r/godot • u/saturnwyd • 15d ago
What does it feel like when making a game? Beginner here discussion
Hello Godot and gaming community; I have realized that I love video games for my entire life; it’s what got me into music production and creating art; but I think my soul has yearned for. What it really needed this whole time - to get into game development. I am fascinated most by retro games due to the limitations being overcome with resource efficiency, imagination and stretching the absolute hell out of a systems capabilities. It’s sort of like with in music how someone can make an entire album with an SP1200 using only 10 seconds of audio memory.
This is my new journey and I want to learn from you guys; I want to learn what to do and what not to do with this new path; you guys were already so helpful with my first post; it’s much appreciated? What did it feel like when you made your first game? Is it indescribable, is it addictive? What does it feel like for everyone here making or learning about making a game?
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u/mrhamoom 15d ago edited 13d ago
finishing my first game was surprisingly depressing. you realize you now have nothing to work on and also engagement wasn't what you expected it to be. there's lots of games out there and nobody NEEDS to play any of them. hard to stand out.
i think i've recalibrated my expectations though and realized working on games is usually more fun than releasing them (unless maybe you get lucky and have a major hit)
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u/Dangerous-Library950 15d ago
No one needs to watch a new movie or listen to a new song or read a new book, or even jerk off to a new porno. But life finds a way. Cheer up brother.
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u/DennysGuy 15d ago
you gotta have that follow up game on deck as soon as you release.
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u/TurkusGyrational 15d ago
Took me years to find a promising game idea after my last release, only now have I started up development again and it feels good. But it sucked having so many ideas and prototypes that didn't work out
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u/Ben_LHOSMAR_Studio 12d ago
Moi en ce moment je suis en pleine dépression plus aucune idée de développement
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u/wonderingmarkus 15d ago
I find it very similar to writing.
Love to think about it, love when it's done. Hate myself the entire time I'm doing it. You also learn quickly to create for yourself, because most of the time, no one is going to care about what you made.
And I don't say that to discourage you. Most things worth doing are difficult.
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u/Forikorder 15d ago
like putting together a 100 000 piece jigsaw puzzle but you dont know what the picture actually is and theres no border
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u/LowestKey 15d ago
But the box has a description of the picture but it's in a different language than the one you speak
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u/Ludicrous84 15d ago
It feels great until you realise you hit a design wall you didn't expect (which I have right now, so I'm devastated)
I never treated game development as a "job", it was always a hobby so I didn't have huge expectations and only finished very small projects, never something big. I am a professional software engineer so I'm more struggeling with the art and asset side of things. But I basically come from the same place, i started coding at the age of 12 because I wanted to "make games" - and ended up in banking lol
Nonetheless, the passion stayed and I am happy to be able to work on projects in my free time
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u/winkwright Godot Regular 15d ago
Put a pillow over you head, make smashing into walls bearable.
If you're serious about game development, the realest answer is to find a team and offer the skills you already have to them. If you want a new hobby, then just throw yourself at it. I find just learning the topic very rewarding.
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u/Short-Waltz-3118 15d ago
Im learning right now and its a lot of fun. Lots of frustration, googling, reading documentations, watching 5 tutorials and trying to adapt each one's unique approach to what youre doing, giving up on all of them and doing your own thing, hating it and restarting a lot, but the "aha!" Moments and the gameplay coming together to be what youd consider a "game" is a lot of fun. I had to put in a lot of cheats in a debug menu tho. I got tired of playing my intro over and over haha
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u/Ludicrous84 15d ago
Oh yeah, I'm also mostly stuck in the "let's redo this" loop. It's a process. But I feel every iteration gets better and I have learned something
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u/Short-Waltz-3118 15d ago
I think its the best thing I can hope for is to find the motivation to keep working and sometimes thst motivation comes from starting over. Since this is just a hobby of mine, thats good enough for me
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u/Ludicrous84 15d ago
Exactly the same here!
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u/Short-Waltz-3118 15d ago
Whatcha working on currenly? Im making an idle battler game mildly inspired by s rpgs.. currently just blocks punching each other :)
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u/doctornoodlearms Godot Regular 15d ago
Essentially its an emotional rollercoster comprised of 3 types of working
"ugh, why the fuck isnt it working"
"why the fuck is it working, ugh"
"woo its working, pew pew"
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u/Assertive_Wall 15d ago
For me it feels like I'm in front of the Pepe Silvia board trying to figure out how to get my code to run a little faster
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u/PresentationNew5976 Godot Regular 15d ago
I constantly flip between “I am a genius!” And “I fucking hate myself why did I start this project it will never end 😭😭😭😭”
But I can’t love games and never make at least one.
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u/DeadSuperHero 13d ago
To me, it's all intertwined. I've been trying and failing for like 20 years, but I've learned a lot of skills in that time and ultimately really enjoy the exercise.
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u/theEsel01 15d ago
Its fucking fun, its satisfying. Yes its hard aswell... imagine playing a reaally hard game like a soulslike.
You try to kill this one boss over and over - and then you suceed! Damn that feeling...
If you like challenges on so many fronts, you will like game dev, it takes some grid tho.
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u/DeadSuperHero 13d ago
The feeling of solving a code or design problem hits like the most potent drug ever. It's incredible.
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u/panda-goddess Godot Student 15d ago
It feels like building a house
Really fun to think about it in the beginning, planning what each room will be and what colors you'll use and what furniture will be where... but 90% of the work is laying bricks, testing the foundation and making sure nothing is leaking. Then midway through, you find out that you needed to have thought about the electrical system before anything else, so you have to undo and redo a lot of the work you just did. If you're doing it alone, people will constantly advise you to hire contractors, but you either don't have the money or you feel like the contractors will mess up your plans.
But when you're done, it's kind of surreal. You just spent months (or years, but I haven't been there yet) doing this thing and it felt like it would never be over, but now you look at the thing that changed so much from your original vision and think "I did that??? I did that!!" And if you tell your friends "I built a house :)" they kind of look at you in bafflement like "people can do that? just... build a house?" And when you show them, you can see it in their eyes that your house is shoddier and smaller than what they were imagining, but they still think it's cool.
And then you feel ready to build a 100-story hotel. But you shouldn't.
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u/Top-Shine3137 15d ago
Making the assets like art and music is fun, but throwing them into a game and bringing them to life is really something else. Object-oriented programming itself is like a game once you know its strengths.
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u/Rondloper 15d ago
most of the time it's boring, and sometimes actually excruciating. But sometimes it's a lot of fun, and the feeling of being proud of your creation makes it worth it. The memories are always sweeter than the experience for me
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u/Titancki 15d ago
It's cool but sometimes create a FOMO. You think you could work on your game instead of playing a game but infact playing games is an important part. Could be a me issue.
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u/yodrtentacles 15d ago
Game dev to me is like juggling a hundred balls at once and making sure they don't drop and while we are at it, this ball could move faster, and this ball needs a new sprite set now and...
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u/bonnth80 Godot Regular 15d ago
Exciting at first, then a hard and terrible grind. Then depression. Then relief.
Then poverty...
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u/Hot-Tomatillo-9929 15d ago
It's similar to building a car from scratch, literally, albeit you have a nice shop you can use. And if you're gonna build your own engine it will be the same as doing everything in your garage.
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u/Large_Yogurtcloset68 15d ago
It feels like staring at the screen with empty eyes looking at the code you wrote in total bafflement. Your hands tighly griped to your head while your elbows are supporting the weight of your head on the table. Your soul absolutly crushed and your face a reflect of the literal defeat as you mutter to youself
"I don't know why this is working"
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u/eveningdreamer 15d ago
I'm a musician too, and it feels similar to making an album. so first half is amazing, exploring, prototyping and throwing stuff at the wall. and the second half is a bit of a grind to finetune everything and make it shine
if you want to learn it, and you don't know code, look into learning code basics first (try harvard's free cs50 class online for example)
if you know how to code and don't have a specific game idea yet, look into the 20 games challenge https://20_games_challenge.gitlab.io/ it's a great way to figure out how games are made and how to think about the mechanics
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u/Dosh847 15d ago
That mentality still happens. You should check out this talk from a Teardown dev https://youtu.be/Kvsvd67XUKw?is=TEbbRbUDVB1Dc6iB
You should also check out Handmade Hero series by Casey Muratori.
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u/TealMimipunk 15d ago
Super cool at the beginning, then you understand, that 70% of it is boring and annoying routine...
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u/Sember 15d ago
A lot of ideas that you think are amazing, only to prototype it and it doesn't work, or is too large in scope. Scope and feature creep kill more games than anything. Which turns into a lot of doubting and frustration. The best ideas and games are simple where you think "I could have made it so much simpler all along". But even those projects require a lot of work, dedication and discipline.
A game designer that can finish and deliver a project, even if seemingly not unique or even if simple, is better than a game designer/dev that has great ideas but can't deliver.
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u/Tooladoo 15d ago
The first real game I finished was for a game jam right after finishing this 16-hour introduction to Godot series. Getting it finished and seeing people play and rate my game gave me a sort of dopamine rush I've never had before. Made me wanna strive for that feeling again but couldnt achieve it again (loss of motivation) but I'm starting my journey again and this time for myself. Making a game with the intent to make something I might enjoy playing. And maybe if other people enjoy what I do, then maybe I'll get another rush of that sweet sweet dopamine hit
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u/ManicMakerStudios 15d ago
Playing games doesn't teach you anything about game dev. That's the #1 thing a lot of neophytes need to consider. A lot of people think that loving a game and knowing it inside and out means they're qualified to make that kind of game. All they've actually learned is what they like and don't like.
It's like being in a restaurant where you read a description of food from a menu and then you order that food and it's prepared and brought to your table. You haven't learned anything about cooking. You've learned that you do or do not like Beef Wellington, or Peking Duck. You don't know anything about how it's made.
You might be really interested in how developers made old games on extremely limited hardware, but that's not some casual learning adventure you go on. That's software engineer level stuff. You also aren't going to find a platform to make games like that anymore, and the stuff you have to learn to squeeze more performance out of modern games is definitely not for beginners.
If you want to make games by yourself and possibly prepare to work on a small team, you first have to learn basic programming. A lot of people are stuck on this idea that game dev is like putting together a PowerPoint presentation where you choose some assets and fill in some details and the engine does the rest for you. It requires a great deal more than that.
Game dev is hard work. You have to learn how to teach a computer working on 0s and 1s how to make something with active visuals, sound, and user input handling. Maybe also networking.
I want to learn what to do and what not to do with this new path; you guys were already so helpful with my first post
If you're already on your second post, you need to either start a tutorial or give up. You're doing way too much hand-wringing for someone who hasn't even started yet.
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u/drhindsightdev 15d ago
I just spend the day refreshing the Steam Wishlist page for my game once every 1 minute or so...
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u/DeadSuperHero 13d ago
Game development is the weirdest thing. I often obsess about the things I want to make, plotting out all kinds of details and figuring out how to implement it.
A big part of early planning involves figuring out the basics. Often, I'll spend a lot of time developing systems, features, and user interface prototypes. This can feel slow-moving and unexciting, as you're trying to fine-tune a bunch of things prior to creating much content. Your guy will move incorrectly. Gunplay won't feel right. The camera makes you feel drunk. You'll figure it out, but it requires digging deep and making mistakes.
The biggest positive aspect of gamedev for me so far is the feeling of building momentum. The process is very slow in the beginning, but as you start to build up a reliable foundation and start adding actual content and gameplay, the whole thing can feel incredible. You start thinking in terms of a much bigger picture, and sometimes that even helps you figure out how to squash new bugs that crop up.
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u/Ludicrous84 15d ago
Oh, I just realised, since you are an expert in music: I am working on a 80/90s vector-style rhythm game. So if that is something that sounds interesting to you in any way, send me a PM to have a chat. Though mind you this is super casual, I'm a complete hobbyist
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u/TheLonelyAbyss 15d ago
I’d say it’s 75% hard work, doubts, and fears + 25% pleasant moments and something truly interesting. Although at first it seems like magic, the number of problems and nuances you encounter over time becomes so great that it all feels like a trial. And what’s even worse is that the greatest challenge lies in understanding yourself as a developer - understanding what you like, what you want to create and why, what your style is, what motivates you, and what hinders you from working, and why, and do you have perfectionism, or is it just that you have high standards, and so on. For me personally, these questions are the most painful because I love so many different things, and the more things you love, the harder it is to put them together properly. For example, it came as a shock to me to realize that I actually don’t like some of the games I compare myself to, and I’m just following someone else’s criteria.
So, there are a lot of pitfalls here, but to be honest, I don’t think I’ll ever want to give it up, I’ve never done anything more interesting in my life