Was learning game development with unity, then I realized it takes a ton of effort to make a game and noped out

im still bitter at my parents for absolutely stiling my early game dev experimentation as a kid. this is back in the "lower middle class home with one old PC in a public room" and using V-basic.

"you're breaking the computer! get rid of it!" proceeds to make me delete weeks worth of carefully crafted code.

i mean, computers, amiright, that's just for nerds? who could possibly make money in that nerd shit? go play sports - my parents

As someone who has made teeny weeny tiny games for game jams and stuff, I really think as a single person, at least to start, it's good to aim very small and focus on what you're passionate about. If you find something you enjoy making, that will be all the difference. Nobody starts off good at making stuff, and most game devs just have a history of repeatedly getting absorbed into a project and coming out knowing more, that's all it is. There's only one reason I code professionally now: Over years, I every couple of months went out of my way to find a bunch of interesting things I wanted to code as a hobby. That was all.

Sprites and artistry are where I seriously fall over in my game dev projects. I tend to focus on avoiding that as much as possible, and if you start looking, you'll be surprised how many successful indie games (at least initially) really cheap out on too many art assets. But the other thing to remember is there are tons of digital artists out there looking to get involved in stuff, and they're often friendly lots. It's okay to enjoy one aspect of game development, and go looking for other people to collaborate with. It's something I intend to try more in coming years.

Doing something that interests you, and working with people you get on with. Will get you a thousand times further than any amount of willing yourself into doing work you hate.

I really enjoy making ASCII roguelikes, there's a whole community around making them.

Try twine and make your own choose your own adventure game in just text.

You can put them on itch in HTML so people can play them in their browser and twine games are one of the ways people get jobs in games writing

Years ago I looked into Unity, but it felt a bit awkward. (No I'm no expert on this shit). Nowadays the fee increases make it seem not worth it.

Would you consider doing something open source like Godot?

Consider making something really small! The entirety of my own "game dev experience" is making a little Galaga clone and then making a Legend of Zelda thing that was only one screen and only had one enemy, and even though I didn't make much I still felt really fulfilled every time I would go "now how do I make X happen" and after an hour of researching and trying things out I would have successfully added X to my little game.

This is why game development tends to be a multi-person endeavor, and why it's super important to measure your expectations and be flexible. Like I've got game ideas of my own, but I 100% accept that if my ultimate dream video game would actually be made, that most of the ideas would have to be scrapped, and I'd need to find several people to help me do everything.

Ultimately, though, even if you just draw concept art and write a huge document detailing every idea you have and how these fit with each other (as if 90% of it wouldn't be cut for one reason or another), and make a short barebones tech demo or however we call it, you're still expressing your creativity and building skills. So it isn't really a failure, it's still a step towards achieving your dreams.

I don't have much to add but I feel ya. Planning on using Unreal Engine to make some stuff.

Honestly as someone who doesn't think they're a competent programmer and knows only basic stuff with C and Python I'd be proud If I do the thing with adding Mario in a realistic setting lol.

You can always try making something that doesn't require animated sprites. I haven't really spent much time working on games but the last time I was messing around in Godot I was making a system for placing rail tracks, and a terrain generation system. I didn't have to worry about making sprites at all, and all the stuff I wanted the player to place down was just static graphics that I was generating procedurally. Admittedly, later on I wanted to have the player place down buildings like train stations and generators that would probably have to be animated, but I think if you've already invested a lot of time into the fun part of a project it gets easier to do the boring parts.

I’ve been “trying to learn game development” on and off for years and it really does seem like the sort of thing where you have to continuously learn for a long period of time without having much output or without having output that would feel good to anyone but yourself. But then again I suppose that’s true for a lot of things. It’s just that I can’t spend a decade becoming a great musician to do the soundtrack and then also spend a decade becoming a great artist to do the sprites and also spend a decade becoming a great programmer to be able to code the game logic and also spend a decade becoming a great game designer to be able to put it all together.

What did you want to get out of game development?

I know that's a silly question, but there might be other avenues to release that energy with more immediate payoff.

Speaking of game dev, why do I always have the same mising faces when I export my mesh for rigging? I went to all the trouble of learning how to do basic 3d modeling and texturing because I am so in love with my setting, and now I have an actual playermodel but I can't seem to fix this issue. What causes it? I swear to god I'm hitting select all

Have you tried playing dreams? I mean the game made by media molecule, not the minecraft youtuber. If you have a ps4 or 5 then I recommend trying it out because it's astonishing how streamlined game development is on that thing. Modeling, rigging, making music, programming, and rendering is all instant. It's seriously revolutionary and would be industry standard if it were possible to create on PC.

If you find game making too hard you can always use Game Maker or, idk, RPG Maker 2k3 or MV

ASCII games are fuckin good tho so you should do that.

Mood.
I’ve got ideas, but the math and stuff involved in programming I just don’t think I have the right brain for.

this is me whenever i try to do anything interesting, i think its depression

I think it isn't actually that hard and it is probably just capitlaism preventing us form having good Middleware to make this achievable. I feel like thr post half life boom and the starcraft custom map scenes show us what the good timeline could have been

Same. I got the furthest with Construct 2 where I recreated some Warioware mini games with premade assets from itchio.