Hey, I was wondering if you could help me with some begginer game development material such as Books, websites, etc. I find myself a little bit lost since seems that there only few websites (from my expirience) that covers this matter in a quite professional way. If possible, I would like to know what people do study on university and what kind of books they have access to in order to be able to go ahead and jump in this vast world. Although, if possible, I would like some reccomendations on how to start and direct me a little bit more into mobas. I'm aware that few steps are needed before jumping into this whole world and that mobas are really hard to create and expensive (my main objective in the future), I just would like people to give me some adviced more orientated than other games even if the first games that I would probably start to make would be even less than a level from super Mario bros. Meanwhile engines, even if is a matter that I believe that I shouldn't touch yet, Unreal Engine have a lot of documentation of how to is it and how everything works in their engine, so I feel confident that there's no need for further material but who knows, I'm just a noob trying to figure out how this world works.

Thank you in advance for your help.

What do you want to do in game developing?  Concept art, In game art, design, writing, game logic programming, graphics programming...  What are your interests exactly?

@Infinisearch I'm not quite sure yet but I would say it would be logic programming. What's the main core of a game? For example, I would say that programming is the core, and concept art, graphics, etcetera would be the layers to make it good looking.

I would say something like: "Go to this direction, this key equals to jump."

I expect to be understandable, if not, sorry in advance and thank you for your help.

Core of the game highly depends on the game. Eg a table-top game or a card game doesn't need much programming

University is only slightly helpful, as it teaches the fundamentals of computers, and programming, the theory of programming, so to say. Making an actual game (or even writing actual software in general) is much more practical. The theory does its work in the background only.

Below a link to an article with some basic questions and advice on how to get started.

That's a tricky question.

For programming, one would start with knowing how to actually code, but that tells you very little about the specifics of game development.

Then, you have game design (Jesse Schell's book comes to mind) but that tells you very little about how to make it happen.

A good gameplay programmer has quite a background under his belt. The technical know-how, the understanding of how to architecture their code (using 'contexts' for example instead of boiler-plating everything, etc.)

Doesn't seem to fit your requirement here.

On the other hand, using a tool like Construct might help you a bit. It is 'relatively straightforward' and will allow you to get results swiftly. At least, that'll bring you one step closer to understanding how things get made, all the while actually producing results.

@Alberth @Orymus3

Thank you very much for you help. The article that you just shared though is something that other articles talk as well. I'm sure that I want to start with little things such as Pong that would let me reach and sratch the surface of this subject. However where do I start? Should I learn specific programming language that would be relatively easy? Use a GameMaker? At what point a GameMaker wouldn't be enough?

For programming I understand what you mean because I had experiences with HTML5, CSS, Java, and a little bit of JavaScript. What I really wonder is the actual coding that would allow me to reach the stage of sending commands to the interface, so something like a little triangle can move or even shoot squares. That's where me real lack of understanding appears.

Does the Jesse Schell's book talk about game development in depth?

Do you want to make games beyond the MOBA?  Or is that your only goal?  Do you want to make 3d games in the future? (including the MOBA)  Gamemaker Studio 2  is a fine choice for 2d and simple 3d.  I don't know much about gamemakers 3d performance so I can't help you that much with it.  If you're serious about 3d then unity or unreal would be more to your liking.  If you know java then switching to C# should be pretty simple, so Unity would be a good pick since it uses C#.

Many beginner learning materials are engine-dependent, so pick up a tool (just go with whatever you feel like: Unity, Unreal, GameMaker, Construct) and just go through the official tutorials, there are plenty of those.

It's harder with books. Most renowned stuff is game design books like Scott Rogers's "Level Up" or Jesse Schell's "The Are of Game Design". Those are great, but I would not necessarily recommend them as a starting point (they also are only about design, they do not cover anything else). There are also some tech/programming books, but from my experience they are often pretty advanced.

I think the main thing is just to start making something (just grab any official tutorial from any engine). Then eventually you will figure out what you should learn next, what books to read, etc.

@Infinisearch @Oxeren

The idea is to be able in the future to do a moba, however due to the lack of experience, the high revenue needed and the amount of people that are needed in order to be able to, is just not possible. So I was wondering what can I do so I can start to understand this world better, start to develop some 2D games, or some 3D games as a way of practice to get into mobas in the future. However it seems like everything is very engine dependant which I believe it can be great because so much work is done in just a couple of hours. At the same times it seems like having knowledge of Java, JavaScript and C++ (it can be C# and other as well) is enough. It seems like there's already an input that would let players to control characters. Correct me if I'm wrong, but at least the documentation that I got is seems to be like this. I think is a really good idea to start with an engine and even if it's hard to understand at the start, as long as I can still taking their documentation and I study the languages above mentioned is enough to make games work.

Now the art concept, design, audio, etcetera is a completely different matter. I'm glad to understand how it works now and thank you very much for your help. If it's anything else that you would like to explain to me, or if there's something that you think I still don't understand, don't be afraid to tell me something because I almost know nothing about game development and it would be very helpful for me to get into this world. Furthermore, I never expected to be that simple, if course it would need a lot of work however with engines things becomes much, much easier.

16 minutes ago, Serox said:

The idea is to be able in the future to do a moba,

2d or 3d... this is important in choosing a tool/engine to stick with.  Unless you want to learn more than one language and way of doing things.

After you pick a tool/engine, start learning the language it uses.  At the same time play with the engine to get a feel for it and what you both know and don't know.

There is other practical knowledge that you'll need to know like what a vertex is or a texture or a matrix.  All of which you can google.

Since you have a particular game you want to make (work towards) I suggest after the above continue with small games using tutorials on the internet or books.  It will introduce you to game making and build your understanding of how things get done.

As to the below IIRC yes you are right there are 'controllers' built in but you can also make your own custom one.  Its been a while since I played with Unity so hopefully someone can correct me if I'm wrong.

16 minutes ago, Serox said:

It seems like there's already an input that would let players to control characters. Correct me if I'm wrong, but at least the documentation that I got is seems to be like this.