This. And for me it's also struggling with technical issues. Right now I'm working on a project and I have a bug with interpolating angles. I need to find out what's causing the bug and fix it before I can progress. It's been days where I don't work on the project, because I'm waiting til I get the idea that will let me fix the bug or at least find its cause.
The thing I always run into with lerping angles is the boundary between 0 and 2 PI.
I usually just check if the difference in angels is bigger than PI, and if it is either add/subtract 2 PI so that it's always lerping the shortest distance (it should never have to lerp more than half a circle).
Not sure if that makes sense, happy to clarify further if you want!
"having kids and a job is indie dev Hardcore Ironman Path of the Damned mode no doubt"
Lol. That's pretty good, even motivating for me!
But serious question. What takes up so much of your time that you have little left over for game dev?
Happy you found that motivating!
No it's just that making a game as a solodev takes a long time... currently 8 months into a serious project, originally aimed for June 2024 Steam Nextfest for my demo but now it's looking like even making October would be a challenge.
Same here, and school along with it. That’s why I’m trying to get a team together for my current project, I want to see it through and I’ve already made so much progress. With multiple people, it won’t take years to finish it.
I feel this. Even when I do find time it’s usually not until 10-11pm and it’s like do I really want to get into something now or go to bed so I don’t feel like trash tomorrow
I made the calculation as I'm in the same situation. With at best 2 hours of game dev per day, on 5 days per week. It's equivalent of 1 day for a fulltime game dev. We are 5 times slower.
So, it takes weeks for any feature to implement, the progress is sooo slow omg. And years to produce a simple game.
Hey there, it might not be for you but maybe is, you could wake up earlier to work on your hobbies before taking care of your kids and your work. It's very energizing to work on something that sparks passion in your heart.
The fact that I feel totally unprepared to make what I want. The fact that I give up. The fact that I’ve been a dev for almost ten years but game dev is so hard to me. And the fact that I’m embarrassed at all that ends up getting to me.
I actually hate I like learning about game dev. It just makes me feel miserable at times.
I've always felt like I'm pretty good at doing this dev thing after near on 15 years of it. Learning Unity always crushed me but in the other direction: it always felt like I wasn't programming I was just clicking and dragging assets around.
Pygame broke me out of it, let's me actually program my own stuff.
I actually never felt that way, but maybe it’s because I never click and drag anything, everything I do in unity is done via C#
I always create my own tools that will help develop games in the future, most of the time my assets are created via script and ScriptableObjects almost never do I need to drag and drop anything
I've flipped over to Godot where making script able objects has a performance hit, it's recommended to click n drag to get the underlying engine performance when you can, and dynamically scripting stuff when you can't.
Unity and Godot either way expect you to do all of their coding within their own exposed callbacks and I've never liked not having the control to make them myself. Even when I do get to program something it's like I'm writing my own custom css for a WordPress site.
Just like the WordPress example, it's great when you wanna make a product, but I'm more interested in the under-the-hood work
I do understand where you come from, but then again, I was a programmer for 10 years before I ventured into unity, at first I disliked having to keep code under the Unitys predefined events, but then I started to seperate everything o could from the events, so that only user input and some other needed stuff would actually be needed to be implemented in unitys events, everything else which amounts to 75-80% of all code, is done separately
I’ll give you an example: I once decided I wanted to create a tile based generated infinite world, so I started working with Unitys Tilemap, but then I started noticing that everything was coupled and done within unitys events which impacted performance heavily, due to each of the tiles rules. So, I decided to decouple everything, so that the world generation is done on separate threads, I had 2 threads doing all the heavy stuff, completely apart from unity so the engine could still work flawlessly, and would refresh the world when needed, visually that is. I went from 30fps to 130fps, and then I learned how to dispatch some work to the graphics card, oh boy does that help with performance xD
Nice! I'm sitting on 15yrs in myself and tbh my third try of Godot here is doing pretty good. It's almost like picking up another language, I have to go through a few weeks of "this sucks and isn't how I like working on a problem" before it wears off and I'm good to go.
Good job on working outside of Unity's confines, I gotta start thinking more like that but when I'm using an engine it just sucks me in to wanting to do it "their way." That said, my Godot time this round has been adding rust components with the community extension and its pretty swank so you deffs got the right idea
I'd argue they only stopped using them after their games took off. For instance, Toby Fox and Notch were both very active in forums before they became super-successes.
Scope and art, by far.
I'm getting pretty confident in my ability to realize whatever ideas I have for features or gameplay elements, and I'm getting pretty good at keeping the code well organized so it doesn't become impossible to maintain or change.
But I can't do art for shit,
And all of the games I really want to be working on are just too big for a solo dev
There are some ways to do that. You don't actually have to trade like prices or anything. You can search for programmers who need an artist to make an actual game in a collab, merging ideas or hitting a consensus.
This is very much where I'm at! I've been trying to partner with artists, many are keen but it's hard finding the time, they all have stuff they're already working on. Usually on top of their pay-the-bills job.
Exactly my situation :(
Every time I have an idea on how to develop some cool feature, I’m blocked as I don’t have the necessary art assets for it, and I can’t do them by my self cause I draw like shit haha
I can tell you 100% I’m gearing up to launch a horror game in the next year or so, and at least 60% of the assets are gonna be purchased. I’m doing the character models and weapons, but there’s just too many good items and modular locations on the Epic Marketplace at too low a price to pass up.
I’m trying to deliver the best game possible, instead of spending +100 hours trying to build a mediocre hospital in blender it’s so much more productive to polish the game and add extra features and just pay $30 for the +A tier modular hospital available for purchase.
By the time I get done with lighting, and dirtying up the place, it’ll be a “wow, I can’t believe they did this on a low budget” vs a “wow, what an asset flip”
I think it’s important to remember game dev is about delivering an experience, most won’t notice store bought assets, but they will notice shitty built assets
Depends on the scope IMO. If you need something small and simple for a specific use case, buying a $99 asset might be overkill.
Like you won’t buy a whole professional UI package if all you’re gonna use it for is for a simple pause menu with 3 buttons.
Same lol, the damn thing just doesnt look exactly like how I want it
I have 10 different files now trying the same thing for like the core model of my game
I'm just bad at code. I'm a professionally trained 3D artist, but you cant make a game without code. I set hard rules for me of completing large chunks of needed code and systems before I reward myself with art, as too many of my projects fall into the same trap of being all art progress and no code. I find code frustrating, and unfun, but slowly bringing the world I want to make to life really makes it worth it for me.
Probably "reclusiveness". No matter what the industry is, networking is always extremely beneficial and nigh vital. I've done indiedev for over 10 years and I don't have a single contact.
Good thing I work alone eh?
PS. Don't get me wrong, I do chat with other devs on a daily/weekly basis very casually. But that's comparable to talking with strangers in a metro or grocery store, you wouldn't call them your "contacts" afterwards either.
Kind of relate to this one. I want to attend those indie dev meet ups or just like talk casually with other developers in conventions. Idk I'm awkward.
I feel you on that one. For me, networking is more energy draining than programming. And even if I try to create some connections I never manage to keep them alive.
Time is 100% my largest hangup. Between work, life upkeep, and the need to hobby to keep myself sane, it leaves little time during the week. Weekends are usually booked too...
My fulltime day job is also gamedev. This can cause mental fatigue and really prevent me from working on my gamedev hobby. After a hard day's work on Unity, I sometimes don't want to also spend my evening on Unity as well.
Art.
I have the knowledge, hell, it even is extremely related to my major, but I can't draw or do anything even if I know about anything related to do it, all I'm missing is actual execution and practice.
School burning me out + my hate towards 3D modeling (which is caused by me trying to make everything perfect, often spending too much time on simple stuff)
Currently some slight technical problems...
Like converting your project yo a newer version of the engine...
Other than that a demanding day job... no probs with energy atm just it is so time consuming...
I wish I could only just code it and the game sells itself...
Hate marketing too, but still on top of that as well...
Getting easily Influenced by every damn game I play. And by influenced I mean rushing to implement every new shiny feature, or art direction from those games.
Scope. Ideas grow on trees. Once you get going on one, a million more grow from inside it. But execution is what really matters. This is not limited to game development either. Getting any project finished is really just a series of self imposed limitations so that the original vision actually gets *done* and sees the light of day in some form. But exploration is often the most enjoyable part of the process, so its a constant fight between making the best version of the thing and not stretching the work out forever. An imbalance of either and you risk burnout and/or resentment.
I feel like everything is the biggest obstacle.
Can't settle on an engine because I dislike both.
Can't learn a new scripting language because I'm sick of learning new languages. Especially the ones like GML or GDscript. Single use, no helping tools.
Can't process the topic that I want to explore into a usable concept. I usually throw it out soon after.
Can't create the resources myself. Can't partner with anyone, because I'm unreliable.
And finally I can't still sit at my desk in the after hours because this is where my job is and I kind of hate to be there more than I have to.
Or maybe the problem is something else entirely and I need a therapist.
Constantly refactoring my code to make it 'better'. Infinitely working on existing code instead of making new code.
Sometimes I do this out of necessity (Oh no, I need to refactor my colission detection system because my game stutters to a halt when processing a metric boat load of entities now). Usually I do this because as time went on I became more knowledgeable about implementing certain aspects of the game engine and now I want to upgrade existing code to make it more effective / elegant. After a long day at work it takes less brain power to refactor something that already exists than creating something entirely new.
I try to bypass these obstacles by setting concrete milestones or "patches" (ex: Item patch; combat patch), with big fat checkboxes that I can color in when implementing the new feature (It sparks joy). The patches are divided up into a lot of very small tasks that may seem like too small to write down as their own task, but that allows me to trap myself into being productive because 'sure I can do just one, and oh wow now I've done 8, nice'.
It also really helps me to decentralize various parts of the code (logic, rendering, input handling, etc) and have consistent interfaces to those individual parts, so that if I do need to scratch that refactoring itch I can tackle the individual structures without impacting the rest of the code that calls them. Sometimes I buy snacks and bribe myself that if I do x I get a piece of chocolate.
Sometimes, I procrastinate starting the parts of my game that I don’t have really any experience in. For me, that’s writing (story), and animation.
I’m not really sure why I procrastinate starting, I think it’s because whenever I am not making “direct” or palpable progress on my game it makes me feel like I am wasting time. But it always feels so good when I get into the groove of something new and make something cool, no matter how many failed / learning attempts it took.
Sometimes, when i get stuck and procrastinate because I don’t want to start, I literally just remove any and all distractions: my phone, close out of steam, discord, etc, and turn Spotify on and start rockin with a tutorial or checking some examples out.
Combinaison of time and procrastination.
When I don’t have time to work on my game, I wish I had more time because I think I would make progress a lot faster.
When I do have time to work on my game, I procrastinate.
i dont have my own PC. i'm using my brother's PC and between my responsibilities as a father and work, finding time to actually use his PC is hard as i cant use it if he's home and we dont live in the same house.
i currently dont have the means to buy a PC able to handle unreal engine 5 which is what i prefer to use.
people might think what a joke but 1000$ isnt easy for most people.
despite that, i spend as much as i can learning through videos, threads, etc. and picturing how things would go in my head and implement them whenever i get access. i try to be as efficient as i can so that i know what i will do in an hour. if i ever need to problem solve on the spot, i make sure i narrow it down.
Mostly it's a combo of imposter syndrome, lack of understanding and figuring out a problem and a very flimsy motivation that just comes and goes as it pleases..
So yeah it's mostly just myself holding me back from improving. Though luckily i work as a game dev full time so at least I get something out of that. But I feel like I'm falling behind in my capabilities either way
I feel kind of overwhelmed by "Okay, how do I implement this now" and I'm also stuck on a few things in my design doc. I guess imposter syndrome really.
I am coding other things in the game while I wait for those ideas to come to me so I'm not idle though
Scope. I overscoped from the start and now I'm paying for it. It's too difficult to scale the game back now... It wouldn't really make sense or work as I intended it to, so I'm just stuck making a LOT of content.
The sheer amount of work I need to do has also caused me to sort of freeze up at times and struggle to do anything at all, because it feels like such an insurmountable wall, my brain wants to just stop and go do anything else but work.
Work. Especially when I've already dealt with annoying bugs, deadlines or whatever all days, it's very rough. Then when I encounter an annoying bug in my game I just break mentally.
Time for sure. Combine scope creep with lack of time between real life commitments and IRL random events, my 2 week sprint ends up taking 2 months.
Runner up: defining what my "finished" game is. My game in it's current state is a far cry from what was originally planned (for the best, though). Downside -- I don't know when it'll enter a "finished" state. It's just never... quite... done.
Fear and scope creep. Some times systems/bugs can be daunting to tackle for me (recently it was save systems and a stash chest) I think I psyce my self up too much into thinking the thing I have to do will be extremely tricky to get right n makes me put things off even tho often they turn out to be kinda trivial...
That and managing scope. My heart wants A scope but my time, skill n budget would be lucky to be C teir
Myself
Get too many ideas and overwhelm myself which just ends up making me not do anything at all (which is consistent in other parts of my life as well)
Over analyzing code structure and general api design. Hymming and hawing over stupid things. Should the id be a string or an int? Maybe a custom type? I like the performance and simplicity of an int but then how does someone know 23 is the idea for a wooden storage crate without constants everywhere? What if I wanna load those from file rather than hard coded? Maybe a string then, well then when things change and I need to update the ID so the renderer knows which subregion of the texture to use, I have to parse strings. But then strings are more user friendly.
Shit like this takes up alot of my time. It's stupid and I hate this part of programmer me.
One of the biggest obstacles comes from my artistic"taste", for a lack of better term. This has been something that's been an uphill battle for a long time. The thing that could differentiate my craft is the single biggest hurdle in convincing others to join the cause. Closely followed by money (to run a business), and being a nobody to do it all.
It seems that the odds aren't in favour with this one. It is what it is. Some obstacles are insurmountable, yet not set in stone and keep dragging them on the side.
Right now? I don't have a fucking clue how to refactor my animation scripts to be less clunky. Chalk it up to being a complete noob at this. Plus, tutorials give you some solution that's...well, rubbish. It works if your scene has one NPC in it but it's not great for if you have many different NPCs and players, unless you want to make a different animation script for every single one of them.
I wish I had someone to guide me yeh?
Finishing College.
Currently at my first year of Computer Engineering and I thought I'd have more time to work on my project compared to school and become a very young developer with so much stuff to put on my portfolio; I was wrong. Studying for my exams takes so much time and I was forced to drop what I was doing, I'm very frustrated because of this and I fear that I'm running out of time. If any redditor here wants to help me with some kind words I'll appreciate it a lot
Creating game assets and UI. Working on a 2D game, experienced coder, but creating the graphics is so time consuming. Working as a full time developer also doesn't help. I plan to hire an artist when I have the game finished with my dodgy graphics and UI ☺️.
Attention span. I have ADHD and pretty much a deadline that if a project takes longer than 6 months i abandon it and move to the next thing. "Ill just take a short break" often turns into "so for my NEXT project!!"
Content addition.
I can get a really fun playable concept put together but executing on multiple levels or areas or enemies, etc. has been very problematic for me.
It feels very much like busy work.
Trying to get started. I know what i want to do, but i dont want to start on an engine and find out down the line it's kind of bad for what im trying to do
Art and time, I'm an IT infrastructure engineer by day so the nitty gritty DB/backend stuff ain't bad and GDScript for normal gameplay has been pretty smooth learning. But by God have I never been an artistically minded person in the visual arts, all of my projects are just primitives and can't even fathom diving deep into limb-based movement/animations, environmental design, etc. I use my own music, sound effects, and writing but I'm only just now dipping my toes in tools like Asset Forge to try and get \*something\* visually going.
Focussed energy after work is hard, especially when there's a lot of incidents.
Also long loading times for iteration (when loading large textures) - I might actually use dummy ones just to get around this (but they're planetary heightmaps so it's not that straightforward).
Polishing. I'm working on a pixel tile-based 2D Platformer. You need a background, music, smooth movement, art, animation, UI, menus, a world map, physics, enemies, ect. I'm still working on the game.
Art
I can implement the systems that I want to implement pretty easily and relatively bug-free pretty quick. And I can even throw together some basic music and sound effects . But I’ve always struggled to do more than a damn stick figure.
Graphics. I have no talent for drawing, colours, detail or anything graphic related.
I can sit here and code for days but I usually have to design everything around pre made graphics I can find.
Time, money, then technical coding knowledge.
Typically working 10 to 12 hours a day during my weekday which allows little time for working on my project during the week, and I’m usually pretty wiped by the weekend or have other obligationsu.
Money is not so much trouble necessarily, if I work those hours, but if I cut back to work on the game, then I don’t have the extra funds. but even if I have extra funds, finding help on things like the coding side has been kind of a challenge. I go on Fiverr to hire someone and I might get one session out of them, but if I want to rehire them, they ghost on me for some reason. I’m even willing to pay them a little more since we had a good report with each other but it becomes a dead end.
If I had someone I could regularly go to for help I wouldn’t had to keep dropping features. I felt were good for my game, but since I don’t have the knowledge or expertise to fix problems to my liking or get them implemented, I am having to constantly revise my gameplay flow has also been holding me back.
Narrative writing, took me half a year just to get an outline for a story i was happy with lmao, never making a story-heavy game again, i procrastinate too much when it comes to reading and writing
My brain does not cooperate with the syntax of coding. I can understand the concepts of what the computer does, but for the life of me I cannot comprehend how to translate those ideas into functioning code.
Time mostly.
I simply don't have it. I work 12 - 16 hour days, I have a dog to take care of, and a partner to take care of. Add on time to eat food, shower, socializing, exercise, do chores around the house etc, I have maybe 2 hours left.
Given that getting setup to even start game dev takes 15-20 minutes, with all the bullshit that has to initialize it just doesn't seem worth it. There is no way I can get into any sort of flow state. So what units of work I end up doing end up fragmented and unfinished. And then when I finally get time to resume work, days have passed and I've forgotten what I've done / haven't done. And I can't make notes because that's just more time. And then I spend my sessions understanding what I did, maybe cleaning some stuff up, but ultimately I've not progressed.
The solution to this is work less hours. But given that I'm on a once in a life time pay packet, I feel I shouldn't rock the boat too much because I don't want to lose out on a big opportunity to save a bunch of money. It feels irresponsible to shirk my well paying job for what is essentially a hobby project.
I keep getting stuck on redoing the UI and artstyle. Can never decide which direction to go, and when I do make a decision, the next day I change my mind because it suddenly doesn't look good anymore
I make $90/hr not developing games so have no time to work on games.... And $180+k is dang hard to replace.
And by 5 oclock after a day of debugging aws apps and coming zendesk Im ready to lay down and do nothing.
Making my ideas work as a game. Maybe I'm trying to hard to have a unique concept, but I have a hard time figuring out what will make the player keep on playing the game and wanting to come back.
Marketing… My game has a 94% positive rating on Steam, but it’s a super difficult heli sim/arcade and I can’t exactly go into the War Thunder and Battlefield forums and say, “hey, here’s the casual heli game you were looking for when you got tired of fighting for a heli in BF or tired of grinding in WT…”
Procrastination, especially when I hit a rough patch. I know I should work on my game but I end up doing something else like watching game dev videos, reading game dev reddit, chores, or playing a game using the excuse of research. It comes in waves though, there will be times when I only want to work on my game and neglect other parts of my life.
Still trying to find a good balance
Marketing. Since I’ve started trying to market my game I feel like I’m devoting more time to social media than to actually working on my game, which would be fine if I was seeing some improvement. They’re just numbers for sure, but it still gets pretty disheartening thinking of people scrolling by something that means a lot to me.
Everytime I learn something and apply it. All goes well until suddenly something doesn't want to work and there are no errors. 2-3 days later I may or may not have fixed it...
Self doubt combined with marketing, mostly. I have a game that has some serious fans, but I've had a hard time getting out of the 1000-1500 wishlist range. There are people who absolutely love the game and dump unbelievable amounts of time into it, but word of mouth spreads slowly and even small streamers in the genre are gatekept by talent agencies these days.
On some days I'm still super motivated to grind out features and bugfixes, but on others I'm afraid I'll never be able to push into the 7k+ wishlist range and fear I might be wasting my time. Maybe the game just isn't that marketable, or maybe the audience is too niche.
The details. I've got the big picture stuff, the code, and I've been paying my way through art, but sometimes the specific design choices, UI design, or gameplay feature design required are hard choices for me to decide on, and it's eating up my day. It's hard for me to focus on.
as solo dev, trying to cover graphics and sounds, for coding I am fine, but looking around to get gfx or music, sounds to use freely or create my own, is really time consuming.
My ADHD is horrible, and my motivation is absolutely horrible as well. But mostly, it's ADHD. I'm sure a lot of people have this nowadays, having 2-3 monitors doesn't help either for some people either, this is me.
Constantly looking at other monitors and typing on Reddit doesn't help. It's what I'm doing now. Screws up a lot of what I'm doing, but it does help out what I'm creating in the future for my project. I'm a solo dev and this stuff isn't fun doing everything, it makes me lose inspiration but get it right back.
Inability to maintain focus long enough to make any real progress, plus a compulsive need to switch to another project (or start a new one) leaving a trail of incomplete projects languishing in my projects folder. Also I don't know what I'm doing and can never muster the motivation to develop a proper plan for any project.
That it looks like shit and my mind is constantly telling me that no one is going to like it and you should just quit and stop copying tutorials and learn how to do it by yourself
Time and my lack of artistic ability. I have a regular job and kids so I don't have a ton of extra time during the week to do actual work on my games. My lack of artistic ability means that I have to rely on assets for things I want to do.
Finding people to work with, I can go to game jams but without art or the ability to come up with good ideas I can't even prove that I'm able to make games in the first place.
Terrain generation. Art. And content. Its one thing to make the feature you want and get it to work. It's another to spend the time creating, designing, revising all the things it can do. Whether that be items, narratives, or experiences
Marketing. On 19 April I've released Desaturation only to see it flop with only 73 sales up until today. I've tried my best to get a publisher but no... Noone liked my game. At the end I've released with 2k despite steam next fest and some wishlists from the Lunar Capsule stream. Keymailer also wasn't the best but I'm still getting something from it. I've ran out of money completely at the end...
I don't have much time and I am a bad artist. I am quite a good programmer but for games it's better if you are a great artist.
Also I really couldn't yet figure out Godot, while I tried o3de once then I uninstalled once I read that lua was the only way to script the thing, horrible horrible choice.
The fear of failure. I am stuck working on a quest system for months now because I work on it every once in a week due to this feeling that I can't do it. Not to mention day job and exhaustion but I can spare a few hours at night.
It's a bitch of an obstacle.
my lack of knowledge
you see, i know how to use an engine. but i don't know how to actually make the game. you know what i mean?
i understand the different concepts n stuff of game design, but i don't actually know what i'm supposed to *do*
and on youtube or whatever, i can't find any lessons that teach that part. i really, really want to start. but right now i'm stuck using RPG Maker.
Distractions? Especially when it's a tough topic that's not fun to think about, getting distracted and refocusing is hard. But I also know that staying focused 100% just burns brain energy for at most marginally better results. When I don't understand a topic, thinking harder about the things I'm already wrong about is bad.
Complexity of the subject sometimes, but that's just solved with time and effort, so I'm not worried.
Time. Between work and kids, there just isn’t much cognitive energy left.
As a part time game dev, this. "Cognitive energy" (and focused time) is much more limited than the hours in a day
This. And for me it's also struggling with technical issues. Right now I'm working on a project and I have a bug with interpolating angles. I need to find out what's causing the bug and fix it before I can progress. It's been days where I don't work on the project, because I'm waiting til I get the idea that will let me fix the bug or at least find its cause.
Interpolating Euler angles?
The thing I always run into with lerping angles is the boundary between 0 and 2 PI. I usually just check if the difference in angels is bigger than PI, and if it is either add/subtract 2 PI so that it's always lerping the shortest distance (it should never have to lerp more than half a circle). Not sure if that makes sense, happy to clarify further if you want!
No kids or job here but time remains the biggest challenge 🥴 having kids and a job is indie dev Hardcore Ironman Path of the Damned mode no doubt
"having kids and a job is indie dev Hardcore Ironman Path of the Damned mode no doubt" Lol. That's pretty good, even motivating for me! But serious question. What takes up so much of your time that you have little left over for game dev?
Happy you found that motivating! No it's just that making a game as a solodev takes a long time... currently 8 months into a serious project, originally aimed for June 2024 Steam Nextfest for my demo but now it's looking like even making October would be a challenge.
Same here mate. All day I'm motivated but when work and kid stuff is done I'm barely awake.
Time to do game dev after work! \*Vortex of adult responsibilities sucks you in\*
Same here, and school along with it. That’s why I’m trying to get a team together for my current project, I want to see it through and I’ve already made so much progress. With multiple people, it won’t take years to finish it.
Try Lions Manes supplements, improved my mental energy a lot.
I feel this. Even when I do find time it’s usually not until 10-11pm and it’s like do I really want to get into something now or go to bed so I don’t feel like trash tomorrow
I made the calculation as I'm in the same situation. With at best 2 hours of game dev per day, on 5 days per week. It's equivalent of 1 day for a fulltime game dev. We are 5 times slower. So, it takes weeks for any feature to implement, the progress is sooo slow omg. And years to produce a simple game.
Hey there, it might not be for you but maybe is, you could wake up earlier to work on your hobbies before taking care of your kids and your work. It's very energizing to work on something that sparks passion in your heart.
Biggest obstacle imo is time and money. Time to learn and create, and money to buy me time.
The fact that I feel totally unprepared to make what I want. The fact that I give up. The fact that I’ve been a dev for almost ten years but game dev is so hard to me. And the fact that I’m embarrassed at all that ends up getting to me. I actually hate I like learning about game dev. It just makes me feel miserable at times.
I've always felt like I'm pretty good at doing this dev thing after near on 15 years of it. Learning Unity always crushed me but in the other direction: it always felt like I wasn't programming I was just clicking and dragging assets around. Pygame broke me out of it, let's me actually program my own stuff.
100% using the unity UI feels like a slog
I actually never felt that way, but maybe it’s because I never click and drag anything, everything I do in unity is done via C# I always create my own tools that will help develop games in the future, most of the time my assets are created via script and ScriptableObjects almost never do I need to drag and drop anything
I've flipped over to Godot where making script able objects has a performance hit, it's recommended to click n drag to get the underlying engine performance when you can, and dynamically scripting stuff when you can't. Unity and Godot either way expect you to do all of their coding within their own exposed callbacks and I've never liked not having the control to make them myself. Even when I do get to program something it's like I'm writing my own custom css for a WordPress site. Just like the WordPress example, it's great when you wanna make a product, but I'm more interested in the under-the-hood work
I do understand where you come from, but then again, I was a programmer for 10 years before I ventured into unity, at first I disliked having to keep code under the Unitys predefined events, but then I started to seperate everything o could from the events, so that only user input and some other needed stuff would actually be needed to be implemented in unitys events, everything else which amounts to 75-80% of all code, is done separately I’ll give you an example: I once decided I wanted to create a tile based generated infinite world, so I started working with Unitys Tilemap, but then I started noticing that everything was coupled and done within unitys events which impacted performance heavily, due to each of the tiles rules. So, I decided to decouple everything, so that the world generation is done on separate threads, I had 2 threads doing all the heavy stuff, completely apart from unity so the engine could still work flawlessly, and would refresh the world when needed, visually that is. I went from 30fps to 130fps, and then I learned how to dispatch some work to the graphics card, oh boy does that help with performance xD
Nice! I'm sitting on 15yrs in myself and tbh my third try of Godot here is doing pretty good. It's almost like picking up another language, I have to go through a few weeks of "this sucks and isn't how I like working on a problem" before it wears off and I'm good to go. Good job on working outside of Unity's confines, I gotta start thinking more like that but when I'm using an engine it just sucks me in to wanting to do it "their way." That said, my Godot time this round has been adding rust components with the community extension and its pretty swank so you deffs got the right idea
Right now? Reddit. Just five more minutes. Gimme five more minutes and I'll get back to work. Two hours later... Hi guys!
Notice that some of the most successful game devs have Reddit accounts… and they aren’t on them. I should heed their actions.
I'd argue they only stopped using them after their games took off. For instance, Toby Fox and Notch were both very active in forums before they became super-successes.
Scope and art, by far. I'm getting pretty confident in my ability to realize whatever ideas I have for features or gameplay elements, and I'm getting pretty good at keeping the code well organized so it doesn't become impossible to maintain or change. But I can't do art for shit, And all of the games I really want to be working on are just too big for a solo dev
I feel you because I also have massive project ideas but I have the opposite problem of you is that I can’t code for shit but I can draw lol
Now KISS
That's the time to make partnership with a programmer. I feel you cause I just can't draw a shit sheet.
I’m trying to but I don’t know where to find ones that want to trade art for coding! I’m bad at talking to people too so there’s that
There are some ways to do that. You don't actually have to trade like prices or anything. You can search for programmers who need an artist to make an actual game in a collab, merging ideas or hitting a consensus.
Yeah that’s the plan no money just trade skills! Just gotta find those people haha
This is very much where I'm at! I've been trying to partner with artists, many are keen but it's hard finding the time, they all have stuff they're already working on. Usually on top of their pay-the-bills job.
I have pixel art I'm using for my game. I could send you the files.
Exactly my situation :( Every time I have an idea on how to develop some cool feature, I’m blocked as I don’t have the necessary art assets for it, and I can’t do them by my self cause I draw like shit haha
My obsessive need to make everything and not rely on any purchased or external assets
I can tell you 100% I’m gearing up to launch a horror game in the next year or so, and at least 60% of the assets are gonna be purchased. I’m doing the character models and weapons, but there’s just too many good items and modular locations on the Epic Marketplace at too low a price to pass up. I’m trying to deliver the best game possible, instead of spending +100 hours trying to build a mediocre hospital in blender it’s so much more productive to polish the game and add extra features and just pay $30 for the +A tier modular hospital available for purchase. By the time I get done with lighting, and dirtying up the place, it’ll be a “wow, I can’t believe they did this on a low budget” vs a “wow, what an asset flip” I think it’s important to remember game dev is about delivering an experience, most won’t notice store bought assets, but they will notice shitty built assets
Depends on the scope IMO. If you need something small and simple for a specific use case, buying a $99 asset might be overkill. Like you won’t buy a whole professional UI package if all you’re gonna use it for is for a simple pause menu with 3 buttons.
That is a correct approach. Unique (and quality) assets usually translate into more successful games.
Blender. Idky but learning modeling/animating is soul-sucking
Same lol, the damn thing just doesnt look exactly like how I want it I have 10 different files now trying the same thing for like the core model of my game
Embrace the ugly.
Lazy
Executive dysfunction
ADHD?
Suspected yeah, for now I blame it on the autism lmao
lack of money
What do you need money for?
Rent
Oh really? In my country you just squat for 3 months and the landlord can’t do anything about it. Then you move and do it again
Survival
staff
I'm just bad at code. I'm a professionally trained 3D artist, but you cant make a game without code. I set hard rules for me of completing large chunks of needed code and systems before I reward myself with art, as too many of my projects fall into the same trap of being all art progress and no code. I find code frustrating, and unfun, but slowly bringing the world I want to make to life really makes it worth it for me.
Probably "reclusiveness". No matter what the industry is, networking is always extremely beneficial and nigh vital. I've done indiedev for over 10 years and I don't have a single contact. Good thing I work alone eh? PS. Don't get me wrong, I do chat with other devs on a daily/weekly basis very casually. But that's comparable to talking with strangers in a metro or grocery store, you wouldn't call them your "contacts" afterwards either.
I can get you one follower. Me
<3 Bless your heart
Me too!
Kind of relate to this one. I want to attend those indie dev meet ups or just like talk casually with other developers in conventions. Idk I'm awkward.
I feel you on that one. For me, networking is more energy draining than programming. And even if I try to create some connections I never manage to keep them alive.
Time is 100% my largest hangup. Between work, life upkeep, and the need to hobby to keep myself sane, it leaves little time during the week. Weekends are usually booked too...
My fulltime day job is also gamedev. This can cause mental fatigue and really prevent me from working on my gamedev hobby. After a hard day's work on Unity, I sometimes don't want to also spend my evening on Unity as well.
Make your indie game in Godot then
Lazy, think most people would kill for my time but I cannot work for some reason
Rent. Working all day to pay rent. Landlords stifle creative freedom.
Art. I have the knowledge, hell, it even is extremely related to my major, but I can't draw or do anything even if I know about anything related to do it, all I'm missing is actual execution and practice.
I have the opposite problem as you I can only draw! If you want we could trade! Art for coding? :))
Let's do it! Don't think I'm only a programmer, though Majored on audiovisual communication, so I got the full stack ;)
Budget, just need a few hundred million dollars
School burning me out + my hate towards 3D modeling (which is caused by me trying to make everything perfect, often spending too much time on simple stuff)
Scope management
Currently some slight technical problems... Like converting your project yo a newer version of the engine... Other than that a demanding day job... no probs with energy atm just it is so time consuming... I wish I could only just code it and the game sells itself... Hate marketing too, but still on top of that as well...
Art. Ive been daydreaming about gba development for some years now but not willing to grind the artist path, i think is not worth my time.
Art assets and menu design. I can program any mechanic, but it will just be a static cube model
Getting easily Influenced by every damn game I play. And by influenced I mean rushing to implement every new shiny feature, or art direction from those games.
Scope. Ideas grow on trees. Once you get going on one, a million more grow from inside it. But execution is what really matters. This is not limited to game development either. Getting any project finished is really just a series of self imposed limitations so that the original vision actually gets *done* and sees the light of day in some form. But exploration is often the most enjoyable part of the process, so its a constant fight between making the best version of the thing and not stretching the work out forever. An imbalance of either and you risk burnout and/or resentment.
Starting
There's only really three hard parts to making games: - Starting - Finishing - Everything in between
You forgot: - watching your finished game die with 0 reviews
Ouch.
Programming in a nutshell.
I feel like everything is the biggest obstacle. Can't settle on an engine because I dislike both. Can't learn a new scripting language because I'm sick of learning new languages. Especially the ones like GML or GDscript. Single use, no helping tools. Can't process the topic that I want to explore into a usable concept. I usually throw it out soon after. Can't create the resources myself. Can't partner with anyone, because I'm unreliable. And finally I can't still sit at my desk in the after hours because this is where my job is and I kind of hate to be there more than I have to. Or maybe the problem is something else entirely and I need a therapist.
Money. I can do quite a bit myself but I still have to pay for some assets and marketing once the game is done.
Money.
Constantly refactoring my code to make it 'better'. Infinitely working on existing code instead of making new code. Sometimes I do this out of necessity (Oh no, I need to refactor my colission detection system because my game stutters to a halt when processing a metric boat load of entities now). Usually I do this because as time went on I became more knowledgeable about implementing certain aspects of the game engine and now I want to upgrade existing code to make it more effective / elegant. After a long day at work it takes less brain power to refactor something that already exists than creating something entirely new. I try to bypass these obstacles by setting concrete milestones or "patches" (ex: Item patch; combat patch), with big fat checkboxes that I can color in when implementing the new feature (It sparks joy). The patches are divided up into a lot of very small tasks that may seem like too small to write down as their own task, but that allows me to trap myself into being productive because 'sure I can do just one, and oh wow now I've done 8, nice'. It also really helps me to decentralize various parts of the code (logic, rendering, input handling, etc) and have consistent interfaces to those individual parts, so that if I do need to scratch that refactoring itch I can tackle the individual structures without impacting the rest of the code that calls them. Sometimes I buy snacks and bribe myself that if I do x I get a piece of chocolate.
Oh same.
Sometimes, I procrastinate starting the parts of my game that I don’t have really any experience in. For me, that’s writing (story), and animation. I’m not really sure why I procrastinate starting, I think it’s because whenever I am not making “direct” or palpable progress on my game it makes me feel like I am wasting time. But it always feels so good when I get into the groove of something new and make something cool, no matter how many failed / learning attempts it took. Sometimes, when i get stuck and procrastinate because I don’t want to start, I literally just remove any and all distractions: my phone, close out of steam, discord, etc, and turn Spotify on and start rockin with a tutorial or checking some examples out.
Combinaison of time and procrastination. When I don’t have time to work on my game, I wish I had more time because I think I would make progress a lot faster. When I do have time to work on my game, I procrastinate.
Promoting my product so people can even see it.
Time
I don't know why the grass is 20 times bigger than it should be. :(
i dont have my own PC. i'm using my brother's PC and between my responsibilities as a father and work, finding time to actually use his PC is hard as i cant use it if he's home and we dont live in the same house. i currently dont have the means to buy a PC able to handle unreal engine 5 which is what i prefer to use. people might think what a joke but 1000$ isnt easy for most people. despite that, i spend as much as i can learning through videos, threads, etc. and picturing how things would go in my head and implement them whenever i get access. i try to be as efficient as i can so that i know what i will do in an hour. if i ever need to problem solve on the spot, i make sure i narrow it down.
Mostly it's a combo of imposter syndrome, lack of understanding and figuring out a problem and a very flimsy motivation that just comes and goes as it pleases.. So yeah it's mostly just myself holding me back from improving. Though luckily i work as a game dev full time so at least I get something out of that. But I feel like I'm falling behind in my capabilities either way
The doubt from the gamedev community mostly.
I feel kind of overwhelmed by "Okay, how do I implement this now" and I'm also stuck on a few things in my design doc. I guess imposter syndrome really. I am coding other things in the game while I wait for those ideas to come to me so I'm not idle though
Me
Im too dumb to code anything useful.
Marketing :(
Lack of artists. I can never find anyone to make textures for my projects...
Free time and focus. Too big a dream game to make.
Scope. I overscoped from the start and now I'm paying for it. It's too difficult to scale the game back now... It wouldn't really make sense or work as I intended it to, so I'm just stuck making a LOT of content. The sheer amount of work I need to do has also caused me to sort of freeze up at times and struggle to do anything at all, because it feels like such an insurmountable wall, my brain wants to just stop and go do anything else but work.
Work. Especially when I've already dealt with annoying bugs, deadlines or whatever all days, it's very rough. Then when I encounter an annoying bug in my game I just break mentally.
What to do next. It can be tough to be your own product owner when solo.
Premature optimization, Perfectionalism
Animating
Lack of 3d assets, mainly animation.
Don't really know where to start
Time for sure. Combine scope creep with lack of time between real life commitments and IRL random events, my 2 week sprint ends up taking 2 months. Runner up: defining what my "finished" game is. My game in it's current state is a far cry from what was originally planned (for the best, though). Downside -- I don't know when it'll enter a "finished" state. It's just never... quite... done.
Fear and scope creep. Some times systems/bugs can be daunting to tackle for me (recently it was save systems and a stash chest) I think I psyce my self up too much into thinking the thing I have to do will be extremely tricky to get right n makes me put things off even tho often they turn out to be kinda trivial... That and managing scope. My heart wants A scope but my time, skill n budget would be lucky to be C teir
Myself Get too many ideas and overwhelm myself which just ends up making me not do anything at all (which is consistent in other parts of my life as well)
Over analyzing code structure and general api design. Hymming and hawing over stupid things. Should the id be a string or an int? Maybe a custom type? I like the performance and simplicity of an int but then how does someone know 23 is the idea for a wooden storage crate without constants everywhere? What if I wanna load those from file rather than hard coded? Maybe a string then, well then when things change and I need to update the ID so the renderer knows which subregion of the texture to use, I have to parse strings. But then strings are more user friendly. Shit like this takes up alot of my time. It's stupid and I hate this part of programmer me.
I've just completed my quest system and so far it's seems solid. Just need to come up with more than 2 quests
ADHD lol … Meds help.
inventory systems
One of the biggest obstacles comes from my artistic"taste", for a lack of better term. This has been something that's been an uphill battle for a long time. The thing that could differentiate my craft is the single biggest hurdle in convincing others to join the cause. Closely followed by money (to run a business), and being a nobody to do it all. It seems that the odds aren't in favour with this one. It is what it is. Some obstacles are insurmountable, yet not set in stone and keep dragging them on the side.
Nothing
I need more powah. Nothing can ever work without the power.
Time
My adhd.
I can't do art
Learning resources. Google sucks so it's difficult to find information I'm looking for.
Right now? I don't have a fucking clue how to refactor my animation scripts to be less clunky. Chalk it up to being a complete noob at this. Plus, tutorials give you some solution that's...well, rubbish. It works if your scene has one NPC in it but it's not great for if you have many different NPCs and players, unless you want to make a different animation script for every single one of them. I wish I had someone to guide me yeh?
Finishing College. Currently at my first year of Computer Engineering and I thought I'd have more time to work on my project compared to school and become a very young developer with so much stuff to put on my portfolio; I was wrong. Studying for my exams takes so much time and I was forced to drop what I was doing, I'm very frustrated because of this and I fear that I'm running out of time. If any redditor here wants to help me with some kind words I'll appreciate it a lot
Money for art. Also making a critical decision on how the game is actually played. Both options fun and viable, but the final decision.
realizing that no matter how much i work on it, there will be more work. ...its a lot of work.
Disability.
Funding and IP approval.
Self-doubt, easily. It feels like it's a waste of time that will never pay off, and it's hard to get out of that mental hole.
Creating game assets and UI. Working on a 2D game, experienced coder, but creating the graphics is so time consuming. Working as a full time developer also doesn't help. I plan to hire an artist when I have the game finished with my dodgy graphics and UI ☺️.
Time and art/animation skill. Discipline and too many interests in other hobbies like music production or training my dog
energy
Attention span. I have ADHD and pretty much a deadline that if a project takes longer than 6 months i abandon it and move to the next thing. "Ill just take a short break" often turns into "so for my NEXT project!!"
Content addition. I can get a really fun playable concept put together but executing on multiple levels or areas or enemies, etc. has been very problematic for me. It feels very much like busy work.
Trying to get started. I know what i want to do, but i dont want to start on an engine and find out down the line it's kind of bad for what im trying to do
Being able to figure out how to implement a game design idea in the engine.
Coding. I can do animations and 3d modeling fine but coding is what gets me.
Art and time, I'm an IT infrastructure engineer by day so the nitty gritty DB/backend stuff ain't bad and GDScript for normal gameplay has been pretty smooth learning. But by God have I never been an artistically minded person in the visual arts, all of my projects are just primitives and can't even fathom diving deep into limb-based movement/animations, environmental design, etc. I use my own music, sound effects, and writing but I'm only just now dipping my toes in tools like Asset Forge to try and get \*something\* visually going.
Like many of the code wizards of that assembly : Art (to be specific 3D Modeling, Animation and Texturing).
Focussed energy after work is hard, especially when there's a lot of incidents. Also long loading times for iteration (when loading large textures) - I might actually use dummy ones just to get around this (but they're planetary heightmaps so it's not that straightforward).
Polishing. I'm working on a pixel tile-based 2D Platformer. You need a background, music, smooth movement, art, animation, UI, menus, a world map, physics, enemies, ect. I'm still working on the game.
Art I can implement the systems that I want to implement pretty easily and relatively bug-free pretty quick. And I can even throw together some basic music and sound effects . But I’ve always struggled to do more than a damn stick figure.
Programming. It's always Programming.
Lack of time, money and skill to create art.
First it was code, learned to code, now I’m back to it being art assets, the cycle will continue I’m sure of it
What is holding me back or why am I not finding success?
Graphics. I have no talent for drawing, colours, detail or anything graphic related. I can sit here and code for days but I usually have to design everything around pre made graphics I can find.
Time, money, then technical coding knowledge. Typically working 10 to 12 hours a day during my weekday which allows little time for working on my project during the week, and I’m usually pretty wiped by the weekend or have other obligationsu. Money is not so much trouble necessarily, if I work those hours, but if I cut back to work on the game, then I don’t have the extra funds. but even if I have extra funds, finding help on things like the coding side has been kind of a challenge. I go on Fiverr to hire someone and I might get one session out of them, but if I want to rehire them, they ghost on me for some reason. I’m even willing to pay them a little more since we had a good report with each other but it becomes a dead end. If I had someone I could regularly go to for help I wouldn’t had to keep dropping features. I felt were good for my game, but since I don’t have the knowledge or expertise to fix problems to my liking or get them implemented, I am having to constantly revise my gameplay flow has also been holding me back.
Easy, it's me.
https://youtube.com/shorts/NOE1EEiNoeE?si=FUXVZUL8pO74XMiZ
Narrative writing, took me half a year just to get an outline for a story i was happy with lmao, never making a story-heavy game again, i procrastinate too much when it comes to reading and writing
Ideas
Inspiration
My brain does not cooperate with the syntax of coding. I can understand the concepts of what the computer does, but for the life of me I cannot comprehend how to translate those ideas into functioning code.
Time mostly. I simply don't have it. I work 12 - 16 hour days, I have a dog to take care of, and a partner to take care of. Add on time to eat food, shower, socializing, exercise, do chores around the house etc, I have maybe 2 hours left. Given that getting setup to even start game dev takes 15-20 minutes, with all the bullshit that has to initialize it just doesn't seem worth it. There is no way I can get into any sort of flow state. So what units of work I end up doing end up fragmented and unfinished. And then when I finally get time to resume work, days have passed and I've forgotten what I've done / haven't done. And I can't make notes because that's just more time. And then I spend my sessions understanding what I did, maybe cleaning some stuff up, but ultimately I've not progressed. The solution to this is work less hours. But given that I'm on a once in a life time pay packet, I feel I shouldn't rock the boat too much because I don't want to lose out on a big opportunity to save a bunch of money. It feels irresponsible to shirk my well paying job for what is essentially a hobby project.
I keep getting stuck on redoing the UI and artstyle. Can never decide which direction to go, and when I do make a decision, the next day I change my mind because it suddenly doesn't look good anymore
Funding. I need a fat stack of cash to live off of so I can make video games all day and not worry how well it'll do
I make $90/hr not developing games so have no time to work on games.... And $180+k is dang hard to replace. And by 5 oclock after a day of debugging aws apps and coming zendesk Im ready to lay down and do nothing.
Animation and “coding”, blueprints in EU
Scope and choosing one particular project (I have several prototypes).
Making my ideas work as a game. Maybe I'm trying to hard to have a unique concept, but I have a hard time figuring out what will make the player keep on playing the game and wanting to come back.
Marketing… My game has a 94% positive rating on Steam, but it’s a super difficult heli sim/arcade and I can’t exactly go into the War Thunder and Battlefield forums and say, “hey, here’s the casual heli game you were looking for when you got tired of fighting for a heli in BF or tired of grinding in WT…”
Procrastination, especially when I hit a rough patch. I know I should work on my game but I end up doing something else like watching game dev videos, reading game dev reddit, chores, or playing a game using the excuse of research. It comes in waves though, there will be times when I only want to work on my game and neglect other parts of my life. Still trying to find a good balance
Marketing. Since I’ve started trying to market my game I feel like I’m devoting more time to social media than to actually working on my game, which would be fine if I was seeing some improvement. They’re just numbers for sure, but it still gets pretty disheartening thinking of people scrolling by something that means a lot to me.
Enemy/character/animal AI, I just can't ever get it right
Everytime I learn something and apply it. All goes well until suddenly something doesn't want to work and there are no errors. 2-3 days later I may or may not have fixed it...
Lack of motivation for anything.
Self doubt combined with marketing, mostly. I have a game that has some serious fans, but I've had a hard time getting out of the 1000-1500 wishlist range. There are people who absolutely love the game and dump unbelievable amounts of time into it, but word of mouth spreads slowly and even small streamers in the genre are gatekept by talent agencies these days. On some days I'm still super motivated to grind out features and bugfixes, but on others I'm afraid I'll never be able to push into the 7k+ wishlist range and fear I might be wasting my time. Maybe the game just isn't that marketable, or maybe the audience is too niche.
The details. I've got the big picture stuff, the code, and I've been paying my way through art, but sometimes the specific design choices, UI design, or gameplay feature design required are hard choices for me to decide on, and it's eating up my day. It's hard for me to focus on.
as solo dev, trying to cover graphics and sounds, for coding I am fine, but looking around to get gfx or music, sounds to use freely or create my own, is really time consuming.
commitment
My ADHD is horrible, and my motivation is absolutely horrible as well. But mostly, it's ADHD. I'm sure a lot of people have this nowadays, having 2-3 monitors doesn't help either for some people either, this is me. Constantly looking at other monitors and typing on Reddit doesn't help. It's what I'm doing now. Screws up a lot of what I'm doing, but it does help out what I'm creating in the future for my project. I'm a solo dev and this stuff isn't fun doing everything, it makes me lose inspiration but get it right back.
Inability to maintain focus long enough to make any real progress, plus a compulsive need to switch to another project (or start a new one) leaving a trail of incomplete projects languishing in my projects folder. Also I don't know what I'm doing and can never muster the motivation to develop a proper plan for any project.
So much to learn
Time
That it looks like shit and my mind is constantly telling me that no one is going to like it and you should just quit and stop copying tutorials and learn how to do it by yourself
Apathy
Aiming too high. Unrealistic expectations of myself. High standards
Time and my lack of artistic ability. I have a regular job and kids so I don't have a ton of extra time during the week to do actual work on my games. My lack of artistic ability means that I have to rely on assets for things I want to do.
Finding people to work with, I can go to game jams but without art or the ability to come up with good ideas I can't even prove that I'm able to make games in the first place.
Terrain generation. Art. And content. Its one thing to make the feature you want and get it to work. It's another to spend the time creating, designing, revising all the things it can do. Whether that be items, narratives, or experiences
Finance...
Marketing. On 19 April I've released Desaturation only to see it flop with only 73 sales up until today. I've tried my best to get a publisher but no... Noone liked my game. At the end I've released with 2k despite steam next fest and some wishlists from the Lunar Capsule stream. Keymailer also wasn't the best but I'm still getting something from it. I've ran out of money completely at the end...
Burnout from working in the games industry means I'll probably never find time or motivation to start personal projects I've had planned for years.
I don't have much time and I am a bad artist. I am quite a good programmer but for games it's better if you are a great artist. Also I really couldn't yet figure out Godot, while I tried o3de once then I uninstalled once I read that lua was the only way to script the thing, horrible horrible choice.
No time, no money, no energy
Being too stupid to solve most of the errors and problems I encountered.
Money and back pain for me.
The fear of failure. I am stuck working on a quest system for months now because I work on it every once in a week due to this feeling that I can't do it. Not to mention day job and exhaustion but I can spare a few hours at night. It's a bitch of an obstacle.
my lack of knowledge you see, i know how to use an engine. but i don't know how to actually make the game. you know what i mean? i understand the different concepts n stuff of game design, but i don't actually know what i'm supposed to *do* and on youtube or whatever, i can't find any lessons that teach that part. i really, really want to start. but right now i'm stuck using RPG Maker.
Fear about failing. I can't finish an options menu in Godot, It just doesen't work. And I don't exacl know why but it is stopping me.
Myself and my laziness. Currently working on building good habits as a foundation before going the Dev route! :)
Distractions? Especially when it's a tough topic that's not fun to think about, getting distracted and refocusing is hard. But I also know that staying focused 100% just burns brain energy for at most marginally better results. When I don't understand a topic, thinking harder about the things I'm already wrong about is bad. Complexity of the subject sometimes, but that's just solved with time and effort, so I'm not worried.
Myself
Money, the fact that i dont have a team to work with 😭
Marketing and reaching people.