I took the next step to learn Godot: I registered at GDQuest and bought their The Great Godot Starter Kit (2D + 3D + Node Essentials) course.

I am pretty confident about spending money on the course because I have already experimented with GDQuest’s (free) tutorials and they are clear, well-detailed, and bug-free. Even more, their Discord community has been of great help since I’ve started my journey with the Godot Engine.

The course is starting with helpful tips on how to make it. The strategy behind how they teach, how you can learn best a new programming language, and how to find the right mindset.

As a part of staying productive (a word I am not fond of, a word that I kinda hate, but whatever) and motivated (a word that I much prefer), the course asks to write a learning plan and provides a few questions to answer. I will do this here.

Why do you want to learn to code? What’s your goal?

I’ve always dreamed of coding my own games, but until a few years ago, the resources were either overwhelming, or inexistent. I lacked a community to ask questions to. And I had no idea how to even start—I learn best by example, and most of the resources were theoretical (the best Freya repellent).

I started to look at Godot after I looked at GameMaker with my son. I probably could have gone that way as well, but two reasons attracted me to Godot: I want to let my son have his own thing, even if we now can have something in common to talk about, and Godot is free and open-source. That was the first step. Watching some tutorials and learning that Brotato is made with Godot convinced me.

My goal is to learn Godot by doing many small tutorials for different skills I need to make my own games. I might even do some apps, since—if I’m not mistaken—Godot is also capable of handling that.

Then, I will try to use what I learned for my Expand Idle TD (EITD) project. Ideally, I need to finish a working, “finished” game (albeit a small one), and then I could make small changes, incrementally, and release them in the project once I feel they’re working.

What will you get when you reach your goal?

I’m hoping to be able to sell my games and apps, but most of all I’m enjoying learning a new skill. I have some experience with PHP, but nothing good enough to make games or apps.

I could also be able to create apps that I need for my day-to-day life—the ones I wish would exist but don’t. The practicality to be able to do that would be awesome, and it would maybe also help other people with their own needs.

Where and at what time will you practice?

I’m lucky enough to have a computer dedicated to my Freya Cobalt projects, so I will use it either from my bedroom or my Artelier.

I usually work better in the mornings, so this is the time when I will practice. I might not work on it every day—chronic illness is a bitch—but I will get advantage of my “in the zone” moments.

For how long will you practice?

I truly have no rules. I know that when I am in the zone—plus physically and mentally healthy enough—I can work most times the whole morning.

But I don’t want to force myself to do anything—that sail has shipped a long time ago. I will practice when I feel like it, and I will base how long I practice on variables that are not based on productivity, but on motivation instead.

How will you avoid distractions?

I have no problems avoiding most distractions usually. The distractions I cannot avoid are the ones tied to my kids and their schedules. Adulting for them is hard, tons of administrative tasks to do, and people who need to get a hold of me immediately.

But as they get older, I delegate to them more. I was surprised this morning that my son had asked his taxi driver to liaise with him on his own phone for the pick-up time, instead of going through mine. I welcome these demonstrations of being autonomous, and I hope to see more of them in the future.

How will you stay accountable?

I have no intention to be accountable to anyone. I’m learning Godot for fun (and hopefully, one day, for profit) and I am not turning this into a business obligation.

Instead, I will post here on my blog my progress. I will share what I do, what I learned, and where my personal project is heading. If you want to keep tabs on what I do, you can do this with my RSS feed—but be warned that my interests go far and wide, and I will probably talk about tons of different topics. This blog is not Godot-oriented, it’s Freya Cobalt-oriented.

And here we go. One of my challenges will be to share what I am working on without giving away too much of the GDQuest courses. I will do my best, but to be clear, the documentation is already out and free, and nothing can beat the experience of working with the GDQuest Sandbox, so I doubt that any blog post I could write about my learning experience will stop serious people from buying the course(s).

Tell me what brought you here and what you’re doing these days in the comment section below. ⬇️

It would make my day much brighter! Starting an online presence can feel very lonely, and I’d love to hear from you.