Why am I so fed up with this project??

LOL, I agree! You should stop trying to explain it to me. Honestly I don't even get how what you said relates to the initial discussion.

Except for that, right there, that's where we differ.

There seems to be this notion when you begin learning anything, that it's easy for those who have been doing it for a long time.

If I wanted to learn piano today, I know I would struggle playing the simplest tunes. And if I didn't know better, I could believe someone experienced wouldn't find it so tedious.
But I know people who play piano professionally, and I can assure you, it gets even harder, not easier. Constant practice is required, playing same thing over and over and over. A piano player doesn't just show up at a concert, it requires weeks/months of practice beforehand.

That's why no one should feel discouraged because something feels tedious. If you don't learn to enjoy now, you wont enjoy it later. So best is to take the drama away, it looks bad? Keep trying! It's gonna look great soon enough.

 

We might say the two of you are in violent agreement!
Gigi

 

Hahah, classic case of two people arguing each other about completely unrelated things. I read it over and frankly it's like a collage of different conversations put together, even though many of Neginfinity points are very agreeable on their own.

Neginfinity, lets agree to disagree, and act casual, before.... the hippo arrives :-0

*jaws theme*

 

You know, that's literally the worst example you could've picked, because I play piano.

The reason for the disagreement is because the whole "you'll never reach perfection" sounds to me like people trying to convince themselves that something they want to do is, ultimately, very far away and unachievable. Like, you know, getting to the moon using a ladder.

While, in reality, most of the skills can be mastered in few years or SIGNIFICANTLY improved in few months. So, that place where you're good enough to implement whatever you had in your mind is not on the moon, but on 20th floor of nearby house, except the elevator isn't working.

Either way, I'll just drop the subject.

 

Unrelated? Or simply different ways to approach the situation? Your responses strike me as the viewpoint of a hobbyist developer who is more concerned with pursuing their interests than having a completed project. His come across as a professional's viewpoint of getting a project completed and to market. Both are correct in my opinion.

 

Of course the viewpoint is from a hobbbyist, because that's the topic of the thread.

If this was about a paid project, and Brainee had a deadline, then yes... it would be related.

Not the case, though.

All your life, professionally? Teaching, playing concerts? Working super hard for scholarships? Saving money to learn overseas what you can't learn in local institutions? Trust me, it's long hours, not for everyone.

The moment you decide to get better, you'll have to work hard. Doesn't matter if you started today, or long ago.

Especially in game development. Lets say I learn to make a simple platformer. Once I learn that, it'd be very easy to reskin it. Over and over. But that would be like paperwork. It would be as bad, if not worse than feeling overwhelmed, or unsatisfied with the result of a project. At some point, you'll want to set yourself a new challenge, and when you do, the headaches will come back, but also the fun. Frustration does not mean you're not cut out for it, it means you're on the right track to get better.

 

This. This pretty much sums up the difference between a good and bad attitude after a burnout.

As a someone who has started a lot of projects over a few years and managed to learn an incredible amount without ever releasing a worthwhile game, I hope that my input is of value.

Everything becomes easier when other people are involved. I don't necessarily mean involved as in partners or having anywhere near the same input as you, but simply having eyes on your project makes you want to show the best of your capabilites. I've spent far more time on my asset store models than I had patience to spend on models for my own game. The fear that my space combat starter kit that I hope to release soon will not be good enough to other people has made me scutinize every line of my programming and write and re-write and re-architect and comment and read endless amounts of programming 'best practices' books. The moment that anyone has a chance of seeing your project, you will work hard to show what you're capable of.

A few months ago, as someone who had been living off my savings for quite a while and spent too long on my own, I had a burnout and became a bit down on myself after starting a project that I was not ready for and realizing it. Since I'd always wanted to make a start on freelancing, I decided to have a go making 3D models at Fiverr.com (don't, just don't, unless you can make a game model in 5 minutes). I spent the next month or so dealing with what could only be termed 'low-quality customers' and making an insanely low return on investment. However, it was exactly what I needed. I realized that making 3D models didn't need to be hours and hours of tweaking and vertex pushing, that I could set a reasonable standard and hit it first time (or nearly so). I stopped being obsessive and developed a more objective view of my art. Since art was often a bottleneck for my projects due to being obsessive about tweaking it, this has helped me immensely. And the reason for it was that I learned to see my art from the point of view of my customer, to make art for a game/product, and not art for art's sake.

So my suggestion would be to start a WIP thread with whatever game you decide to work on. And (this is very important) don't present it as if you're presenting to your peers. Present as if you were presenting to your customer, your player, your paying customer. People who don't owe you any warm/fuzzy feelings, whose admiration and positive feedback you need to constantly fight for by making things the best you can be. Don't waffle, show clear progress, work on your presentation, and learn to be comfortable with the business side of games. Funnily enough, a good business-like attitude seems to work well in all aspects of life.

 

Hallelujah! I wish more artists would reach this point especially ones doing paid freelance work. There really is a difference between obsessing over every little detail spending ages to do the most basic things as most artists love to do because, as you stated, they are obsessed with the art form itself. That is their focus not in actually making an object for a game. Just do a good job get the damn thing done & delivered.

Great stuff!

 

Exactly. You know, like how George Lucas f*cked up Star Wars so many times.

It's a good idea to spend time creating a test harness for your individual systems. Game programmers who have not yet experienced emergent gameplay via non-deterministic behaviors like some AI systems can do, don't see a need to develop isolated tests for these systems.

More experienced game programmers realize that there's a lot of test code that eventually gets ripped out (or thrown on the cutting room floor, as a couple of other industries would put it). There's quite a lot of "scaffolding" code that is put into place to get game systems working properly, and this is apart from the various pipeline tools and editors.

Having said that, the realization that such a system needs to be built can sometimes make your heart sink, thinking that, "Sh*t, I didn't think of that before, now it's going to cost me another few weeks to create this, just to support that", and the discouragement sits in. When, in fact, the true game developer will not see it as a setback, but will soldier on, and implement what needs to be implemented, while still keeping sight on the goal, and making sure that the goal is still worth pursuing.

A mind hack you can use here, is that, your project has sh*t-tons of stuff to be done to be called finished. Approach development of the game from another angle, and work on that, while you plan out the areas that have you blocked. The idea is, by the time you are finished with the tasks you know have to be done and are clearly defined, you will have had a solid plan in place for the area that you were blocked on, and execute that plan without any second thoughts, because you had already planned it out. Rinse, repeat.

Another mind hack: Don't feel like you've wasted your time and effort on a project that won't see the light of day, either because there's just too much work, or you don't feel that it's going in the right direction. You can ALWAYS take away the experience, good or bad. Whatever programming experience you've gained, you will be much faster doing it next time around, or better yet, if you've engineered your code properly, you can take some systems wholesale into other projects, and save you lots of future time.

 

I had to put my own project on the shelf for about a year before really coming back to it, and ramping the remaining team back has been slow going. Sometimes you just need to put something on the shelf and do something else for a while. I've found that sometimes the best ideas for something come full circle when you've stopped looking at it for a while.

 

Dogzer is right. Basically, there isn't a ceiling to anything, you just are able to reach higher, and that isn't easier.

 

If that was the case then Unity would find it incredibly easy to ship a bug free product. It's not the case, it just means you can tackle more. It does not make an easy task ANY easier.

 

I'm talking purely in terms of motivation, and in regards to devs who don't work in the industry, which I think possibly accounts for quite a lot of us due to Unity being so accessible. It seems to me that a lot of us don't have much collaboration or even communication with other developers, at least I don't where I live. So our projects live and die with the fluctuations of our motivation and ability to work consistently on stuff in our spare time. I think the WIP thread is a great way to motivate yourself by putting yourself in front of other people's eyes, people who have some ability to judge the quality of your work.

 

It's definitely down to personality too. I have zero desire to show people my work until it's done, I just don't require the motivational aspect. If anything, it drags me down I guess. So I would imagine it's more an individual thing.

 

Hmm... maybe that explains it for me as well. On one hand I know it is good to get some feedback yet at same time it's mainly always feedback on things I already know needs to be done and plan to do. So in that regard it definitely makes more sense to just do every single thing you already know is needed first and only then throw it out for public scrutiny.

 

Actually I think you're looking at it from the perspective of someone who (it seems to me) has had a lot of experience and success in this industry. A lot of people here (it seems to me) don't even work in the games industry and have downloaded Unity and tinker with it in their spare time, and likely haven't even shown their work to anyone. I think it would be incredibly helpful at this point for them to start getting eyes on their work and getting some feedback from more experienced people.

I consider myself to be somewhere in between, in that I could probably get a job in the industry at this point but still haven't done that or produced a game on my own. Yet I have sold some stuff on the Asset Store, and spent enough time on the forums both looking at other people's work and showing off my own, to realize that I'm not all that bad. But sometimes when I'm on my own, working away without pay or the company of other devs, I feel totally disconnected and start wondering what I'm doing here, and I have nothing really to motivate myself with in terms of accolades or accomplishments or even feedback unless I make an effort to show off my work online.

If I was making enough money to live on or worked in the industry I probably would have so much implicit/explicit feedback from people around me that I would not even think if it being an important thing. But working on your own for hours every night sometimes motivation is a little hard to find, especially when you haven't finished something yet.

 

Very valuable @Billy4184 - as someone - on a personal (indie) not professional (employed artist) level, who seems to be on a very similar track you have followed.
Thanks for your insight.