My desire to make cool video games vs my desire to not have to learn how to code properly, fight
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in reply to @ratbastarddotfuck's post:
what if i told you the 'properly' part isn't the important part?
Like, go make games, wonder about coding "correctly" later. Start off making small things, literally do not worry about performance or having any decent form of "good" code at all. That's something for later.
Just duct tape together stuff you found on the internet, make that cool thing!
Also, re: learning to code: learn code by doing projects, not by doing boring classroom examples! Plan out a stupidly simple lil game, see if you can build that, then go nuts with graphics and the lot! It's pretty easy nowadays with engines like Godot out there.
And uh. #the next goty is stuck in my mind and I can't get it on a screen. Not to be a buzzkill, but thinking way too big is honestly the highway to getting stuck / frustrated because things don't work out.
Yeah, that all makes sense - my issue is that I want to do it properly the first time so I don't have to do the tedium of cleaning it up later lmao. Which I know isn't really how learning a new art form works. I've started a couple of cobbled-together projects and for what it's worth, they're fun to make! But like you say, I think I need to go much simpler and focus in hard on one easy mechanic. Build up from there.
And don't worry, the goty line was just a joke 😅 (mostly, I mean, don't we all want our Thing to be fabulous and beloved? But no, I don't actually think this way)
My other issue, and the excuse I keep using, is that I just have so many projects on the go all the time that surely I could never find the time to make a game. But really, I just have brain worms that make me afraid to start new things.
A fun exercise method I saw for making games (mentioned by some experienced indie dev, don't recall where from, sorry) is "make microgames with a gameplay of 10 seconds" aka, mini game jams. Warioware-style games, basically.
But yeah, starting is hard! Keeping up momentum is even harder, especially if you have a trillion ideas. What I've personally found quite helpful as another adhd nerd is to give up the idea of starting a thing, finishing a thing- instead, multitask, switch between things all the time. The one thing to keep in mind is to leave proper documentation to Future You so you can pick up where you left off the next time you restart the project.
Progress is a little slower that way, but it's much easier to restart existing projects that way. Anyway, that's what works for me, ymmv.
I might be (am) biased but i really enjoy game-making tools that allow you to create stuff with little-to-no coding! obviously they can't do everything but especially when you have a bunch of ideas you just want to get out there they can be really fun. have a lot of recs in those areas if you are interested :)
Always keen for recs!! I've mostly been playing in unity, and I've done some renPy work before (which is what got me into the whole thing). I've heard good things about gamemaker studio but I haven't given it a go yet.