Best game development software without using code

salimmatta

Hey guys,

I'm an artist and i'm pretty interested to start my own Metroidvania  game project. But again, I don't code, so in your opinion which is the best game dev software that requires no coding in order to create a Metroidvania  game? 

I'm using Buildbox, I think it is somehow executable in it, but id love to hear more opinions on the subject

Obscura

Unreal has blueprints for scripting anything without a single line of code. its node based, the learning curve is great in my opinion. I can't code either, except for a little hlsl, but I made many game prototypes and tools using blueprints in Unreal.

Dash-POWER

If you are planning to create a simple game then blueprints are ok. I think the only disadvantage with blueprints is their speed - UE4 case. Don't know how it's with Unity. Heavy raycasing, massive multiplayer and such things shouldn't be done through BPs, but I would say UE4 has very good base for non coder devs.

Obscura

Yeah the speed of bp isn't that great, but for simpler tasks it should do it just fine. You could also nativize your blueprints which should minimize the this problem. Here is a speed comparison between blueprints, c++, and nativized blueprints speed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gVixDglpQ4

Dash-POWER

Hmm. Thanks. I didn't know about that. I'm surprised that there is way how to boost BP speed to almost C++ speed.

poopipe

The chances are that if you're using blueprints you're not capable of writing code that's faster than the blueprints


In answer to the original question.   Yes,  use unreal.. Nothing else comes close. 

salimmatta

I'm a game artist and I use UE4 and Unity for more than 3 years as game art technicalities approach. But to be honest I want also to be able to develop my own games or at least understand coding properly, and I want to learn from scratch, because I have 0 knowledge in coding.

So any idea where do I start from? 

Dash-POWER

If you want to learn coding (for UE4 C++) from scratch, I would consider to buy a beginner book about C and C++ or to start watch some YT tutorials. I can recommend for starters this channel. Before you will start to learning a new programming language, I would be sure what I should expect as my study results. C++ is not easy to learn because it's on lower level then C#. On the other hand C++ has very good portability to almost every platform on the market. This cheat sheet may help you to choose your path.

Python seems to be very easy to learn and has a lot of potential for scripting and automation, but you probably won't build a game on this language running on 60FPS and looking great.

Basically, C++ (UE4) is mostly use for large AAA titles and C# (Unity) is mostly use for smaller titles because developing under the language is easier (friends saying) and iterations and implementations are quicker for their projects.

salimmatta

Dash-POWER said:

If you want to learn coding (for UE4 C++) from scratch, I would consider to buy a beginner book about C and C++ or to start watch some YT tutorials. I can recommend for starters this channel. Before you will start to learning a new programming language, I would be sure what I should expect as my study results. C++ is not easy to learn because it's on lower level then C#. On the other hand C++ has very good portability to almost every platform on the market. This cheat sheet may help you to choose your path.

Python seems to be very easy to learn and has a lot of potential for scripting and automation, but you probably won't build a game on this language running on 60FPS and looking great.

Basically, C++ (UE4) is mostly use for large AAA titles and C# (Unity) is mostly use for smaller titles because developing under the language is easier (friends saying) and iterations and implementations are quicker for their projects.

Thanks a lot for your feedback! I will proceed and start doing my research

poopipe

I have a fair amount of programming experience - it was my job for several years before I got into games and after many years as a tech artist I've written a shit load of code in quite a wide variety of languages. 
Even with all that experience I wouldn't touch the ue4 codebase with a bargepole, it's huge, it's old, it's tangled and it's very, very complicated. 

If you want to learn gameplay programming in actual code I urge you to start with unity. C# is a very pleasant language to write and allows you to skip over all the low level bullshit so you can concentrate on learning the logic required. 

salimmatta

poopipe said:

I have a fair amount of programming experience - it was my job for several years before I got into games and after many years as a tech artist I've written a shit load of code in quite a wide variety of languages. 
Even with all that experience I wouldn't touch the ue4 codebase with a bargepole, it's huge, it's old, it's tangled and it's very, very complicated. 

If you want to learn gameplay programming in actual code I urge you to start with unity. C# is a very pleasant language to write and allows you to skip over all the low level bullshit so you can concentrate on learning the logic required. 

Most of my friends said exactly the same this is what I will do anw.