My thoughts and pains as a new game developer - doubt this will be read

Early Planet Mockup - Context for this at the end

So I guess this is my first reddit post. And probably not the last. I'm doing this to explain write about my experiences (creating my first, second and third game - the latter being made currently) . It began last year, in around September- October, I decided I was going to make my first game in Unity using C++. The game sucked, I didn't understand how to model objects (so I used free ones from the vast marketplace) but these were mismatched and ugly. The game had a lot of particles, so it was very laggy, and I didn't understand how to change directions of objects to face away or towards other objects which made it so I couldn't ever create a flame projectile that went away from the player (which was a capsule by the way).

The real problem was that I thought the game would give me happiness to see it completed or progressing. Inside however I had an ulterior motive, money. Never make your first game for money, it just doesn't work. I spent around 40 hours on that game before I stopped (excluding time investment learning how to code). One of the reasons for the blockage in the game developing was the fact that my motivation to create something was not enough, I needed a sort of constant pressure to keep on going and a resolve that even if you fail, you need to stand back up. I didn't have that. The nail in the coffin for that project was that I had forgot to backup the file and accidentally deleted it. That's my first experience done. Lesson to be learned, buy a large external ssd or thumb drive and make sure that your game is backed up at least once a day.

So lets think about my second game, the one I started developing at the start of the year and decided to stop working on last month. This game was an fps, I had learned about various modelling techniques and for some inexplicable reason believed the overstaturated fps genre needed a western style shooter, rpg mix. This time I also had help in the 3d modelling department and was using blueprints as they were the best way to go for someone who doesn't understand coding very well. However, the mechanics were the same as many other point and shoot style games. Yeah, no one needed that. But that 2nd game taught me a lot about UE4 and its blueprint system and I yearned to create something unique. Also I had everything backed up onto a hard drive this time. Note this game took around 500 hours to arrive at a sort of mediocre stage.

This is where my 3rd and current game comes in. I don't want to talk a lot about the mechanics and concept for fear of it being stolen. However I can say it is a space genre, beautifully shaded, low poly game which will most likely be coming to kickstarter soon to fund its publication fees and other development costs. I adore what I'm designing and the art style is something that I wish was in more games. I have ran into some problems, and the atmosphere (in ue4) looks like its made of hexagons (albeit artistic ones) but the main planet (earth) is beautiful as seen in the rendered mockup (not the final version for ue4 of course).

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EDIT: By 40 hours, I am excluding time learning the actual coding language (moderately well) which was a far longer process. Thanks to _pixelRaven_ for spotting that and catching me on it (would have made my post slightly less accurate otherwise).

Submitted July 20, 2019 at 06:06PM by TheGameDevException https://ift.tt/2LyN0BN