Postmortem - What this game taught me about myself

Hello everyone!

I hope you're all doing good today! I know I am right now! I'm finally release a new game after what seems like forever since my last project. And while you might think that, that's a lot of time to be working on projects; and this is what you came up with?? Well there's a lot to explain about that actually!

My last project I posted on here was back on 26th June 2020. I was so excited about that game because comparatively to my first game, I got it done in no time at all, I thought I was going to be on a roll from then on out! So you must be wondering...Where are all these games?? Well I was wondering that very same thing myself. I was ready to start work on my next project and I was more than pumped to get started. But I ran into multiple problems that many people like myself come across. Scope management. I kept telling myself that this next game was going to be bigger and better than the last one, but still reasonable enough to create. Well I had that all wrong in my head. The project quickly, and I mean QUICKLY started to get out of my hands. I had made a decent amount of progress for such a task and near the end I learned a lot from the experience! But I knew I had to move on to something more realistic.

The next project seemed a bit more manageable in my eyes, a third person shooter in the similar vein of a Call of Duty: Zombies game. I had planned to make it a much more dumbed down version of the game thinking that would make it more feasible. But unfortunately I started to run into the same problems again. Too big of a scope on the project and getting feelings of hopelessness. I was way in over my head again and knew I needed to start over with something smaller. And it was at this time that I was attempting to learn new skills in 3D modeling as well.

I started to get lost into modeling because it was more apparent when I was making progress because I could see it right in front of me! I would work more and more on modeling and animations then I would coding and actually game designing!

BTW you can see some of those animations here on my YouTube channel *wink wink* *nudge nudge*

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2HwK_qDCWnKqvSBpIjl3HA 

I had ended up spending months to almost the whole year focusing on something I wouldn't end up using a whole lot down the line. So when I came back to actually trying to work on a game I learned the horrible truth that I had forgotten most of my skills that I used to create my first two games. I was more than upset at myself, I was distraught! I felt like I had been wasting my time for almost a year on something I wasn't even intending on pursuing. I started to question whether I was cut out to even make games at this point. I felt a serious weight come over me, and it hurt.

It wasn't till the most recent game jam I got to participate in that one of my teammates @MoonlightStudio(https://moonlit-studio.itch.io/ please check her out, her games are amazing and so is she!) told me about how she's trying to focus on only her one skill she wants to level up, and for everything else she'll just grab free assets to fill in the gaps that they don't want to work on. This idea hadn't hit me before and it made me come to a couple big revelation about myself and my process of making games.

1.) I don't have to do everything myself ESPECIALLY if those other things are not what I plan on doing the most.

2.) My skills in a subject will only improve if I actively work on them. And

3.) As much time as I feel like I've been wasting doing something that was going to help me, I still learned so much from what I was trying to do!

I feel new wind in my sails after working on this project and while I'm well aware it is small and not to the size of projects I keep envisioning, it's done and that's more to say about any of those other ideas. 

So what all has this game taught me about myself?

Well I learned a lot, but at the forefront I learned that no matter how much I say I want to do one thing or the other, the only thing that will make a difference is whether I act on it or not. I'm always advocating to my friends and family to spend at the BARE MINIMUM at least 

30 min - 5 hour of time out of the week on your craft. I know people can be busy with life and everything going on around us these days. It's going to be hard, it might suck a little, but if this is something you truly want in life you need to put in the time for it. It doesn't have to be like a second or third job for you to make progress, but you need to put something into it. Otherwise you won't see much return.

Now I know this all sound super cliche, but until you can really internalize these cliche saying, you won't get what they're really trying to say!

Anyways I feel like I've gone and rambled enough about this, so I hope any and everyone that reads this has a wonderful rest of your day, and I hope you enjoyed playing my game! :D