Bite sized tasks are great. Finding the motivation to start the next task is also important. If you want to read a chapter of a book, start by reading the first sentence. This naturally leads towards getting into flow, and the next thing you know, you've read three chapters. The brain tends to engage readily once you get over the initial hurdle of beginning the task.
Finishing my first game while working full-time
11–20 of 198 posts
Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time
#12Good tips... but in reality if you're working full-time (especially in a software related role), you may find yourself depleted before you get to the keyboard.
It took us 5 years to finish our game (everyone started from 0 knowledge on how to make games, so it was a rocky road), and for the last 1.5-2 years my life was absolute hell.
I'd push hard at work for 9 hours a day, eat, then push hard on the side project for 8-9 hours a day, sleep, wake up, and just keep going. One day a week maybe I'd just sleep. Not having "pure energy" for the side project meant that everything suffered.
We had to learn-by-trial virtually _everything_, I don't recommend ever doing a big project that way.
If you want to finish a game, choose a small game. Start doing game jams. Practice _finishing_. You can do more and more later.
Or, go for it, do it our way, all in to win (win is subjective, the pride is real, the monetary result didn't really do anything meaningful for so much investment). I wouldn't do it this way again, but I understand people who do.
All that said, the joy of doing something for us by us is not something I've encountered in my 15 year career yet. So... if you've never built something (and truly finished!), but you want to try... go for it.
Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time
#13Getting that 1 hour of work done every morning is what keeps the ball rolling.. momentum is critical..
Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time
#14Game jams are a great motivator. I need hard deadlines.
I recently did this [1] for a game jam, over one sleepless week. It's pretty unfinished but submitting something felt good. (Source: [2])
Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time
#15I tried to complete a simple 2D RPG that is a Ultima spinoff a few years ago. Nothing is technically impossible as it's just a simple 2D game but eventually I lost interest and broke away.
Now that I look back, there are two obstacles:
- I'm not really interested in such a game. I probably fancied about the genre as it's classic but I never finished any of the Ultima games.
- In the middle I tried to implement a full scale map editor. I managed to build a simple yet working one, but dropped the project once I realized that it needs a lot of work to write my own GUI (back then I'm using C++ and SDL2).
I also find out that once I know how to implement something on paper (e.g. if I can draw the process of an algorithm on paper), I usually lost the interest to implement it in code. It takes a huge amount of effort for me to complete assignments for the Data Structure class I'm taking, to the point that I'm thinking about dropping the class.
Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time
#16I did this for my first Steam game, which let me go full-time back in 2015 as an indie game developer and where I still am today. [1]
I'd get up early and get a few hours in before my more ordinary programming work as a Python backend developer at a fintech startup. And then on Saturdays I'd get something more like a normal days work done on the project.
It worked, and I'm glad I did it, but it definitely was a temporary situation, I don't think it's something you can do long-term without facing burnout or neglecting other important areas of life like family, friends, exercise, reading books, etc. So that last paragraph of the original post - making it sustainable - I'm glad to see it in there.
[1] The Cat Machine - https://store.steampowered.com/app/386900/The_Cat_Machine/
Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time
#17bruh, i didn't finished the text, how could i finish my project?
Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time
#18Good tips... but in reality if you're working full-time (especially in a software related role), you may find yourself depleted before you get to the keyboard. It took us 5 years to finish our game (everyone started from 0 knowledge on how to make games, so it was a rocky road), and for the last 1.5-2 years my life was absolute hell. I'd push hard at work for 9 hours a day, eat, then push hard on the side project for…
Agreed. It's a LOT difficult to finish something, especially something to sell.
Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time
#19Good tips... but in reality if you're working full-time (especially in a software related role), you may find yourself depleted before you get to the keyboard. It took us 5 years to finish our game (everyone started from 0 knowledge on how to make games, so it was a rocky road), and for the last 1.5-2 years my life was absolute hell. I'd push hard at work for 9 hours a day, eat, then push hard on the side project for…
> I'd push hard at work for 9 hours a day, eat, then push hard on the side project for 8-9 hours a day, sleep, wake up, and just keep going. One day a week maybe I'd just sleep.
No wonder you feel like hell, where is time for people, leisure, exercising and all the other activities that will help you move faster by feeling better? The true optimization for becoming a more efficient person is to do less of the thing you're doing most of, and do more of the other stuff you do less of.
Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time
#20Good tips and different things work for different people.
I find that I need to find something that I think would take a week to build. Then accept the fact it's going to take 8 weeks to finish given i'm doing about one hour a day rather than 8.