I’ve mentioned this a few times but i think it’s mostly down to finally being past the threshold where I need to sit down and study for a few hours to do a new thing in unreal engine. I enjoy learning, but not when the information is spread across incomplete documentation, youtube videos where you can’t be sure if it’s just them reading the documentation back to you until halfway in, and snarky forum posts from guys who watched those youtube videos. You might get lucky and find a genuine expert who helped someone solve what you’re solving, but mostly it’s combing repetitive resources looking for that one nugget of info that fell between the cracks.
Now that i know the engine well enough to do most everything i want on my own, it’s making learning new stuff a lot more fun! Instead of having to start from scratch, i can look up details on a specific node or function, for which there’s usually p good info out there.
I think game dev is the most satisfying when you’re first starting out and when you’re comfortable with it, but the least fun in between. When you’re starting out it’s all new to you, and everything is a “whoa i actually did this” experience. When you’re comfortable, dev can be rapid and result in huge changes to your game. Plus there’s the satisfaction of spending a few days programming something then finally testing it out and having it all fall into place just how you planned. That kind of called shot feels great!
In between though…. when you know enough to know you’re doing something wrong but not enough to know how to learn the right way to do it… that is definitely where i see most hobbyist devs drop off, and it’s def where i struggled the most. It’s also where you’ll be least equipped to know which loud prolific posters you should ignore and which you should listen to, so it’s easy to get led down rly bad paths. If you keep at it, it’ll get better but wow it’s rough in that middle there.
