Just need to vent here...

I love games, I always have ever since I was a kid! I've always always wanted to create them and every time I try to, I just seem to fail, not because I can't be bothered or give up it's just that I'm just not a code-minded guru like many others and I find it terribly frustrating, all I want to do is just have the freedom to create and implement things on the fly however I get so distracted waisting afternoon upon afternoon trying to understand how-the-frack I can i.e. get a character to wave and tell me 'hello world"!! Garrr!! It's so frustrating! I'm so keen to learn but living in a small town where Unity is just not on anyones radar makes it so difficult to learn as i just don't have anyone to help me correct my mistakes!!


Do others feel like this?

...rant over...

 

My biggest problem is the fact that I tunnelvision. A lot. I will typically overcomplicate a problem before realizing there are much more consolidated solutions.

Basically, I tend to re-invent the wheel a lot without really intending to do so. As a result, I force myself to study documentation and practice using other methods and practice understanding the use cases of each method so I wont tunnelvision as much as I normally do.

 

I find getting in the shower and just sitting there to relax helps figure problems out LOL.

I get so stressed sometimes I feel like my heads gonna explode, I get in the Shower and magically the answer is right there lol.

 

...*strips off, leaves trail of clothes down the hallway, sobs quietly*

 

I just swear openly and break into a cold sweat while overindulging in carb rich foods. Although tonight I decided to move from the kitchen table to the kitchen island and standing up somehow affected my mood positively. Just gotta stay frosty.

 

I'm of the opinion that everyone is capable of be successful at programming. I think it's more about perspective than anything else. The answer may come much more easily if you look at a problem through one perspective instead of another. Fortunately, humans are quite capable of shifting perspective. That just requires that you keep learning and keep trying to approach the problem in different ways. The more you know, the more tools you'll have at your disposal. And one of them might just be the right tool.

Also, it often is best to walk away from a problem and relax for a bit if you're absolutely stuck and getting no where. The brain operates under two modes, in a sense. There's the focused mode and the diffuse mode. It's important to know that even if you're not thinking about a problem consciously, your brain is processing what you took in and is doing work on that problem outside of your awareness.

To explain the modes, I'll use an analogy I learned from a college course I took about learning. Think of the brain like a pinball machine. And let's assume that the solution to our problem is somewhere on that pinball board. In focused mode, the bumpers and obstacles are very numerous, tightly packed together. It's sometimes quite hard for that ball to reach the solution. Think of the ball like your train of thought, and you're trying to get to the solution. But if you're focusing in the wrong area, it's going to be really hard to get to that solution.

In diffuse mode, the bumpers and obstacles are far fewer, and there's a lot more space for the ball to move around. This is when you're relaxed and your mind is off the topic. The ball has a higher chance of hitting that solution, or at least being somewhere where, when you go back into focused mode again upon returning from break, it's near the solution now and you'll be able to handle it.

That is why it seems like walking away from a problem for a bit really does help solve it.

As for getting help... well, I'm in the same boat from a real life perspective. I basically live out in a forest where there is no civilization whatsoever. All the help I've gotten has been online.

Sometimes it makes me wonder if I'm programming things in a 'quality' way or if I'm approaching it all wrongly. I trust that as I keep learning, I'll keep getting better!

In the end, though, it takes a lot of effort. Lots of learning, lots of practicing, lots of taking criticism, and lots of mistakes. But you get there eventually.

Oh, yeah, also, sleep well. Your brain creates toxic byproducts as it runs, and these interfere with its functioning. When you sleep, one of the key jobs for the brain is flushing out these byproducts. This is partially why sleep is so important, and you'll actually die if you don't sleep for a certain period of time. No all-nighters!

 

Hey Jason! Thanks for the encouragement! I really do think you are right with what you are saying, sometimes the answer will come to you while laying in bed at 3am in the morning and you get that Eureka moment. Perhaps i just get way too frustrated way too quickly and Maybe i get disheartened when i look on the internet and there are all these awesome programmers that just seem to know it all and i think to myself that ill never be able to get to that level. Ive been trying for a while now just allowing myself to play in unity pretty much every day to get myself familiarised and allow myself to make mistakes etc. At the heart of it, i just want to create and hate when i waste soooo much time on one silly little problem that could be fixed and understood in a heartbeat if i had someone beside me teaching me. I sometimes feel guilty asking people online for actual snippets of code but thats sometimes the only way to learn and put together the pieces. I'm sure it will get much easier (i hope) just gotta keep going at it until the day they develop Unity 7000 where it practically guides you through everything without code and i can concentrate on actual design

 

One of my game design professors suggests making a card game out of your idea first. The interactions that come from that might help guide the coding while you focus on design.

 

My lack of skills definitely killed my creativity over the years. Before I started in Unity my imagination and creativity were running wild, and I had the awesomest game ideas and stories and mechanics in mind, but then as I started scripting I started hitting bumps, and roadblocks, and dead ends, and limiting my imagination to what I can actually do at that level. So over these 3 years since I first started scripting, my brain switched from designing based on my awesome imagination and making it fit that, to what I can actually do, and making it fit that. Thus killing my creativity, and now its so hard to imagine anything, especially new or original, without my brain hitting the breaks and telling me I can't do that atm. So I sort of have a major block. xD

That's definitely an interesting take on tackling this.

 

Limitations shouldn't be the end of your creative cycle. True creativity is born out of spite for limitations. Children take a cardboard box and make it into a rocket ship, a race car and a castle. Adults are given an internet full of resources and say that we have nothing to work with. As a person who had his imagination die for several years I can definitely tell you that creativity must be carefully kindled, fueled by a wealth of sources of inspiration and not suffocated by putting too much pressure on it. I make a lot of jabs at people who wax philosophical over rather technical issues that are best approached without emotion, but when it comes to creative power you really can't take it by force, you have to let it give itself to you.

The best thing you can ever do to start regaining your creative power is to eliminate this phrase from your vocabulary:

"No, that's not a good idea, because..."

The moment you think these words, creativity runs away and hides.

I would also add that some of the most inventive games over the last several years have been remarkably simple. If you can't think simple because you absolutely must have certain things... again... stop saying, "No, that's not a good idea, because..." and start saying, "Hmm. I wonder..."

 

Good stuff guys! I'm feeling much more positive about learning after hearing your comments

 

I can relate to you. If not for stupid camera issue that I can't seem to figure out even though most of the script was basically written for me (based on the script from wiki), I've could already move to other stuff like building levels or implementing enemies/other obstacles.

 

This is just some advice, but I find that when I study in advance, trying to learn everything there is before I begin, it's still hard.

So, you shouldn't be copying from wikis you should be modifying example code to get a feel for what does what and how things work.

Getting by just barely understanding enough to be functional is too hard and frustrating

 

Maybe it is, but I've tried to do proper TPP camera for months before asking those questions. Watched countless tutorials about the subject and either person who did a tutorial was so boring that it felt like someone forced them to do so, described things that other people described simply in so over the top fashion that my head hurt, a lot or relied on commands that are no longer in Unity.

So I did the only logical think I could, asked question and got pointed to that script, then made question above after trying literally everything (that I could think of) to do it on my own with only semi-success.

 

For what it's worth... Ive used 5,432 words of my swear word vocabulary just this afternoon...

 

For the best absolute must watch set of design pattern videos go to youtube and type Design Patterns... By Derek Banas. These will give you the foundation and conceptual design patterns to build almost anything you can imagine. They are extremely well presented and pretty much start at the beginning, yet even a veteran game developer would likely learn a ton of new stuff.

This is the link if it lets me post it.

There are about 27 videos altogether. Make sure you have the first 2 down solid before moving on to the rest. Then you can watch in pretty much any order.

I've been an enterprise developer for years so for me Unity came easy and I went to building games fast. But the above videos took me from just getting by to really putting together full game systems and getting the confidence I can build just about anything. Don't expect to just watch them once and get it. If you are not code minded it will take longer. I've got 30 years of programming experience and I still have something to learn from more than half of them in the list.

It is a real gem of a series and must watch for any aspiring game developer.

 

Thanks so much for the link, looks like I've got a few good nights of watching under my belt

 

Yeah limitations shouldn't be the end of my creative cycle, but that's what was happening since I started making games, and I didn't notice until recently. And now I can't think without my brain going "No, that's not a good idea, because..." and shutting down the imagination. I'm trying to force it by actually wondering hard what I want, instead of what I can, and then trying to achieve it. Even tho imagination and creativity used to be easy for me, now its hard because of how I was thinking for the last 2-3 years. Completely inverted my way of thinking. xD

Anyway my greatest scripting adversaries are pathfinding, and marching cubes, or any other mesh modification. I keep going back to the two every few months or so and frustratingly fail every time. I can't even make a simple version of those two things. And I need at least some simple pathfinding for some assets I wish to include it in, but can't because I can not do it. I understand it perfectly, but don't know how to implement it...

 

WizardGameDev I'll see your Design Patterns and raise you Game Programming Gems.

Not sure if this will help you make an implementation for your needs, but I found this video extremely helpful for my needs of making a basic pathfinding system.

 

pff, a video? check out this simple image I made to demonstrate pathfinding.

 

The best thing to realise is that even those with experience still don't think they have a clue what to do.

 

My son started programming by using Playmaker. It is sort of cheating but it allowed him to work quickly and get his ideas together. He will be transferring to a 4 year college program in software development in the fall and his teachers say he is a gifted programmer. He is still very creative and has great ideas which I think make programming more fun for him. You need to be able to get your simple ideas implemented to get the rewards. That should help to keep you motivated.

 

I went through that vid once, and fully understand it up until the coding part. I guess I'll have another go at it.

lol thanks, but I understand the concept and how it works, just not the implementation. I can see code examples but not understand them.

Yeah I keep forgetting that. But their knowledge is still worlds apart from us beginners, and our problems are a breeze to them.

 

@ChrisSch
I learned pathfinding from writing a simple A* program for finding the shortest route between nodes in a map. Maybe you could start there. Don't worry about 3D or 2D or whatever, make a drawing like so:

and then give those paths some costs and intuitively using your own human brain, figure out the shortest path between a few of them. Then translate the algorithm your brain used into steps a computer can execute. I recommend having a node class to represent the above doodle.

Code (CSharp):

1. class Node
2. {
3.     Node[] connected_nodes;
4.     int[] cost;/*parallel array to connected_nodes*/
5.     String name; /*this node*/
6.     int id;/*alternative to name*/
7. }

 

The shortest path to muffins! I like it! =)

Hopefully they're either double-chocolate chocolate chip muffins, orange muffins or blueberry muffins... any other kinds and I wouldn't bother with the shortest path to them XP

 

Haha thanks. You wouldn't believe how much (and how effectively) I tutor people with drawings xD

 

Impressive. I can tell that you really "get it". A person can ramble on spewing buzzwords and other academic rhetoric. Little value in it other than trying to sound ed-er-ca-tated. As Einstein said "if you cannot explain it to a 6-year old you do not understand it yourself."

 

Thanks, I doodle at a college grade level, heh Einstein knew the value of doodles!

Starting with A* is great because then you understand right away, the problem isn't path finding... the problem is laying out the path

And that should be no surprise to people. Look how old starcraft 1 is, and it has path finding down to a point where you can make your own maps and dynamically alter geometry (with buildings and such) and the ai rarely gets lost and it never slows the game down.

Remember your christmas thread asking what people are working on? I'm still on the same project, and the current task is having the ai project it's own minigrid of an area for pathfinding, so it can *nom the player to death.

*Nom - current gen buzzword

 

BTW, A* is the way to go for basic path finding... pretty much plug and play systems are available.