I really wanna get into game development and Ive chosen to use Godot as an engine. Is there a specific "blender donut" tutorial for Godot thats really good, or some discord full of face to face walkthrough with coding? Or is there some Skillshare class i can take? Btw does Godot use its own language or will I have to learn something pre-existing? I already got an idea of what i want to make. Or maybe I could use flash & actionscript, but there are like, ZERO tutorials on it online. Any answers on this would be great, thanks!

Personally I got the most out of HeartBeast's tutorials, but not the first time around (couple years before my second attempt). Copying without understanding didn't really help. I stepped back and tried Scratch for a while, and this made a lot of things "click" that just hadn't up until then. Then I tried UE4, and started basically toying around with blueprints (it's visual scripting language) and following a few tutorials for that (sorry, can't remember which ones). Using blueprints on UE4 triggered a lot of "aha!" moments, kind of expanding on that transferrable knowledge that had begun with Scratch. Then when I went back to Godot and HeartBeast's tutorials (because UE4 was a bit slow to run on my PC), I wasn't just copying without understanding anymore, what he was explaining actually made much more sense and I was even able to experiment a bit on the tutorial project and make it more unique.

What works for one person might not work for everyone, but I did find that very effective. Sometimes you might need to try a few things before something starts to make sense. GDScript (which Godot uses) isn't very difficult to learn, really beginner friendly. I've tried and failed to learn C languages in the past, and GDScript seemed much more intuitive. Some say it's like Python but I don't have much experience of that.

Having a lot of fun on Godot just trying things out and making projects that will probably never see light of day but taught a lot a long the way. So, I'm still a beginner also. Maybe someone with more experience will have better advice.

Before getting too into it, be aware that Godot 4's web exports have compatibility issues with players using macOS or iOS even though they're playing on web from their browser, while Godot 3's web exports work fine on anything. You can still make non-web exports for mac or iOS with Godot 4 that run fine if the player installs it. But if your goal is to make web games for NewGrounds then you might want to stick with the latest release of Godot 3, and use the GLES2 renderer since it'll be the most compatible with anything even if the player is using a potato.

Start with the Godot Docs and change the version in the bottom left to be whichever Godot 4 or Godot 3 version you're using and start there. At least go through their Getting Started section and explanations on how things work and bookmark that site because you're going to be referring to it a lot. And read whichever parts of the Manual section look like they would be relevant for you. Afterward, if you like videos then I'm sure there are a bunch of youtubes on it, but I personally hate videos and wrote this text tutorial walking through everything I did to make a small gamejam game that covers a lot of the fundamentals using Godot 3. And you're probably starting from the right place if you already have a game in mind and can, as you're reading stuff, pay attention to what people are doing and why so you can identify what approaches you can use when you're making your own game (or decide you want to change plans to make things easier).

If you have some coding experience and are familiar with variables and types, if-else, for() loops, functions and passing parameters, and are sort of familiar with object-oriented principles then you're in a good position to start. Otherwise it might be kind of tough and you might want to focus on learning some coding outside of a game-making environment first, like learning some Python or C or JavaScript or smth. It doesn't really matter which exact language you learn as long as you get the concepts down.

dont try to make a full game on ur first try. just try to think of mechanics u want to put into a game. then google how to program that mechanic. build ur way up from that. also, whatever u do, do not try to make a 'good' or a 'big' game. start off as small as u can, the smaller, the better

eg: u want to make a racing game? google how to program a racecar, then program a race track, then add other racers, then add a menu, etc

ps. just google, 'how to program a racecar in godot' or w/e u want to start with

What I did to get an idea on how an engine works is that I made a very basic test game. Try testing how stuff like player movement, jumping, crouching, collecting coins and etc works. Maybe make a simple menu with a "play" button to get an idea on how menus work. Using tutorials is good but I would say to not fully relay on them. When you have gotten the basic feeling of how the engine works then you should start to work on your game project. Also do not be too ambitious for your first game.

If you want easy to pick up and use, which I recommend, because there's no better way to develop a creative skill than creating things, Game Maker is phenomenal. It's ideal for beginners, but advanced enough for any 2D functionality you could possibly hope for, with limitless tutorials online and an intuitive drag and drop system for ease of use, until you want to recall advanced functions with its programming language. Now that it's 100% free for non-commercial freeware use, I give it a strong recommend.