Stuck

I have like a game that I would love to make like everyone
but I can't make it .

The game is not massive but it's not small either.
But everytime I try to make a game it doesn't work.
I'm never fully motivated to work on it. There's always something
missing and I always think that this is not a game I like to make...

So what should I do?
Just work on that game and do what you can and
leave the rest for in the future?
Or take a while to think of a new game that is easier
and give up after a while (or not).
Or maybe something else?

 

You can do anything if you put your mind to it.

Gamedev is work. A person has to accept the burden of doing that work, the difficulty associated with it, and commit to learning what they don't know in order to achieve their goals. As challenges arise, your desire to reach that goal must be strong enough to motivate you to get through them. This applies to all facets of life.

 

It's been said here before, but the biggest "danger" to a hobbyist's work is their motivation.

The problem isn't the game idea (or it probably isn't). The problem is your motivation.

And there's no magic answer to finding motivation. A few things can help, such as talking about the game ideas on here with others and showing interested friends what you have. Both things might reveal new cool ideas you could incorporate (which might further increase your interest in what you're doing). Ultimately, however, as already mentioned - game development is work.

Writers say that they sit down, often for a scheduled time period every day, and write. Even if they don't feel like it. Just writing gets the "creative juices" flowing, gets you used to the idea that you're going to be working on something, so the motivation issue starts to go away.

I personally have never tried it, but I imagine doing something similar for game development would be helpful.

 

I have several medium sized projects "on hold" that I put months into and haven't yet come back to, so I understand how you feel. What I ended up doing was step back and tried to come up with the simplest game I thought I could complete within a few months time (but one I would still like to play - this is very important as you won't complete a game you wouldn't want to play) and get up on Steam, so I could walk through the whole process from beginning to end. No more unknowns along the way.

Doing that ended up being a big success for me. Not financially, but success in I started a project, got a working prototype, got feedback, iterated and then iterated some more, and got the finished product to market. It ended up taking more than double the time I had planned, but still it has been such a source of motivation now that I know I can do it. (Game is called Omega Reaction by the way if you want to look up what I'm talking about)

I'm about a year in and half done with a much larger sized project now, and the motivation from completing the first one is really what has been keeping me focused on this one. This game is really the one I have wanted to make for some time now, and I know I would be discouraged with the long development time if I hadn't completed the simple one.

Another thing that has helped is listening to The Debug Log podcast while I drive to and from work. Good podcast where they basically just talk about game dev topics.

 

Works for me. I don't necessarily have set times, but I do make sure that I build and maintain the habit of regularly working on my projects. I don't like more than one day to pass without progressing something in some tangible way. I'm disciplined enough about that now that I feel bad if I let it slip.

One thing which makes that significantly easier is having some project management in place. Even something as simple as a task list is a good start. Tasks on your list should individually be self explanatory and small enough to be completable in less than a day.

In addition to a task list I strongly recommend some kind of scope document at the very least, so that you can be agressive about culling tasks that don't help you finish the game. Don't just add every cool idea. Everything you add increases the total workload, and it's incredibly easy for newbies to get trapped adding work at a faster rate than they can complete it.

Between those two things - a good work habit and a little project management - even if you "don't feel like it" or you're suffering "creative block" or whatever, it's really easy to sit down, pick a thing from the list, and just do it. Don't leave it until tomorrow. Don't come up with excuses. Don't mess around on the forums instead. ;-) Pick a thing from your list, and work until it is done and you can take it off your list.

Which brings us right back to...

It can be fun work, and it can be a hobby as well, but getting games finished to a quality where other people will like playing them is almost always still work.

 

Maybe you rather have a game that you would like to have. If it was a game that you really like to make, then working on it shouldn't be a problem. It's a fine but important distinction that one needs to be honest about with themselves. I struggle with that as well. The thing I'm working on is what I want to have, but I'm not sure yet what the kind of game is, that I actually would most enjoy making. Maybe you can answer this for yourself if you think about it for a bit.


I'm generally interested in what people around here consider game types that give the best feedback loop on the development side. E.g. I think anything multiplayer must be terrible because you expend so much energy on technical/architectural requirements for stuff to even work in multiplayer, that you don't get the same kind of "reward" for, compared to e.g. when you add a new weapon or make something explode in a nicer way in a singleplayer game. Not talking from experience though...

I'm hoping that some improvements to the "gamedev feedback loop" could be beneficial to my own output.

 

The problem is kinda that I want to make a mulitplayer game... but I can't really do
that I've tried it alot but it just didn't really work.

And an other very big problem for my game is
I can't find any good character(or other models) for my game
https://forum.unity.com/threads/cant-find-assets-for-game.499568/

 

I think you have a lot of good advices in your post.
If I would add something it would be that it's also good to have someone to show your work to. For example if you have another member on your team, then the idea of wanting to contribute and show your work to that team mate might give you some extra motivation to continue working.

 

Yes, thanks for the help guys.
I'm just to shy to talk about it with someone since they don't know
that I like to make games. But I will now.

 

This is worth its own thread here in Game Design. I'd love to discuss it.

And, so much this. This (mainly the first, partially the second) can be applicable to every discipline.

To return to writing, it's also very common to make an outline of what one plans to say, which can help one collect their thoughts and build something well-designed (in addition to the aforementioned working on small, manageable steps).

Well-designed is important, because without it you can do a bunch of work in a direction that you ultimately end up scrapping, and that can be a killer for motivation.

Though, at the same time, it's very important not to get too caught up with designing something while avoiding working on it. Both are important.

OP, I haven't really looked at any of them, but it looks like there are a bunch of multiplayer tutorials here (https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials). You might give them a run through if you're having difficulty there.

 

Maybe it will help but I don't know anything about networking tbh, I also heard you need to pay alot too .

 

If you feel like you are constantly smashing your head against a brick wall, it might be time to put your dreams on hold and get serious about learning. Finish lots of tutorial projects, find somebody else that will let you help on their project.

Don't try to climb Everest before you even learn to hike. Learning should be challenging, but not so frustrating that it makes you want to give up. Keep the long view of things in mind.

 

Of course build what you want, but understand building a networked game will around triple your development time compared to a similar quality single player game. There will also be long stretches of development time spent on the back end where you won't be able to show the layman any visible progress to your game. This in itself can be discouraging, both from the perspective of the considerably longer development time and the feeling of general lack of progress (even when you're making big progress under the hood).

For those reasons I would suggest sticking to a single player game if you haven't gone through a complete game release before, and come back to your larger multiplayer game idea after you've experienced completing a project.

 

I'd also suggest doing that, in part because building single player games is hard enough as it is! There's no need to make your first project any harder than it has to be.

Honestly, I don't think I'd tackle a multiplayer game without my own network of computers at the very least, and preferable a team of human beings. The team isn't necessarily for the development part, though it'd be useful there too. It's because testing of network stuff requires multiple computers interacting, which explodes the amount of time required to test even simple things. Having additional people to operate additional computers while doing that testing seems important.

Also, automation. But having not done it before, I'm not sure how long it'd take to get to the point where you could realistically automate stuff for useful testing. For instance, an automated player is the same thing as a bot (AI player), which requires a while bunch of other stuff to be in place.

Back to basics... one of the biggest pieces of advice I can give for any game dev project is "get it playable ASAP, and keep it playable until you're finished".

 

Maybe I should search for a small team.

Cause mulitplayer is too hard I'll maybe make a coop game
that two players play on the same computer (turnbased).

 

Yeah, multiplayer games are almost never worth to develop as a single-person team; They require too much time and scope to be dealt with. I've figured out that hard way.

 

To be honest the mulitplayer is not the biggest issue, the biggest issue are the assets.

 

If that is the case, don't worry about the assets. You can use anything as a placeholder while you get the rest of your game built, and worry about collecting the assets for your game once it is all put together. By then you will likely have found something that works for you, or perhaps saved up some money to afford to buy something decent or hire somebody to make what you need.

Keep in mind, if you are trying to find quality stuff for cheap/free, it's going to be like Craigslist hunting. You have to stalk the webpage daily and be ready to spring at a moments notice (well, not really in this case because it's not like there is only one digital download.)

 

Developing something multiplayer takes about 2 times longer (or even more) than something that isn't (from my perspective). If you ok with extreme time consumption, that's ok then.

As for the assets - you don't need them up until you have to evaluate gameplay in terms of visual and audio quality. So making placeholders is more than enough.

 

MP length of time depends on your experience as a programmer. I have a lot of experience and I would say it is more time consuming than adding more visual assets, because the assets can be broken and they will still function, but MP will just keep on blocking progress.

 

I have unfinished projects from 5 ish years ago. I also released my first complete project after 5 ish years of jumping back and forth from game to game. Eventually, I started working on a simple project that eventually got done.

 

So I'm going to create a small browser game and than I am gonna get back to modding.