Welcome to Learn to Code From Zero with Godot, and thanks for supporting Godot and GDQuest.
We made this course based on many requests in the Godot community to teach them to code by making games.
There’s an issue with most courses: they don’t teach you what you need to know to become an independent developer.
By independent, I mean taking your ideas and translating them into computer code without constantly needing tutorials.
There is a specific mindset and many techniques programmers follow to get work done efficiently.
Professionals don’t rely on tutorials or step-by-step guides to get their work done.
Instead, they solve problems by discussing with peers, using a code reference, reading code, and, most of all, experimenting.
We call this mindset thinking like a programmer. It is a mix of creative problem-solving and translating ideas into things the computer can do.
The essence of programming is making the computer do what you want it to do.
It’s not simple, as computers are dumb rocks struck by lightning. You have to give them exact instructions using a programming language, which is very different from using a natural language.
To get there, this course will teach you:
And more.
Our goal is to make you an independent programmer by the end of the course.
We don’t pretend to turn you into a professional with a single course. Getting there will take years of experience.
However, we want to give you the mindset and tools to:
The third point is crucial to us.
We decided to create a course that would be serious about what it teaches while keeping things exciting and engaging for you.
In the first module, you will get a rough sense of how you make games with the Godot game engine.
We will give you pre-made components to assemble into a game.
This is so you can see that we build games from separate blocks. You will also see the kind of game you will get to create by the end of the course.
Even if you are not fond of action games, the point of the final project is to teach you essential techniques that’ll help you in all your adventures.
At first, you won’t be able to program your dream game. Some kinds of games are surprisingly tricky to create.
That’s why we chose this action game: it’s a project designed specifically for learning.
In the second module, you will learn the foundations of the GDScript programming language, which we will use throughout the rest of the course.
For that, we created a free and open-source app that anyone in the Godot community can use.
This app makes it much easier to take your first steps with the language. It puts you in a friendly environment to get started with many interactive practices.
This will give you the necessary foundations to later get into the Godot game engine itself.
Note that while you’ll learn a specific programming language, the skills you’ll build will stick with you all your life.
Game developers learn many technologies, and professionals often work with multiple languages.
Even when you learn a new game engine or programming language, you’ll be able to apply much of what you’ll learn in this course.
After completing the app, you’ll build up game development skills by creating many small projects. Their size and complexity will vary to focus on specific learning points.
For instance, the first project will teach you Godot’s four essential concepts by coding a ship you can control with the keyboard.
The final module will get you to create a complete game, but not in the form of a complete step-by-step tutorial.
Instead, we’ll guide you through some steps and challenge you in other parts. We’ll provide everything you need not to get lost, and, of course, we’ll be there to give you the support you need.
Throughout the rest of the introduction, we will explain:
In the next part, we will talk about how you can make the most of the course.
