Why exactly were the Gamemaker tutorials bad? Bad like in hard to understand the concepts? Bad like in too advanced for you to follow the topic? Bad as in a hard to understand the speaker? Bad examples chosen? ...
Well this is where I'm pretty much convinced as a slow learner. But basically I will always questioned every single detail and ended up not satisfied when I couldn't find exact answer, and kills my mood to continue to study. For example, I'll watch someone goes "ok here you put ; after x" and I will be like " why? Why do we have to use ;? I don't get it." And then they just move on to the next thing and I'll still be left wondering. It's silly, I realized that. So now I'm trying to look at it like math, where that's just how it is, that's in the formula.
Look, in this situation I would take this single thing you are not understanding right here to the forum and ask. There are more than enough people here that are happy to help a newcomer and someone most probably could give you the why.
I f you get the feeling there are so many questions you would open a thread every minute, then collect your questions first before posting.
Just like with math, there is an underlying reason why things work the way they work. Its sometimes hard for a non mathematitian to understand the logic behind it, but that is why forums like this one exist.
And to be honest, I for example also don't understand a lot of things I am using for game development. I try to get more knowledgable about it whenever I can, but sometimes it just does not matter too much if something is still "Black Magic" to you... as long as it works.
"which engine to pick?" - Well, what do you need exactly?
Well I'm aiming to be able to develop a character action game in the future. I guess for my first time making a platformer is the way to go first? I'm really passionate to make action games but I don't want to make a rookie mistake and start too ambitious and ended up failing horribly. Correct me if I'm wrong but learning to do scripting for an engine is a good way to start? I'm looking at forum on yoyogames forum called " The Complete Beginner Guide to Gml Coding".
Well, first thing is, you need to get a little bit more specific. Most probably for you "Character Action Game" is already pretty specific, but there is important information left out in this Name for someone not knowledgable in the genre.
For example 2D / 3D? Firstperson view or Thirdperson? Art Style? A lot of this will influence a) how much horsepower you need, b) what kind of engine would be more suited, c) do you even need an engine to get started?
And don't feel forced to anything in a particular order. There are good reasons why people around here will tell you to start with small games without much graphics, go 2D after and move to 3D after that.
This reasoning might not apply to you. The question is: how much frustration can YOU take? What does motivate YOU?
If you need to see results as in "a finished project", then yes, the smaller you start, the better.
But if you don't want to loose any time on anything but your dream project, you don't care if you might make stuff horribly wrong in the beginning and might need to start over, then go for it from the start. It will be frustrating, a chore at times, and granted, you will have a much steeper learning curve (depending on your expectations for your game of course), but its certainly doable.
Now, as I already pointed out, for beginner, the choice of the engine itself matters little. You will quickly hit your head on the ceiling of engine limitations if you naively start to throw things together in the engine without optimizations anyway, and if you start small or stay small, no engine will ever limit you.
Important are the tutorials and the community. I would really try to focus on that. If you cannot work with the existing Gamemaker Tutorials, try the Unity ones. Then move to UE4 or UDK.... and so on. At some point, you either find some that resonate with you, or you should start to question why all the tutorials don't work for you.
I would really urge you though to try to work out your issues with the tutorials you already looked at first. Maybe post links here together with WHAT you don't understand in them, so people from the forum can have a look and decide wheter the tutorial really is bad, or try to help you understand them.
