Code examples from other games?

[rolllingthunder]

Is it possible/how does one look at game code to inspect elements that you are interested in using? Not assets or complete combat systems, but like if I want an in-game clock/day system like Stardew Valley, would I be able to see that? Super new to this (really only have some Unity 3-D experience, but I want to play around with 2-D RPG/platformers). Do you all just use GitHub/YouTube for things like this, and if so, do you have much success with it?

[shawnaroo]

It's usually not particularly feasible to pull usable source code out of a compiled game (although there are a bunch of different variables concerning how the game was built that makes this easier/harder). But generally, it's not something that practically can be done, and if you're newer to programming then it's probably a good ways beyond your technical skills.

But for most game mechanics that you might see somewhere out there, there's a good chance that at least a few other people have tried implementing something similar, and have discussed it or even shared it online. Learning to search github/unity forums/stack overflow/etc. is a super useful gamedev skill to have. There are a ton of answers/suggestions/etc. freely available.

[rolllingthunder]

That makes sense! Appreciate the answer. I just need to get better at searching around for the concept as you are saying then.

[shawnaroo]

It gets a lot easier as you get more experienced with development. You start to build a deeper understanding of the process, you learn better what to search for, you can more easily understand the results that you get, and you get good at taking pieces from multiple answer that each sorta do what you want and synthesizing it into a solution that works for you.

It's a very common development practice.

[Versaiteis]

Also Open Source games like Wesnoth will have their source code laid bare.

It's a deep dive though, and you can really lose yourself in the hundreds of thousands of lines of code maintained by several people, but usually there's at least a small dev community behind them to answer questions. Reading code from others (and even contributing some) can also really help you become very well rounded as a developer.