Do you have game design anxiety?

[Barzona]

I'm going to talk about my journey, but for the love of god, please tell me about yours, too.

It's been two years this month that I've been working on my "main" game and I'll admit to at least five months of hiatus while I dealt with life stuff, but for the most part I've worked fervently on this.

I'll never give up on finishing this thing. I'm having too much fun creating new things and bringing them to life. Even the times I want to pull my hair out trying to figure out something simple are important to me. I can't think of anything more rewarding than creating an entire world.. well other than actually finishing this game and people liking it.

But seriously, how many of us are suffering constantly? Stressing about whether or not we are doing the right things or if we should even be spending our time doing this? Yes, I doubt myself a whole lot and constantly measure myself against the greats and wonder how they do it and how they always seem to know all the right moves. I get caught up in so much idea debt that I wind up spending a ton of time on features instead of getting more of the bare bones fleshed out.

A friend of mine is finally releasing his game to Steam Greenlight and even though it's an RPG maker game, I still feel like I'm getting left in the dust. I refuse to use a tool like RPG Maker, but only because I feel like I'd be letting something else dictate too much of the control and design factors. No, can't do it..

There is still so much work left to do..

[MSGhero]

At 6/25/16 11:25 PM, Barzona wrote: But seriously, how many of us are suffering constantly? Stressing about whether or not we are doing the right things or if we should even be spending our time doing this? Yes, I doubt myself a whole lot and constantly measure myself against the greats and wonder how they do it and how they always seem to know all the right moves. I get caught up in so much idea debt that I wind up spending a ton of time on features instead of getting more of the bare bones fleshed out.

I coded my terrain to be entirely static and split into 2 classes, but that was annoying to clean up so I made it instanced and one class, but I needed to access it from multiple places (and I hate passing around references) so I used the service design pattern.

You'll never code something the "correct" way the first time you do it (there are many correct ways). I let future me deal with that and just code something. I'll code something just to get it working, leave it alone for a while, then revisit and refactor it later when I have a better idea of what it's doing in my code.

Working > being "correct" as far as finishing a game

[Barzona]

I get not stressing about code all too much, but what about the stress of how much you're actually accomplishing? I can't make claims about anyone's accomplishments but my own, but I feel like I should have had something finished by now. Even just a small game.

There's really nobody to talk to about this stuff. Family/friends are supportive, but hearing props (or constructive criticism) from the community is way more helpful. They aren't so biased.

[MSGhero]

At 6/26/16 03:13 PM, Barzona wrote: I get not stressing about code all too much, but what about the stress of how much you're actually accomplishing? I can't make claims about anyone's accomplishments but my own, but I feel like I should have had something finished by now. Even just a small game.

There's really nobody to talk to about this stuff. Family/friends are supportive, but hearing props (or constructive criticism) from the community is way more helpful. They aren't so biased.

I have a todo list and I'm versioning my code, so I can see what I've done over time. It's more than I think each time I look back. Pretty sure everyone in this forum sucks at making projects that don't take years, so it's fine.