The countdown is for 13 more hours and I don’t know how interested you guys are in game development assets. But this looks like a lot of stuff. 30,000+ assets. All free!
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Should probably try to copy and paste these things into something that barely runs in unity and flip it on steam.
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oooh. The shade, 
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Unity “Learn Premium” is giving 3 free months to learn game development. Access to all their tutorials and some interactive classes. Apparently, it is so much information, that it can be applied to other game engines. Even has some content for beginners. It’s free so might as well try it.
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A game developer offers their game developing program for free to make pixel games. It will be available for a few months.
To get it and the pro materials you need to do a few things.
Sign up and make an account. Get access to base version downloads and pro tools downloads.
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I can finally begin my work on “Toilet paper shortage simulator” . Should be up on steam in Early Access soon.
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Wow, that looks really cool. And it seems like you can play others’ games while making modifications to the games on the go.
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I don’t know how it compares to all the free information found on youtube. But pluralsight is offering complete access to all their courses for the month of April.
Courses are several hours long. They include, software development, Cloud Computing, IT Ops, Machine Learning/AI, Data Professional, Business Professional, Architecture & Construction, Information & Cyber Security, Manufacturing & Design, Creative Professional.
If you have a lot of time and think this could help you, push yourself forward and learn it.
I personally will check out their Software Development category. It talks about learning the right skills in the right order. So I get the feeling that these are complete courses.
Some subjects are Python, JavaScript, C++, CSS, HTML5, Angular, AngularJS, Java, C#, Maya, Photoshop, etc. etc.
It also has a “Skill IQ” test assessment to check your current understanding of the subject. So if you are somewhat knowledgeable already, at least you won’t start from the complete beginning lessons.
Remember, it expires May 1st. So learn as much as you can.
Also, I might as well add this. Sorry none of it is permanently free!
Affinity photo & designer are free for 90 days.
Reaper digital audio software that does everything(?) A lot of people like it. For free until July 1st. 4 months free!
It’s a good time to try out new things! I’m keeping my eyes out for things that are permanently free. But I thought these were worth mentioning in case it tickles someone’s curiosity.
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Used Reaper for the first time years ago - it’s actually not bad at all. Not too hard on lil sweet potatos like mine either. I’ll have to see how it runs now though.
Maya and Photoshop are interesting too - I just have neither software. O_O
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Maya and Photoshop are interesting too - I just have neither software. O_O
Lol. That is true. I forgot that they offer courses for software that needs to be bought first. Or you can learn it for someday when you buy it?
I don’t know if you would be interested but there are popular free alternatives. I have them bookmarked so I got to find them somewhere in these folders…
Maya alternatives:
https://www.blender.org/ (Very good alternative)
Daz 3D - 3D Models and 3D Software | Daz 3D (I haven’t tried this one.)
Photoshop alternatives:
https://www.gimp.org/ (I like it a lot. Apparently it can be changed to look almost exactly like photoshop.)
Here is a Krita tutorial series. The webpage navigation is bad, so I go to this webpage and went down each lesson.
https://www.gdquest.com/tutorial/art/krita-tutorial-for-game-artists/#Get-the-most-of-the-course
By the way, these are all FREE! But I don’t know how related they will be for the pluralsight courses.
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Yes, I did my research too a while ago. Not sure about Krita, but man is GIMP different from Photoshop. You can do the same things but the methods are vastly different and GIMP is a bit awkward too. Still, for free, why complain?
Blender, I might be able to run, but forget rendering anything O_O
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As always, everyone should make their own determination, but I personally found Pluralsight to be a colossal disappointment. I have free access via my employer and what they have to offer might have impressed in 2000 but not today. If I had paid their absurd prices myself I would have demanded my money back. It’s largely a series of videos with little if any way to interact and no work-ahead projects or assignments (mostly it’s “here’s the course project, just watch the instructor do it with no sense of where they’re going with it” - they should at least have the instructor tell you what they’re about to do so you can pause it and try to do it yourself first). The few places where you can actually enter code care more about matching the text than about getting the answer- if the instructor used a loop, don’t even think about solving it with a list comprehension. Some of the courses are what I would describe as “programming for managers” - that is, for someone who just needs a basic grasp of what their employees are doing but never has to write code themselves.
Compare this to MOOC options like Udacity that have had free courses all along. Udacity has tests and assignments where you work in an online interpreter, so there’s a lot of interaction. They follow a sensible learning strategy where they tell you what’s going to happen so you can try it first. Etc. Permanently free content that’s lightyears ahead of Pluralsight’s normally highway robbery prices.
“How to Think Like a Computer Scientist” is a free Python textbook available online that’s also a decent choice for beginners. There is (or was) an online interactive version of the textbook, but even the plain textbook version is a good introduction.
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It’s very interesting that I saw lots of people use Python as the language to introduce computer science basic concepts to beginners.
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Python is a rare combination of easy and powerful. I came from a background in C and later C++, so I already knew how to program when I decided to learn Python in 2014. I would say after about two weeks I knew enough syntax to be as good with Python as I was in C. Since then, I don’t use anything else.
So I can’t speak to the experience of coming at it from a beginner’s perspective, but there are a number of language features that make it obviously more user friendly so that doesn’t surprise me. The use of white space instead of token delimiters makes Python much more readable by default. You also don’t have to learn about pointers and manually resizing your arrays or accidentally writing to memory you shouldn’t, all major hurdles for beginner programmers in mid-level languages. And being an interpreted language makes Python much easier to debug.
I’ll just stop there, the list of reasons I love Python and never looked back is quite long…
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It was Pascal when I started learning. Not horrendous, but not exactly intuitive either.
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Hey, I believe I have heard this one, along with COBOL and FORTRAN 
Although the most low level language I know should be assembly.
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I started with C as well, back at my Junior High (though never became a professional of it).
I fully agree with you on that Python is much user friendly compared to those mid-level languages. But there are also other popular scripting languages out there, don’t they? Languages like Javascript, Go, Ruby, etc. I believe they are all developer friendly and easy for beginners to catch up, also coming with (at least most of) the features you described. So that makes me wonder what makes Python that special against other scripting languages.
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That’s a difficult question to answer objectively. I can tell you that coming from C, Python (which behind the curtains, is itself written in C) was an easy transition. I find the builtins to have more intuitive names and reasonably-familiar syntax. The classic Hello World script in Python is done with the “print” function, whereas Ruby uses “puts”, JavaScript uses “alert” etc. Print was just more natural to me, given my existing knowledge. Same goes for a lot of other keywords.
You also have to consider the languages as they exist in the world, not just on their own inherent merits. Python is very popular in the academic community AND with Google (YouTube itself is mostly built on Python), so there are some incredibly robust libraries available for everything from image processing to machine learning. I can’t overstate the value of these libraries.
I guess my best answer would be the snowball effect. Python is as good as any and better than most, which allowed it to build up a community, which makes it better, which builds the community, which makes it better…
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Thanks for all the information everyone! I’m glad pluralsight doesn’t ask for a credit card for signup then.
I also found the link to the “How to Think Like a Computer Scientist” e-book @BlivetWidget mentioned if anyone is interested.
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Nice explanation Blivet! Coming from C, I share the same feeling as you. Personally, I love to see Python growing bigger and bigger each day.
Just note that Javascript is the most popular language being used in the world, according to a survey done by SO.
I think that’s the result of the rapid growth of web development in recent years.
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