What do you find most frustrating about game development?

What is the #1 thing that annoys you about game development/3d art? Something that you want to learn perhaps, but find too difficult or complicated? Something that never works the way you want it to? Something that you think should be made way easier or faster? Please let me know. Thanks!

 

The swarms of adoring fans who swarm me whenever I try and write a line of code, preventing me from getting anything done.

 

No responses after 1 hour..does that mean there is nothing y'all find frustrating?

Edit: 1 response right as I posted this

 

That it takes so long to get good at something that is so unappreciated by so many.

 

Referencing variables from other objects. I understand the concept but after 12months I still can't do it right first time. Given this is fairly fundamental I dread what comes next

 

Just make everything static.

 

Tried that when I first started, boy did that cause issues as I tried doing levels & stuff

 

Personally, it's bugs that make absolutely no sense and cannot be reproduced consistently.

Of course, last night I wasted many, many hours trying to solve a bug that seemed absolutely impossible to me. Turns out it was because I had something as static that shouldn't have been.

Have to be careful with that 'static' word...

 

You could always isolate your use of static to some singletons with a special naming convention. That way, you can group static stuff conceptually and trace where you're using static with a simple Find in Files.

 

The parts where you seem to be going nowhere fast, although you know it's the most important part so you just gotta keep on going.

 

such as what parts?

 

A hack to get around an earlier hack? In my experience it's less effort in the long run to do things properly to begin with.

Actually, that's one of the frustrating bits: dealing with stuff that wasn't done properly the first time. And another frustrating bit is knowing that something isn't being done properly (there are valid reasons for this from time to time, such as time constraints), but that it's best to carry on anyway and deal with it later.

 

You can create a static collection of generic typed objects and implement a .Find method that takes a string and returns the object with a corresponding name. That's a hack on a hack on a hack.

 

I started programming my game with very little coding knowledge. As I learned more, it started becoming very clear to me how wrongly I was doing... well, pretty much everything.

So, at some point I tore it all down and started over. But I still use 'static' quite a bit for classes that only have 1 instance in the scene and, in my opinion, lend themselves well to it because they more or less are classes with utility functions.

However, sometimes I manage to seriously misuse it such as in last night's case. That was a class that had several instances.

So, I agree with angrypenguin when saying "dealing with stuff that wasn't done properly the first time" is quite frustrating.

 

Thinking about what HAS to be done. I am constantly planning stuff, sorting docs and ideas, writing down new ideas (so I don't have to remember things).

When I am working on A, I am thinking how this could and should fit to B, C, and D ..

And this... This describes my entire life. lol

 

I wonder if it's best to just stop using static in general.

 

Static is a big no no for most things. It's a fairly small practical use case.

The worst for me, is a bug that I can't reproduce under any circumstances, this is usually from a poor bug report. So in the end, bad bug reports.

 

Usual stuff, UV mapping / triggered animations, more meshes, UV mapping, code for animations, more UI actions for conversations, testing, performance etc. etc. tweaking rinse and repeat add salt / pepper until it's cooked.

The "groundwork", getting basic AI / level / health / UI / Char systems etc. is easy. It's having the will to organically grow it into a game you can't walk through in less than 10 minutes without it becoming boring.

 

Yes, aside from some small use cases like the singleton pattern or where it makes sense, it's not the lazy way to reference.

 

I've been at this for quite some time, and this still happens to me. I think it's a good sign because it means we're still learning and improving.

It used to frustrate me a lot, but then I realized that as long as I'm getting the job done it's ok for the back end to be less than perfect as long as I am improving over time. With that attitude I'm more comfortable with what I do, less harsh on myself when I look back and think "what the heck was I thinking?", and generally more pleased with things I do.

 

Pretty much. Static is for things that are static. As in they don't change as you vary the circumstances your code operates in.

Great for constant stuff, like Vector3.forward. Great for stateless helper methods, like Mathf.Max. It becomes generally less and less useful as you start to use static to get a reference to things that really are instances. Singletons can lead to some crazy code tangles if you are not careful.

 

As can any form of global state. (Haven't read that StackExchange thread, but I have faith. )

 

Your faith is justified. I actually learnt a few things there. Previously my response to global state was. "Don't use it because its bad, every time I use global state I get burnt". Now I have a why to add to that.

 

Yeah, I had a bit of a read too, it's good stuff. And yeah, the "why" is important, because even if something is generally bad doesn't mean there are no cases for its use, and understanding they why equips you to evaluate specific cases for yourself.

 

This thread seems very technical

Really the first thing, that came to my mind after reading the title was: That I am not and never will be notch.
(My) lack of professionalism I guess..

 

I guess everything.... but programming is number 1.

 

No harm in switching careers.

 

I guess there is not one single game dev on earth, who is not in a more or less solid love-hate-relationship with his hobby or job. not one.

 

Game dev is my hobby .... Not a career
I have already decided to stay away from programming, but rather pay someone else to do it for me... Problem solved..

 

When i spend days or even weeks trying to fix a really annoying bug in the code and then figure out that the problem were these simple 1-3 lines of code that totally make sense once i find out what's the problem. Sometimes it doesn't even make sense. Happened twice this month and spent a lot of time trying to fix it.
But i guess i could say that's more of a programming thing than game development specific thing

Another thing is when you make such complex systems behind the scenes, that the user will never know the complexity of, and they think it was something like plug-&-play that's very simple to do. It's not frustrating but kinda sad for us programmers
The same applies for other positions like art, sound, design, etc

 

Time.... lack of time. And deadlines that won't allow you to do things as well as you wish them to be.
Other than that its just fun for me

 

Having no idea what I'm doing code wise. I more or less just slam my forehead on the keyboard until something works.

Apart from that it would be whenever I get a feature done, I spend more time cocking about with it that I could spend doing something else. But through this I did manage to turn a turret enemy into a laser-guided-missile-guided-laser

 

Has to be re-doing stuff. And going through old code. In the perfect world things should only be done once and then forgotten for eternity.

 

How expensive is to get decent looking assets and how hard is to get anything done while keeping a day job.

 

That i am not a better artist.

 

I don't find very many things frustrating, but there is one thing that is without a doubt the most frustrating thing for me, far above anything that could be in second place: Documentation.

More specifically, bad documentation.

I remember when I tried to implement various Lua C++ Bindings into my custom game engine. The documentation was so incredibly awful or non-existent that it literally was easier to create my own C++ Bindings than to figure out theirs.

Maybe my skills at reading documentation is bad, or maybe my brain is just wired very differently, but can any of you make sense of this crap? It hurts my eyes just trying to read this horribly formatted crap. I even went through highly reviewed books that teach you how to do this, such as Game Coding Complete which uses LuaPlus. In that book, it all made a lot of sense and was clearly explained. However, I have absolutely no idea how they understood it in the first place. (GCC's explanation makes sense. LuaPlus' documentation and tutorials out there are horrendously bad. It's like a huge gap between the two. And LuaPlus was one of the better C++ bindings. You don't even want to click on the other options.) Apparently though, I am not alone in this thinking.

Same goes for some of the less popular third party assets in the asset store, uncommented or horribly commented code, reading anyone's code (except for the rare instance where they comment extraordinarily well or thoroughly), etc.

For example, this is my biggest complaint of UNET and why I hate it.

However there are many highly reviewed assets that are incredibly well documented. They take time to understand, but are a very easy to understand, very thorough in documentation, and reading their docs don't make your eyes bleed. Those are not at all frustrating in any way.

Anytime I deal with other people's stuff and it's not properly documented, I have significant frustration and hours (usually around 9 hours) drain from my life- sometimes ending with me getting it, sometimes ending with me quiting entirely and thus wasting that time on top of the time it takes me to do it myself ANYWAY. Ugh!

Nothing is more frustrating than other people's works. This applies to why I got into game development too. I get frustrated just playing many developer's (finished) games. Whether AAA or indie, it doesn't seem to matter. It's probably one of the biggest reasons, if not THE reason, I got into game development in the first place. Frustration when playing a game and thinking, "Why the hell didn't they do THIS?" or "Why did they do THAT?" or "What were they thinking?!" or "This has so much potential, but they ruined it by..."

 

That so called last 10% of a game which takes just as bloody long as the previous 90%.

 

Replace game with every project ever and you've got it spot on.

 

IK controls are not included in fbx. If they were - importing fbx and making edits to animations - regardless of which software application they originated from would be so much easier.

 

lol hilarious and accurate. This is one of my tuffest things, sticking to and finishing one thing when I'm constantly bombarded with new ideas, new possibilities, and making progressing past whatever it was that inspired me to begin with, such that the project now seems old and uninteresting. The changes in ME move faster than the changes in the project.

Another big hurdle is making graphical content.

And the other big one I think is just how offputting it is to know how much you have got left to do and how long it's going to take to do it.

Oh and, like, when you have this idea/vision which is great and then it comes to implementing it and you do so, then you discover there are these nagging little quirks and silly technical problems, which suddenly makes it seem like pulling teeth to try to get it to do what you want, and you end up spending most of your time bogged down in these annoying details because the system just won't work the way you want it to.

 

The hardest thing for me is finding the motivation to get anything done at all. Let me know when you put something on the assetstore that fixes that!

That's comforting, I feel a little less alone now.

 

Basically what @imaginaryhuman said: wrestling with bugs. Things that should be easy end up being a nightmare because the underlying engine/framework just does not work as expected. Ends up causing more time to be spent just to make things work (period!) or the way I wanted.

Beyond that there is always the matter of time. Specifically the lack of it. I get around that to some degree by hiring out work to artists from time to time. But then I end up waiting a week or two for them to finish a batch of work. Graphics just take way too long no matter who is doing them. So then I end up going back to my quick n easy 5 minute drawings.

 

The worst thing I hate about game dev is my brain.
I come up with good idea, then randomly I come up with another new idea, over and over and over and over again, it's a never ending process. It happens every single time.

 

Maybe what you need to do is what I consider more as time passes. Just be the "idea guy". Hire people for every aspect of building the game. Hire more contractors to build the marketing infrastructure. Just hire, hire, hire. lol

I am at the point where I am going to start looking for more artists to hire because I am tired of the graphics being such a bottleneck. The artists are great and really they are working quickly it's just that even quick art takes an artist some time. And a game needs so much of it.

It's like this weekend is the Monkey X NES Game Jam. I've thought about participating in that. Then I think about the limited time I'd have for it and the time needed to do the graphics and my interest is basically gone. If I had about 10 artists I could probably hire 3 to 4 of them to knock out the graphics starting tonight while I jump on the game dev.

That might be another way you could do it. Not sure if the graphics or something else is the bottleneck for you. Maybe hire some artists. Or if it the programming hire some programmers. Then you might be able to complete the games quick enough to take advantage of some of your other ideas.

 

It's no so much that I have trouble with anything, I just get bored. That or taking a Risk.
I want to take risks, but I don't want to do a failed Risk either.

So many of my games would be complete if it wasn't for fear of failure.
It's one thing I just haven't gotten past dealing with yet is (fear).
So once I start to even slightly get scared, I'll dub the idea and go to the next.

I still plan on making The Abductee, haven't gotten scared from that one yet lol.

But I can't be the idea guy, I can't stand working with other people. In my head I know exactly what I want to make, how to make it and how long I know it will take to make it. I don't have the time to explain to others what I already know I can do my self in the same time it would take to explain to them how I want it done lol.

 

Ha ha! Yeah I get that. It is how I feel about the software engineering part. Especially at work (not now but in previous companies) I'd get annoyed that same way. In the time it took to explain to someone what to do, how to do it I could have just done it. But I looked at it as just an investment. Take that time now (and more time every week to answer questions) and eventually it will pay off down the road.

But I do get what you are saying. Once I was in meetings where all of these people (some dev team and many biz suit people) were discussing building something. After several meetings of that stuff with no decisions made I took the best points from the meetings and one afternoon knocked it out. There the damn thing is done. lol

 

Hahaha That's how ya get it done lol.

 

As others said, the lack of time. When i finally have some time its just too late to start coding again.
Also +1 to @CarterG81 with the documentations and lack of it. I cant work with uncommented code. Sometimes you need more time to understand it than what it will take to write it from 0.

 

The fact that I can spend ages working on and playing my game, improving it as I go and when I show it to someone else they have to be taught how to play and find all these bugs that I wasn't finding?!

And they don't realise that those red capsules are an evil horde and the green ones are friendly troops helping them out!