So i want to achieve many types of hobbies. For the longest time ive wanted to make games but im honestly unsure where to start, what tools to pick up, and what to learn especially sense i want to attempt to learn for free without having to pay for anything.
Ive been told gamedev is like learning a new language in a way. I could use a point in a starting direction if possible.
I also have a dumb question but i cant really make out a different between the definitions of coding and programming, what is the difference if any?
I’d have to subtly disagree with this. It is really good advice, especially when the scope of your game is larger than what one could reasonably finish in a game jam; If you can’t get to a fun game in a couple of days or less, you need documentation as to what your plan is to get there.
The problem is that this is the best advice for someone who has the technical “hard” skills to make a game (compsci, digital art, etc.), but lacks the "soft"er skills (software eng., scheduling, etc). To be fair that is super common, but the OP implies to me they’re not confident that they have the technical skills either yet.
Without either of those skills you can’t know what’ll take a couple of days or what’s actually weeks of work, and the value you get out of design docs becomes effectively random.
The common advice that I’d have to agree with is that your first few games should be as small of a scope as you can make them. Other comments to this post already go into detail, but the jist is that when you’re starting the amount you learn is more per-project than per-hour, so get out as many small things as possible to get your bearings.
Once you’ve done that, this is really good advice for your first sizeable project.