Our 2020 Content Vision

Yeah, I have to agree with a few others, just not really interested in Unity at all after the UnrealCourse. After taking the time to just begin learning C++, it seems silly to abandon it and go over to C# so soon instead of build upon what I learned here. This course has been, as far as I could find, the best C++ learning resource for a new programmer or artist, I really hope there are plans to continue it at some point in the future.

As for my thoughts on the individual offerings,

Learn to Code by Making Games: If it’s a continuation of the UnrealCourse, I can watch your Unreal content all day. But, as I said, I don’t want to take on too much at once, jumping to another engine and programming language entirely so soon after learning it seems like a mistake from an educational point of view.

Game Engine Architecture & System Master: Again, if it’s in Unreal, I would love this. We’ve worked with relatively small C++ projects so far, but Unreal 4 itself is a monolithic, seemingly insurmountable mountain of code. It would be very valuable having an introduction on how to start picking something that complex apart and actually work with it.

The Complete Game Technical Art Programmer: Not too interested in Blender or Python, partly because I already know Maya and Python from my 3d art background, but one thing I’ve always wanted to learn was HLSL/shader code, I could see myself getting this course for that alone if it’s included.

The Complete 3D Game Artist and The Complete 2D Game Artist: Of all the things on the list, this seems like the most unnecessary. Good, easy to understand 3D and 2D learning resources on the internet are a dime a dozen, it’s going to be competing with things like the Gnomon Workshop, Lynda, and DigitalTutors/Pluralsight. I feel like you have a great direction with the other ideas for the most part, filling in an area that’s sorely lacking for easy to understand learning resources, it makes adding to the already massive pile of content for 3D/2D art seem like your time could be better spent elsewhere.

The Complete Game Audio Artist: To the contrary however, outside of a school for music theory or sound, music/SFX is still a largely self taught area if you’re learning alone. The only thing to be careful of is to avoid making it another “Here’s how to do a drumroll in FL Studio” tutorial that are on Youtube by the thousands, maybe go into other types of music that you might need for the game.

Personal Development for Indies: While it’s an important topic, at least from the description it doesn’t really seem like this deserves its own 60 hour long dedicated class. However, if you do want to cover it, I would move Shipping into the “The Business of Marketing Indie Games” class, it seems to fit that better and could tie in nicely with things like marketing and funding.

The Complete Game Designer: Giving something like level design more or less its own class is great. There are some level design learning resources out there, but it’s still fairly unpopulated, so I could easily see where this would fit.

The Business of Marketing Indie Games: I see nothing wrong with this, I actually want to see it expanded. Maybe try to include some things like Greenlight, pitching the game to a publisher, shipping, and early funding to cover the cost of software licences.

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I really appreciate your detailed feedback. So as I just replied to Ben here, we plan to use the experience of teaching the RPG to flesh-out syllabuses for the courses above.

We will form these syllabuses in this brand-new live Google Doc. As we make the RPG we will build the learning journey for all the beginner courses comprising the 2020 vision. It’s only then that we’ll see if these ideas really do have meat.

Thanks again

I just bought the Unreal Course and just finished Section 2. Do you plan on doing more Unreal? It seems like a lot of time is now invested in Unity? Should I switch to Unity instead?

Hi, yes we have many more plans for Unreal including multiplayer and VR.

That said it dos no harm to know at least two tools, so you can choose the best for the job in hand.

I noticed that, too. Since UE4 is my engine of preference, I hope there will be more Unreal Engine content in the future. And that’s coming from someone who loves C# (I even use it professionally :D) and never liked C++ very much. But the Unreal Engine is just such a sophisticated and awesome tool it makes up for this for me. Additionally, I like the open approach Epic has taken with the Unreal Engine.

I really like the level of quality and detail of GameDev TV’s courses offer, kudos to that. Please keep doing (advanced) Unreal Engine courses!

I really like the idea of the course tracks. Here is my two cents:

I believe the greatest fear from a fledgling indie developer’s perspective is not knowing which direction to take (which course to take, where to begin, am I spending too much time on this? etc.).

Therefore, regardless of how the tracks and courses are built, I believe an interactive tool somewhat similar to the self-assessment tool that you mentioned in this thread would be very useful, for two purposes:

  1. Interested prospective game makers can assess themselves, and then the tool can help them choose which course to begin with, or even lay out a plan for them.

  2. You may start gathering some data about the portfolio of users that you have, and tune the courses accordingly.

This tool could be embedded on this site, and could also be referred to in the introductory video for every course. It could have some Daggerfall style questions to help the person determine their goals, areas of strength and areas of greatest return.

Earlier, you had mentioned that 95% of the course participants are solo game makers. I think that comes in from forum posts. However, I really think you could use some more targeted formative assessments to find the needs of the community, rather than just relying on the courses.

My suggestion is to embed quick surveys at some opportunite places in your courses to ask short and targeted questions / ratings about the participants backgrounds and aspirations, so that you may have more direct and reliable data to educate the vision for the upcoming courses.

I’ve just published a revised vision here: Our 2020 Content Vision - Revision 2

There’s also FL Groove which is a Windows store app and is a subset of FL Studio’s functionality. And it’s cheap. I think it was $6? I got it back in Windows 8, so a long time ago. I used to write music with it on my Surface as I was travelling for work - “Songs at 30 Thousand Feet”

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