Make a Simple Game in Godot – Lesson 1

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Hi, my name is Chadot, I’ll be your teacher today. In this first lesson we’ll download Godot, install it, and create a new project.

About Godot

Godot is an open-source game engine that can be used to create video games, but really you can use it to create any type of application.

It is available on Windows, Mac, Linux, but also as a web-app, making it extremely accessible! (https://editor.godotengine.org/releases/latest/)

However, for this tutorial series (and any future tutorial series) we’ll be using the windows version of the Godot game engine.

Download Godot

So let’s begin, head over to https://godotengine.org/

Selecting version

We’ll go for the 64-bit Standard version since I have a 64 bit operating system. If you are uncertain about which system architecture you’re running then check these links out: Windows, Mac, Linux.

The Mono version is for those who want to use the C# programming language.

The Standard version uses GDscript, which is a language specifically developed for the Godot Game Engine. It is basically a language that is as simple as python, but communicates directly with the engine, which is written in C++. So it is a powerful language yet very user-friendly. In other words, it’s all we need for most of our projects.

Installing

Move the downloaded zip file into a folder on your hard-drive that you want to dedicate to your game development journey. In my example I have moved the zip file to a folder called “Godot tutorial” on my secondary hard-drive.

Extract the zip file

Unzip the contents of the zip file that you downloaded into the desired location. And that’s it for the installation part, simple eh? If you change your mind and want to move the engine to a different folder then just move it, it won’t break anything, you can throw the engine around without having to worry about anything!

Start your engines

To start the Godot Game Engine all you have to do is double click on the icon, or right-click and then choose “Open” or “Run as administrator”. The engine will start up faster than you can type Unity or Unreal Engine (no offense, I love all engines #AllEnginesAreEqual*).

* psst, except when it comes to loading time hohoho

Creating a new project

You’ll be welcomed by the project window. This window will fill up with a list of your projects over time. For now we will click on the New Project button so we can set up a project in preparation for Lesson 2.

Project Name

Don’t worry too much about naming your folders and projects, all these can be changed later on.

I picked a very simple and straightforward name for this project, no need to be paralyzed for hours trying to come up with the name for the next best-seller! Just write something… speaking of something, one of my projects is literally called “something”.

Select folder location

Now that we have an awesome best-seller game title, we will go ahead and create the root folder for our project. But first we will need to assign a parent folder for which our root folder will be created under. Click the Browse button and you will see what I mean.

Navigate to a folder where you wish to store this project and future projects. Remember, you can change all of this later on. For example, you could categorize your projects into different types of genres. This way you can have all platformer games stored in one folder while all your first person shooter games are stored in a different folder. It is all up to you how you want to organize your projects. Personally however, I store all my projects under one and the same parent folder called “Game Development”.

Now that we have decided on our parent folder which will hold our project, we will go ahead and click on the Create Folder button.

Now we get to decide the name of the root folder for our project, this will not affect the actual name of our project! So it is possible to have a different name for the root folder other than the name of the project name. However, I simply copy-pasted the same project name throughout this whole process to keep it simple. Hit the OK button once you are done with the naming.

Click Select Current Folder to finally designate our newly created folder as the root folder for our project.

Finalizing

We are almost done with this first lesson. Now we will select the Renderer we will be using for our project, again, like many things with Godot, this too can be changed later on if needed.

Select OpenGL ES 3.0 and then hit the Create & Edit button to finally create our awesome project.

Conclusion

You have learned the process for how to download and install the Godot Game Engine, this will come in handy in the future when new updates are released for the game engine.

You have also learned the process for how to create a new project. This is an essential part as you will find yourself creating multiple projects over time to try out different things, create prototypes, join game jams, etcetera!

This concludes the first lesson of the “Make a Simple Game in Godot” series.

Homework

I want you to browse through the folders on your harddrive that we just created and change the names. After changing the names, open up Godot and see what errors you get. Try to resolve those errors using Godot and NOT by restoring the names of the folders.


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Ahmad Wehbe: Author of Books, Developer of Games