where and what should I start with?

Sorry in advance if this is in the wrong

forum. So your goal is to learn programming so you can make your own games?
If so, this is the right forum.

like some when I was a child I had an interest in "making video games" I didn't know what it would take I just wanted to make games.
I also had a dream of joining the army, and thus I decided to "make games" as a last resort.

I was 6 at this time, now 17, after recently being told I suffered with Aspergers, the army dream died before it started.

Hence why I am here, my way of thinking with "making games" as a living has died down slowly. as now I know it's not just about designing a game, make it and DONE! (I wasn't a smart child)

Yet I would like to pursue this other dream of mine, not as a functioning job, but more of a hobby, one problem though.

I have no experience on coding/design/using engines like unity,unreal
At most I made simple silly choose your own path "games" on power point

anything along those lines I was homeschooled for most of my childhood, and the option of college is out, due to travel problems.

As for online courses etc, all I've found is ones you need to pay for, and I don't have a job yet. I've searched around on this site and while I've found sheets of code people needed help with, none of it makes much sense

Is there any links or advice you could give me to point me in the right direction.


Sorry in advance if this is in the wrong topic or whatever new to this site

Wow, it felt like reading my own story. I had similar dreams and similar problems, I wanted to be a pilot since i was 5, but I turned out to be too blind to join the air force. And here I am, struggling with code. :p

I did study in college, but I can assure you, that is not mandatory if you want to make games. Of course, some background theory wouldn't hurt, but that's nothing you can't learn yourself. There are many coding books that are good if you are a newbie, and most of them can be found online for free.

Regarding the Engine part of the problem, both UE and Unity are License-free for personal uses, there are tons of videos and tutorials about both of them, they have huge dedicated forums and huge communities behind to support people like you.

My suggestion for you would be to just download Untiy (it's more intuitive, at the beginning at least), to watch the basic tutorials on Unity website (like the roll-a-ball), and see if you really like it. If you do, if you really have passion to stay in front of the compiler and write code for hours, then you know you can be a game developer. :)

when you have a job i'd recomend what my game design school gives us for learning on our own (lynda.com) as for cheap try unity its free to have a membership and they have tutorials and some free stuff thats premade for games in there i wish you luck on your journey ^^

I would recommend starting with the Unity sponsored tutorials (https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials). When I decided to start working on a game, and to use an engine this time so I can finish before life decides I have other priorities, I went with those tutorials. I did the 2D UFO and 2D Roguelike tutorials, then went through any video I thought might teach me anything I needed at https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/topics/2d-game-creation and probably googled some random stuff. Well too late to help with the basics, I also came across https://m.youtube.com/user/quill18creates and it still had a few videos worth watching for me. He has like multiple forty-hour long series on creating different games. I haven't gone through any of those since I'm not looking for that type of help any more, but I suspect from his other work that they are an awesome learning resource. And it's honestly just good to see someone winging it so you understand a lot of mistakes are normal, especially if you haven't worked in software development professionally.

I honestly would not recommend learning C# yet. Just follow along with tutorials, and see if you pick it up on your own. Some people do. Probably only like 10%, but if you're one of the lucky ones you'll get to save a ton of time! If you find yourself not learning anything from the tutorials, and just confused by the C# side of it, then it's time to learn C#. And hopefully by then, you'll know what you don't know, and be able to ask for more directed C# tutorials that will save you time.

And I strongly advise sticking to 2D until you are comfortable with 2D, and have done a project of your own from start to finish in 2D. 3D just adds a lot of extra areas that can confuse you, especially if people are using different words for the same concept in different tutorials. Once you think you might know what you're doing, try doing a simple project from start to finish on your own. Pick something known so you don't get caught up on how you'd do something. I did Sudoku. Some do Tetris. Flappy bird. Whatever is fine. Just anything you can show someone, they'll recognize what it is, and you can say you did it. It will help you find those who will support you. Some people might be meh, but others will be excited at your progress. Spend more time with the people who are excited for you!

And being able to point to something you've done, no matter how unrelated or unimpressive, is far more impressive than sounding like you haven't done anything with your life when you interview for a job. In my prior professional career, I would have quickly pushed as hard as humanly possible to hire anyone who had even done a WoW mod or a Pong game. The people you wind up hiring while crossing your fingers because there's no way to know who will work and who won't just sucks. And I asked everyone in one round of hiring that we all disliked whether they would have wanted the worst candidate, who said he just played WoW for the past few years, if he had done even minimal refreshing of his skills (he hadn't programmed in five years), and said that he made a WoW mod. Everyone said they would have picked him in a heartbeat. And remember, he was the worst candidate.

Sorry this was long, but I didn't want to just give a generic answer. I want you to succeed. And I want you to know why you hear the advice you often hear. And I wanted to chime in to say even if you fail to make your game (as I did years ago), you can always come back later. Just learn from your mistakes. Spoiler alert: you will make a lot of them!