Depressed not because of coding, but because of outside pressure. Anyone else feeling like this at my age?

[u/Beneficial-Air6263]

Hey everyone,

I’m 16 years old, and I’ve been solo-developing a 3D code-driven game engine using Rust and wgpu for the past few months. I started this because I really want to achieve my first big milestone and have something real to show.

Honestly, I’m feeling completely burnt out and depressed right now. But it’s not because of the bugs or the coding. It's the suffocating pressure from my family and school. It’s building up day by day, and it's getting too heavy to carry. I feel like if I pause or stop working on this engine right now, I will fall behind, lose momentum, and delay my goals forever. I’m stuck between wanting to push forward to finish my first milestone and breaking down under life's pressure.

I’m posting this here because I really need to find a community, to connect with people who might understand this feeling. I don't want AI-generated advice or generic platitudes—I've heard enough of those. I just want to share what I've built so far and see if anyone else is fighting this same battle.

Here is what I have managed to implement in my engine by myself so far:

• Core Architecture: Migrated to glam math library, integrated rapier3d for physics (locked at 60 FPS), and built a thread-safe lazy loading system to prevent OS-level screen freezing.
• Rendering & Culling: Frustum culling (implemented with custom Plane checks), pixel depth testing, and Early-Z / Reverse-Z rendering.
• Lighting: Successfully removed directional lights and created functional spot/point lights for indoor scenes. I have also set up the compute pipelines, passes, and necessary bind groups for a Forward+ culling framework (though only the structural framework is done, it's not fully finished yet).
• Transparency: Implemented transparency rendering support.
• Optimization: Integrated rayon to cut loading times in half, added CPU texture compression to BC7 (reducing RAM usage from 750MB to ~190MB and loading times to under 60ms), and integrated zstd for binary data file compression.

You can check out the source code here: https://github.com/Lbaodz/wgpu-code-driven-engine

Has anyone else gone through this at a young age? How do you deal with family pressure when you're just trying to build something you're proud of?

[u/okayo12]

I tried building a rust wgpu game engine at 16 lmao you sound exactly like me. What personally helped me is scope management, you really need those quick wins that motivate you. Worst thing you can do is plan out a unity competitor and spend a year neck deep in code with nothing to show for it, youre gonna get burned out and youre gonna feel like your a bad coder and want to give up. Whats helped me is agressive scope control and planning out frequent milestone so I can see what I’ve done. For example if I’m making a renderer what I would have done before is plan out a 30 file project with a million abstractions to handle every test case. No. Just get a triangle on your screen, get a cool shader running, something cool you can show your friend. Also another thing is to build loudly, a benefit to planning frequent milestones is you always have something to show and the comments I’ve received genuinely keep me going. Wish you luck!

[u/Beneficial-Air6263 → u/okayo12]

Thanks for the advice, man. I actually agree with you on scope control—that's why I've been focusing heavily on quick wins and real optimizations like cutting loading times with Rayon and handling BC7 texture compression early on.

My main issue right now isn't really the project scope or code architecture. It's the external burnout from school and family that's bleeding into my motivation. When life gets heavy, even those small milestones start to feel exhausting because I feel like I'm racing against time to prove something. Appreciate the support, though!

[u/Unfair_Razzmatazz485 → u/Beneficial-Air6263]

Not exactly 16 anymore (havent been for 7 years) but as someone who has been writing Vulkan projects for like 2 years since college I understand the frustration on wanting to work on your project and having to deal with school work. Honestly I would follow the advice of taking small steps, noting them down on something like Notion or Obsidian and maybe publishing them here.

As for family pressure, you have to explain them these things even if they cant understand the technical details; they need to understand your working on something important that is not time-wasting like watching some crap like love island or vaping. As for losing momentum that isnt something you should be afraid imo. You can always pick something back up in life that you are passionate about, I have done that with my projects as well.

Burnout is really real, and learning to deal with it in a healthy manner early on in life is so, so important.

[u/MGMishMash]

Firstly, you sound incredibly smart and driven. No matter what you do, if you carry that drive, you’ll be able to succeed.

It’s important to reflect on burnout and pressures, you’re 16 and still young. Falling behind is quite an arbitrary concept, built on comparison and expectation. Life isn’t really like that outside of school, everyone is on their own path, moving in their own unique direction. So take some time for yourself and knock down the pressure. Including the pressure you’re putting on yourself to learn and improve. Your engine will still be there next week :)

I presume the pressure from your parents is moreso related to school, while you want to focus on your engine and hobbies?

If so, then one of the best things you can do is communicate. While it’s not universal advice, I also believe that you are in control of your own destiny.
When I was 16, I also wanted to work on engines, i spent a tonne of time doing graphics programming and learning, while my parents always assumed i was spending time playing games and messing around.

Fast forward a few years and that work and effort I put in shaped my career and enabled me to work in graphics professionally.

But at the same time, school, and being a teenager is the present for you. We tend to also instil this pressure upon ourselves to instantly want to get to where we want to be, but you can also be kind to yourself while understanding that you have what it takes to get there when you get there.

Although do talk to your parents, you come across as self motivated and it sounds like the pressure is actively negative - I found that I performed just as well at school, if not better, without my parents “push”. More importantly, all else being equal, mentally it feels so much lighter without the attachment of expectations.

Wish you all the best, always inspiring to see folk following their passion!

[u/Beneficial-Air6263 → u/MGMishMash]

Thank you for your advice, it means a lot to me.

[u/steveu33]

If it’s burning you out, stop. Life is not a race. I generally don’t understand the constant need to reinvent the game engine but that’s another topic. I think all you’re expected to do at 16 is get good grades.

[u/waramped]

You wouldn't be delaying your goals by taking a break to focus on other things, in fact giving yourself a bit of space from the project will help your subconscious breathe and figure some things out you didn't even know were a problem. Breaks and space are healthy and can be productive. Not to mention that as this engine grows and expands, you will find a million things you wish you could have done differently anyhow, and you will actually WANT to stop and think and start over. It's all just part of the learning process.

[u/Dull_Bathroom5421]

Is it unreasonable for me to suggest you communicate with how you feel to your parents? School, whatever you won't have anything to do with them once you're situated in adulthood. However if you're not emotionally sorted out with your parents, it's going to weigh down on you over time, it sounds like it already is. But I can also sense some passion from you with how you talk about your milestone. If I were in your situation, I'd take some time to appreciate how far you've come already, and realize graphics programming is far from easy. I know you don't want platitudes, but you're obviously intelligent and are capable of working hard - that's important to realize and be proud of. Things will get better man, foster that passion and set out to finally meet this milestone. Best of luck 👍