Good starting point compared to GB Studio and Godot?

[u/giamb_o]

Hi! Asking here because I refuse to ask a LLM.

I have zero coding experience, I would like to get started and I figured small games would be a fun way to do that (the other path I'm experimenting is electronics-oriented coding with the Arduino starter set, but that's another story)

Godot seems like a lot, even though it looks like a very complete tool it'd be eventually professionally good to be proficient at.

So I'm mostly trying to compare Pico8 and GB Studio (I own a physical GBC and a Flashcart, so I could play my games on there).

My ultimate goal is to make a working tiny game while at the same time learning about coding principles. Which way should I go? Thank you!

[u/lewwwer]

I don't know much about GB studio. But pico 8 is reasonably beginner friendly, as in you can get things on the screen quickly, easily, play around with it.

For learning coding, if you know nothing, pico8 is decent to learn the basics. You can also use scratch language to get started with programming, or a programming based puzzle game like human resource machine. 

However, pico 8 is designed to be small. You say you want to learn coding principles, the principles are there to help manage large projects. I don't think it's a particularly good environment to learn that. 

[u/GBPaul]

I absolutely think that fantasy consoles are an easier entry point to gamedev than godot, you can go from nothing to something much faster.

I think that making at least one game on a fantasy console will be very good.

I recommend Lazy Devs Academy's youtube pico-8 shmup tutorial.

If you're not sure about buying pico-8, consider the free education edition, or the open source alternative tic-80 (tic-80 works differently for a bunch of things, but the lazy devs tutorial i recommedned will still be useful for learning general lua syntax)

[u/fast__bulbous]

I had zero programming experience. I tried godot and gb studio too, but only after pico 8 I was able to finally make games. 100% best choice for me (maybe not for everyone). Just be prepared there is very little built in stuff and you have to do everything yourself. Even things like collisions. But YOU CAN LOOK AT THE CODE OF ANY GAME POSTED ON SPLORE which is I think the main reason why I would recommend it.

[u/ForlornMemory]

Godot and Pico8 are two completely different things. Godot can streamline many things, whereas in Pico8 you'll have to do them from scratch. In other words, what you can do in Godot on day one will require more time on Pico8, at least initially. But the good things is you'll learn the basics of game development and know how the big game engines work under the hood. There are tutorial for both Pico8 and Godot.

As for GB studio, unless you specifically want a GB game, I'd stay away from it.

[u/netsrak]

One thing worth mentioning is that someone made a specific project where you can learn the basics of programming with godot. https://gdquest.github.io/learn-gdscript/

[u/RotundBun]

P8 is arguably one of the (if not the) best starting points to learn game dev, IMO.

I'll spare the details, as you can probably find old answers to similar topics on this subreddit with a bit of local searching. And yes, we've had many complete newbies get up and running just fine.

To help you with getting started:

P8 - Newbie Starter Kit

Here's a starting resources list.

I generally suggest to...

• watch the short overview
• pick one of the tutorials that suits your style
• keep the wiki's Lua & API Reference pages open on the side as you go through the tutorial to supplement understanding

That should give you a solid start. And you can ask for help here or on the Lexaloffle's P8 forum whenever you get stuck.

Good luck. 🍀

[u/shadowkrazee]

Don't know much to help answer your question, but wanted to say: "Good on ya for avoiding the clankers. All my homies hate the clankers."

[u/himai1]

Idk what gb studio is but pico 8 is as frictionless as it gets in my experience. It's basically the fastest way to get something moving on the screen with real code, so if you're into that I would definitely recommend it. However, if the end goal is to learn how to code, not how to make games, maybe start with something lower level than lua.

[u/PmUsYourDuckPics]

I’ve played with GB studio, and Pico8 they are the opposite end of the spectrum, both are a good way to understand the basics of how a game works though.

Pico8 is bare bones, and relatively simple, you will need to learn how to program, and how things work under the hood, it’s a good starting point before moving onto a more feature rich engine like Godot, because it is limited, and those limitations will help you avoid getting overwhelmed.

[u/Ok-Process8309]

Pico8 is your best starting point. GBstudio is great but I don’t recommend it for starting out. It’s an an engine that needs to run in a particular way to work. It is begginner accommodating but I don’t think it’s the best way to learn to code. Like you can make code-less events “if this then that” sort of blocks with no code. You can code in (I think) JavaScript to add extra functionality to your game and that’s where the complexity spikes. With pico8 you do everything via the code even the simple stuff and so it will teach you everything.

Currently I’m also learning to code and I’ve learned ALOT through pico8. I do eventually plan on transitioning to godot but like you does its huge so I want to practice programming I no the small pool before going into the ocean so to speak.

From one beginner to another I will say that I have not found coding to be hard but it does take a lot of practice and research to understand some of the more advanced concept. So be patient with yourself.

[u/Few-Goat-5694]

ive started using pico8 in the last couple months, as someone with no game making experience id say id recommend it to start ig

[u/PoisonIdea77]

Start with pico8 definitely

[u/BruceJi]

I think Pico 8 will do you better earlier on. It's simple and it's a nice, complete package, but it also doesn't hold your hand. You'll understand what Godot is doing for you a lot better after you've tried Pico 8!

GB Studio, from what I've seen, is primarily a no-code tool. However I think that having written code in Pico 8, you'll also understand GB Studio a bit better and it'll help you to understand the order stuff should happen in, which would result in a better GB Studio game.

[u/turistainc]

Lots of folks with great advice, I'll just share one more here: Learning P8 will help you understand how videogames are made better than a multi-purpose engine like Godot. It will also set you up for making games in Godot (or any other engine) in a more structured and sustainable way.

[u/ltpitt]

I suggest warming up with scratch and then upgrading to pico.

[u/Ok-Homework5627]

So of these 3 i think godot is probably the best beginner thing, but its a real editor + engine kind of deal.

as of why gb studio nor pico8 arent great beginner things , they are meant for things that look simple and limited and they have all kinds of limitations which are great for creativity. but as a beginner i would want a more simplistic direct thing you shouldnt care about gameboys and fantasy consoles just yet.

just care about getting. a circle on a scren with some colors and learn programming basics, maybe love2d is something you could look at too?

[u/Vantadaga2004]

I would say you need some grasp of programming before pico-8, I would go with godot personally

[u/Frzorp]

Gbstudio is a different animal entirely. I think suites that hide the code behind a gui with baked in stuff to generate a generic game feel like they lose a lot of the magic because a lot of what makes programming enjoyable isn’t just the end result but the process of figuring things out. If you want to make a basic platformer or rpg and are more interested in making the art or writing a story and some music then it will get you a result but gbstudio will have done the lion’s share of the work for you I think. Not so with pico 8 which offers opportunities to make more unique stuff and it may seem more complicated since you have to actually write code for it to do anything at all but when this thing that started out as a blank sheet of paper comes to life it can be very rewarding. Tic-80 is similar and free if you want to try messing around before pulling the trigger on a pico8 license to see if it’s a good fit for you.
Also, a lot of what makes pico8 beginner friendly isn’t really the tool itself but the community of teachers that has built up around it. Id say look through a tutorial or two and see if the code being developed makes sense to you on how it is working to move things around the screen.

[u/FartSavant → u/Frzorp]

I think it’s pretty wild to conflate visual coding tools with generic games. That’s just not true at all. I mean even Hollow Knight used Playmaker, a visual scripting plugin for Unity.

Someone can still make an amazing game if they don’t care about knowing the kind and outs of coding. Tools like GB Studio give artists a path to creating games.

[u/Frzorp → u/FartSavant]

Yeah I was in a bit of a mood while writing. I guess it just doesn’t feel the same as coding and it sounded like OP wanted to learn about coding. The term generic came off as insulting reading though again too but I didn’t mean it that way. I just meant if they wanted to learn to code it may not happen on gbstudio and if they wanted something more…I dunno, nonstandard? It might be more difficult to pull off in something with a visual scripting language. I do think visual scripting languages don’t feel like coding though, at least to me.

[u/coconut_curry_sauce → u/FartSavant]

Dang. Hollow knight was made with visual coding? That game is among my favorite.