Pretty disappointed with the scope of Complete Godot 4 Game Developer 2D

[Sidremus]

I just finished the Complete Godot 4 Game Developer 2D course and I can’t help but feel disappointed.

A bit of context: a couple of years back I went through the Complete Unity 3D course (and some of that 2D one as well) and I was really impressed by the quality and breadth of material covered. Not only was it a really great learning experience, the amount covered, together with some additional experience I gathered through a handful of game jams, actually was enough to land me a job as a game developer - and I’ve stuck to it since. That course really was enough to get started with a career in game dev.

I’ve also dabbled quite a bit with Godot over the last 2 years. My forte is still 3D stuff, though, and I always wanted to expand my skills towards 2D gamedev as well. Thus I was really excited when I saw that GameDev.tv offered a Godot 2D course - and under the same “Complete” moniker.

Now, you can certainly argue about what “complete” means in the context of something as huge as modern game engines. The Unity courses certainly don’t cover nearly everything that engine has to offer, especially when it comes to the more advanced topics.
However, those courses did provide a very solid foundation from which one could reasonably tackle most topics one would encounter going forward.

And that’s where this course really left a sour note with me. I’m certainly no beginner, in neither gamedev in general nor in Godot, so I did expect there to be some repetition when it came to the basics. I just also expected there to be something else beyond those basics, however.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to be overly critical here. For what it’s worth I think Kaan is actually pretty good at explaining stuff and his approach is clear and methodical. (Though I seem to remember having seen the majority of what’s covered here on his YT channel before. So there’s that too.)
But this course really just scratches the bare surface of 2D game dev. Like, even still at the basics level there’s so much missing:

• BUILDING AND PUBLISHING THE GAME ! !
• Input reading with the proper _input() function and callbacks
• Mouse interactions beyond a single clickable button
• Menu navigation and UI beyond a single clickable button
• Raycasting
• Physics
• Pausing games & non-realtime games
• Saving and Loading
• Materials (not to even mention shaders)
• Arrays vs Lists vs Queues
• Animations and Animations players beyond just changing sprite frames
• Screen space vs world vs local coordinate systems

Do ALL of these have to be covered for this course to be a “Complete Godot 4 Game Developer”? Maybe not. But some of them are really important and not knowing them will stifle rather than encourage a young developer.
For me personally this isn’t such a big deal - but I’m also an experienced developer. However, if I had come to this course in the same way I came to the Complete Unity Courses back in the day, I would have been completely lost tackling anything even of the scale of a small jam game.

[CyberWolf]

I just finished the course and I have to say that I agree with you completely.
At the moment I do not know what to add to what you said.
If I do think of something I will add it to this thread.
This needs to be seen, this course definitely feels lacking a lot.
I feel like I just started the course, barely scratched the surface of the engines abilities.
And it’s over.

I’m also disappointed. I was really happy with the older courses on UE/Unity; this one doesn’t hold a candle to them.

[Marc_Carlyon]

Hi Sidremus,

Thank-you for your honest feedback on the Complete Godot 4 Game Developer 2D course.
We do listen to all feedback and i have passed this along to the team.

Thanks once again.

Marc

[boblob]

I agree with SidRemus. That said, how do I package this up to send to friends?

[LogicGeek]

Pleased with the course, instructor (solid delivery of the “WHY?” of the steps), and projects as a primer. But “Complete” seemed a bit short as labels go for me, too. I have zero prior game dev experience, just a player perspective.

The initial supplemental entries I have for this are:

• Settings menu:
  • basic accessibility features (button remapping options, at a minimum)
  • volume control (went deaf on my first play of the background music in Martian Mike, so I just disabled autoplay)

I’ve got the 3D course queued up next - after I can run a few practice mini games to make sure the 2D lessons have stuck. I’m hoping for more of those notes from @Sidremus’s list to be present there.

[rattle]

Thanks for listing these!

I’m working my way through the course, but I like to check the final video for fun. I had already felt the course was far too short, and when I spotted your post, it only confirmed it. I’m going to use your post as a springboard, though. Going down the list and finding tutorials and guides on the points you mentioned.

But yes, this course is lacking, comparing it to some of their other courses, it is far too short for what it’s supposed to do.

I’d rather call it ‘An Introduction to Godot’.

[SfcoAwol]

I agree with Sidremus, don’t get me wrong, I learned allot with this course but as a newbie to game dev If I could add one more thing in addition to some of what was already brought up to the list it would be to show some basic debugging methods.

when I was trying to build Martian Mike I ran into an issue where I could play the game in the editor with no problems but if I exported a build to windows the game crashes on startup
debug mode was no help because it crashes before you can read the console output.
there may be a way to make the game create a log file but as it was not covered in this course I am still unaware if there is a way to export a log file
in the end I found if your run the game with cmd console, “martian Mike.exe” --verbose, you can see the console log printed into the cmd but as a newbie basic debugging would have been a godsend

I learned allot from this and am looking forward to going through the 3d course in the future. Thanks!

[erickmendonca]

Hello folks! First: I really liked the lessons. I’m not a newbie on programming, but I liked how the course was structured and Kaan is a great instructor.

But I agree with the sentiment here. I also agree that naming was the problem here. I would not have the same opinion if the course didn’t have “Complete” in the name. It’s a good introduction and the students can research for more topics as they create their first project from scratch.

[JaredBGreat]

“Beginning Godot 4 Game Developer” might be a better name for the course. There is nothing wrong with that – even though I’ve made games and Unity and with pure Java before that, I really just expected a beginner course for the length; I’d rather take a beginner course than read a bunch of documentation and try to put it together.

Not everything needs to be in a beginner course, but there are some things that stand out as missing.

What really stands out is no info on how to compile and package what you’ve made into a stand-alone app. I figured it out, sure, but it does require and extra step the first time (to download the export templates), which is not obvious and something that really should be covered.

[kyncaith]

I’m in agreement here. This really felt like a Part 1 to me. I still really enjoyed the course, but I’d like to see a follow up course to really make it “complete.”

[Aiyo]

I agree with you. I enjoyed the course, but I was expecting at least lessons about exporting the game. I feel it ends very suddenly without making it into a real game.