Over the years I have developed an incredibly bad habit.
I start projects to keep myself entertained and end up abandoning them when I hit a barrier or when I get bored. Whether it was doing a painting of my favourite band when I was 15 or trying to become a Variety Idol in Japan (I wanted free food ok), I've never really seen any of my hobbies/projects through.
It's not really a great habit to have when you are aiming to become a game developer because there are loads of barriers that one may face. So I found a solution to this problem. I have a sister. You may wonder why I thought it was relevant to include this but context is everything. My sister writes articles; however, she wanted more practice so she set herself a Challenge to write every day for as long as she could. She is currently on day 660-something now which I think is incredible. I've been doing this challenge for 6 days now. It's nothing in comparison but it's a start to getting where I want to be.
I've been tracking my progress on my Instagram (@perplexed_programmer). Every day I'd like to complete a feature or a set of assets. It's been quite fun learning a new programming language. I did a module on C in my first year at University, so learning C# hasn't been too much of a struggle. I would say that the only problem is that I get so into writing Code that I forget to comment the code so I have to re-read it the next day to figure out what the hell it was that I wrote. Then I waste time writing the comments I should have written 24 hours ago.
I think that's a problem a lot of starting out developers have. We think, "Well I know what this code does so why do I need to comment it?"
But we need to remember, in the real world, we may be working in a team. If you write something while someone is away, or have a different Coding Style to your co-workers (this happened when I was writing HTML and CSS but that's another story), instead of them having to come and find you to have you explain what your code means, the comments allow them to understand it and get their job done quickly and efficiently.
Doing this challenge means that I've had to take on every role in a Game Development company. I am the developer, I am the graphic designer, I am the animator, I am the 3D artist. It's allowed me to use software that I've always been too confused to use (Blender) by forcing me to learn how to use all of the features, instead of just some. I think my favourite things to make in Blender are houses. It's almost therapeutic. When I started this challenge, I asked myself what did I want to get out of it? I ask myself this every time I open my laptop and get back to work. What I want to get out of it is:
- a better coding style (fluent and unaided)
- a complete (or near complete) game that I can be proud of
- to be able to make assets
- to become a better animator
- and most importantly... TO NOT GIVE UP OR GET DISTRACTED BY OTHER THINGS
I just want to close this off by saying that I invite anyone else who wants to get into any kind of development to set themselves a 100 Day challenge. You'll be surprised at how beneficial it can be. I am probably one of the least artistic people on this planet, I can't draw for s**t. But I've started to realise it doesn't matter anymore. Even if your assets look bad at first (my main character is a capsule) just make them anyhow.
You can always adjust them later, just have something there so that you can test that your code works properly. Testing is the most important this you can do when developing anything. That's why I tend to do it as I go because it's easier to fix one issue than to try and take on 50 at a time.
