
-*Moving platform / jump through (usable for multiple player game).
I haven’t delt with box2d much so I don’t have a clue how that would be achievable.
Seeing that there are lack of tutorials then I need to get into Defold and I might start my tutorials - porting my knowledge from Gamemaker.
5 Likes
Thanks @NeZvers for your time. We’ve discussed this now with @britzl. Hope to show something in two weeks or so.
6 Likes
That’s amazing! I’m already subscribed for few weeks and I can’t wait when I’ll get time to dive in.
I’m really stoked at community here! I really don’t get why Defold isn’t way more popular.
5 Likes
so we had somewhat long holidays, but back to business now. In this thread I am thinking aloud about a series of videos that I think should be helpful to you: Defold video channel
You’re very welcome to share your thoughts and to help me shape the upcoming videos so they’re more beginner-friendly.
Frankly speaking, maybe my suggested focus is just not of much help? Like maybe we should sit down and not talk about how people did their games, but dive into the code and talk about every line written or every decision made. But then the video is suddenly 150 minutes and not 15, so nobody watches it…
For beginers, I think it needs to be bite-sized tutorials for sure. It’s not needed to talk more than needed. As an example - simple process walk-through from importing tileset image to adding simple painted level to stage collection.
For coding explanation it doesn’t need to be much more than talking while typing code. As a grate example from Gamemaker community is Shaun Spalding tutorials. It’s easy to follow because he types down the code and tell a brief explanation in giving time to catch up to write the code along with the video.
As the best example I think is Matharoo tutorials - here’s nice example.
For me personally, I think I start to understand working in Defold since I’ve almost completed the 4th tutorial (war battle) and I found @britzl amazing game mechanic examples (some of them cover the ones I wanted to know).
4 Likes
@NeZvers as you’ve seen we’ve delivered a totally not-what-you-asked-for tutorial video, but that sorta addresses the questions you asked.
I gave it lots of thoughts and I just cannot really justify time investment into proper step-by-step onboarding tutorials. IMO those require specially crafted projects, like @sicher used to do:
The problem with tutorial projects is that they take lots of time to craft and document, but are useful only for the very first steps. Afterwards people just discover many code examples on the forum and the github and switch to those instead.
So I thought, what if instead we try to deconstruct key decisions a Defold user takes when making an actual game, like for a game jam. We’ve shipped the first one, and recording the second one on Thursday.
The youtube analytics numbers show that we seem to be doing the right thing, but all the feedback is appreciated. Maybe we need to focus on something in particular? Maybe we’re too slow or too fast somewhere?
4 Likes
I totally respect what ever choice you make. Community is great but I wouldn’t like to keep asking introduction level questions.
In my opinion you are overthinking whole thing, take example what did Mike from Gamesfromscratch
That’s pretty much the pacing that works and not much time needs to be spent - just do and talk along. I understood a lot from his Defold breakdown.
For tutorials best to do concept/ mechanics dedicated for tutorial. That’s the reason video tutorials are better - you see where you need to put what code and that’s sometimes left out in manual. Looking at existing projects help a bit but surrounding elements makes it harder to trail down what makes tick one particular mechanic.
I have little free time I can spend for learning. At the moment my struggle is with controlling render and camera, some stuff I have gathered but I need some more time. If I’ll figure it out myself I’ll be glad to make tutorial video for it.
2 Likes
yeah, makes sense. Mike did a great thing. And we link to this video whenever we can.
2 Likes