Overcoming Game Development Challenges: A Journey of Focus, Efficiency, and Growth

So I haven't done any gamedev in quite a while and recently I got an opportunity in the form of having a lot of free time due to not being able to find a job. So I decided to break out my old friend Godot. My problem in the past was never being able to complete a project for various reasons. 

Tackling Feature Creep

One of the biggest reasons being the inevitable feature creep that would come as soon as I would think of a concept for a game. I would write down pages of cool things I wanted to be in the game but once it came time to implement them it got too complicated too fast and I got discouraged. 

Leveraging Existing Assets

Another reason was wanting to make everything from scratch instead of using something already made. Art, music sound effects, code libraries all with very generous licenses were right there but I just ignored them. I was better than that, or so I thought. It turns out even tho I may be capable of creating all these aspects of gave development by myself, if I actually wanted them all to be decent quality the amount of time needed to develop these skills would be  prohibitive and excessive for the simple games I was trying to make. 

Defying Perfectionism

And the other major reason was just good old fashioned perfectionism. I kept getting hung up on small insignificant details that wouldn't have really mattered in the grand scheme of the game but I just had to make everything immaculate for some reason. Maybe I'm afraid of failure and if I never finish a game then I can never have a game that no one likes. I'm sure you can see the holes in that reasoning but my subconscious isn't that smart apparently. 

So how did I solves all these problems you ask? Hahaha well...

Progress and Learnings

I started a new project and it's been going well so far. I've caught myself falling into old habits a few times but I've been able to snap myself out of it. I think I've gotten further along in this project's development than I have in any other project so far, so fingers crossed. I've also been focusing a lot less on other aspects of game development like social media. I've mainly just been coding. I think it might be easier for me to just focus on one thing for a while instead of doing a little of everything every day. 

I have learned a bit about ui/ux design and I might make a separate post about that stuff later cuz it's something I've enjoyed researching. 

I've also learned about the mobile app ecosystem and why it's terrible for small developers right now. Good thing I decided my first ever game was going to be mobile exclusive lol. 

So anyway, here's hopping that this project will one day become a real boy and see the light of day.