Some advice?

purpletrauma

I'll make this short.. joined awhile ago to ask when I ran into any problems trying to do simple practice projects. Just basic stuff making sure I can move a character around and have him open doors or pick things up before I try a serious game.

I have extensive programming and game design experience, I've just never properly applied it to a project, and after much fussing settled on Godot as my engine. As a Linux user, most engines don't run natively, and many options are just coding libraries which is a bit too abstract. GUI layout in straight code is not a simple task.

.. which brings me to my issue: there any tips on managing a project? Because whenever I try I soon get swamped down by everything a game needs to be considered complete; controls, maps, graphics, music, menus, options, polish... I tried my best to approach it by breaking it into smaller goals, like "only get the character moving in this version" and "Just add picking things up for a one-item inventory next" and so on, but.. I still get overwhelmed..

Is there any advice for keeping a project well managed and collected together, or is this just a power-through-it sort of thing?

Ross

I'm probably not the person to help you, since the "break it into small pieces" approach works for me, but I will say that in my experience trying to plan things too much is a major productivity killer and makes things way more stressful than they should be. It's faster to do a hack job the easiest way you can think of and then throw most of that out and redo it once you've seen exactly how it works, than it is to plan for every contingency and do it perfectly the first time.

I also found this article to be pretty helpful.

purpletrauma

Hmm.. thanks!

Seems to focus on motivation, which may be a big part of what I need, though it has some practical steps.. of which step 8 is the "break into parts" I was already trying to do. the whole recommended process in that article looks similar to how I was trying to approach game making after so many times doing tutorials and reading up on things over the years, but he has it on a more refined level.

I'll read it, spend a couple days going through the thinking steps, keep an eye out for more advice on this thread, and see where it takes me in another month.