How to stay focused and inspired while developing your game.

How to stay focused and inspired while making your game.

Most indie game developers have a great vision for the game they wanted to create. We start thinking of the cool features, effects, and graphics we like the game to have, all of us wanted the best out of our games.

But often, over planning becomes ambitious especially for starters who are just about to start their first game. By the time we started implementing features, we start to realize that most of the cool features we wanted to incorporate in our game is not that easy to do.

Whether you're a fresh new indie game developer or an experienced one, we all lose motivation and got bored at some point along the process, and often we would rather browse social media, watch youtube videos, or play video games. So how do we get back all the inspiration and motivation we had?

This is how to stay focus and inspired while developing your game. Here are 5 tips on how you can cope up with laziness, boredom, lack of motivation or inspiration while making your game.

1. Limitations

Implement limitations in your work. If you have 10 features you wanted to do in your game, reduce those to 5. Determine if the other 5 are really major or needed functions in your game, if not, then just remove it and implement them later as updates. It's better to implement major features first before focusing on the minor elements of the game. Some other developers would argue that even small details matter. Yes, it's true, but polishing comes on the latter part of development. Don't start polishing your game at the early stage of the development.

Not limiting the things you make in your game can overwhelm you. Thus, this is the major reason why developers are often getting burnt out and not able to release their game because it's never-ending! Worse this becomes stress. Hey, remember you make games to have fun and not to stress yourself.

A good tool I can share with you for project management is Trello. I use it to list all the functions I wanted to implement in my game, sort them out by priority, and do first the tasks which I think is beneficial to my game. Here's what my Trello board looks like.

By using a simple project management tool like this, you can track your progress and will help you to identify the important tasks.

2. Watch Game Development Motivational Videos / Documentary

This is for me, the most effective way to get me back up from being bored with my game. Whenever I see someone shares their progress in their games I can't help but feel a little bit envious. What I like about some devlogs is that they also share the problems they encounter during the development, but then they also tell how they were able to solve it. Just like you and I, getting day by day problems making our games. In my other post How I started learning game development alone, I shared my favorite youtube channels I watch. You might want to check out these developers who share their passion with the world as well.

3. Try to work Isolated.

This may vary from people to people, but often than not, we get distracted by someone else. Try to stay away from other people, your family probably, and start working alone. This will help you stay focused and avoid distractions.

I'm currently renting a place alone and I find that I am able to do more things in my game compared when I'm at home. I'm more focused and able to do what I want. I also find that listening to instrumental music helps me focus in my work. I usually listen to lo-fi hip hop music in youtube. There's this channel called ChilledCow and does a live stream of lo-fi music 24/7.

4. Join Game Jams

Joining game jams not only give you a break from saturating yourself too much on your game but it also teaches to wise time budgeting. Game jams usually last only for 2 days, and you have to submit something playable after which. You will learn new stuff and gain new knowledge along the way but it all depends on the jam's theme. My first game jam WOWIE 2.0 and devs were given 72hrs to submit something. I tried to join and reused assets from my first game PolyDungeon.

My first game jam game

5. Practice Discipline

Work Discipline

Making games can become more and more work as you add more features and functions to them. Staying organized on how you work things out for your game is a big factor in terms of sustaining momentum. Unorganized tasks, schedules, and not knowing priorities can lead a developer to stress and frustration. 

If you're a busy man with a full-time job, married, and have children to look over. Then, it is recommended that you divided your time to each of these responsibilities. Proper time allotment will help you achieve more tasks more than you can think of. It's easy to create schedules for each of these responsibilities but it's difficult to follow them religiously.

As you train yourself to be more organized and timely on your tasks. You will be able to eliminate some causes of getting burned-out in the future. Thus, doing so will lead you to be a more productive developer than before.

Self Discipline

Try to refrain from your vices too much. I don't necessarily mean smoking, alcohol, or any substance that you probably are consuming, but it's about any addiction you have in yourself. It could be social media, video games, parties, gym.  I'm not saying that doing these kinds of stuff is bad but too much will get you nowhere from progressing through your game development. As I mentioned from work discipline, you may want to create a schedule for each of your activities and allot a good amount of time for your game development so that you can spend your time wisely and still able to work on your games very well.

Conclusion

In conclusion, no matter how passionate an individual is in making games, he won't be able to make it if he's hindered by his own actions. Remember, that you're the only one who can work out things for yourself. If you're not gonna do this today, then when? There are no other days to do something better but today. Start to work yourself up, balance your time, and determine the things that hinder you from developing your game. Create a solution and conquer your situation. That's it.

Thank you for reading this post. Have a nice day.

Unity PlayerPrefs

A straightforward tutorial on how to use PlayerPrefs

What is PlayerPrefs?

• PlayerPrefs is a persistent data that is stored in the user's hard disk. This means that the value in it will remain even the game was closed and re-opened.
• PlayerPrefs is usually used to save values from the game such as in-game settings. Others use it to save in-game progress for small games.

Where do PlayerPrefs values store?

• In windows, PlayerPrefs values are being stored in the registry. Specifically in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Unity\UnityEditor\(Company Name)\(Game Name)

What type of values can you store in PlayerPrefs?

• There are 3 different data types you can store in PlayerPrefs:
• String
• int
• float

How to use PlayerPrefs?

Sample Script name YourScript

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using UnityEngine; public class YourScript : MonoBehavior { void Start() { // store 3 different data types in PlayerPrefs PlayerPrefs.SetString("player_name","Shrieg"); PlayerPrefs.SetInt("player_hp",100); PlayerPrefs.SetFloat("player_money",250.70f); PlayerPrefs.Save(); // required to save values // access stored PlayerPrefs Debug.log("Player Name: " + PlayerPrefs.GetString("player_name")); Debug.log("Player HP: " + PlayerPrefs.GetInt("player_hp")); Debug.log("Player Money: " + PlayerPrefs.GetFloat("player_money")); } }

PlayerPrefs syntax: PlayerPrefs.SetDataType("key",value)
PlayerPrefs key must always be enclosed with " (double quotes).

How to check if a PlayerPrefs variable was stored?

To verify if the value was successfully stored. Use the HasKey("key") method of the PlayerPrefs class. It will return boolean True if the key exists, false if not.

Example: 

• PlayerPrefs.HasKey("player_name"); // returns true
• PlayerPrefs.HasKey("player_class"); // returns false

How to clear all PlayerPrefs?

In the Unity editor, navigate to the menu bar, click Edit -> Clear all PlayerPrefs and hit Yes once prompted. Note that this cannot be undone. It will clear stored PlayerPrefs registry records.

If you want to do it via script just simply write: PlayerPrefs.DeleteAll()

Can I rely on PlayerPrefs to Save game progress?

This question depends on what values you are storing in PlayerPrefs. PlayerPrefs values can easily be changed in windows registry, so if you store the player's attack power value as PlayerPrefs for example, one can easily modify the value to 9999, thus dealing maximum damage to enemies.

The best way to protect saved data is to use data encryption but that will be discussed in a different post.

So, what's the best way to store in-game values then? In my case, I use SQLite for storing persistent data. You can also use XML and/or other formats.


For more information about PlayerPrefs. See Unity's official documentation. https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/PlayerPrefs.html

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Thank you and have a great day!

How I started learning game development alone.

Saving Merchant Scarlet (Game made for a game jam)

We all have played video games even once in our lives. If you're born in the '90s like me, you've probably grown up with consoles like Nintendo Entertainment Systems (NES), SNES, PS1, Sega Genesis, Game boy, etc... Where graphics are limited 8 or 16 bits of colors, chiptune sounds, and gameplay are most likely limited to move, jump, and attack, yet you find it fascinating.

Back then, I spent hours and hours of playing NES games in front of a CRT television. My older brother was the one who showed me these things and taught me how to play. I developed love in playing video games because of the engagement it offers.

Since I'm also a kid with an interest in computers, I tried to learn computer programming as early as 15 years old. I remember watching YouTube videos that taught people how to create windows applications I didn't know what is a programming language back then. We don't have a computer and an internet connection at home during that time. So I go to an internet cafe and learn these things on my own.

The very first game that I created as far as I can remember was written in Visual Basic 6.0. I don't know much in programming that time as I didn't formally train in programming, but I was able to pull off a very simple game where gameplay is basically a button clicker.

Fast forward to 2019. I decided to take and learn Unity seriously. I tried learning it in 2018 but I think I haven't got the dedication it takes to partake in such a difficult and long term commitment. But January of 2019, I told to myself. "This year, I will take this seriously, start my very first game, and with all my heart commit working on this stuff."

Thus my journey began in 2019. I choose Unity because it has lots of tutorials that you can find online compared to other game engines. Below are the things that helped me learned game development in unity.

1. Youtube Tutorials

Youtube this the best among the rest. Hands down, 80% of the things I know in unity are all from watching tutorials from different game developers and all of them for FREE. One of the best out there is 'Brackeys', I learned a lot from his short and concise tutorials. 

Aside from Unity, I also taught myself how to use blender and create 3D animated models. If you're a starter just like me who don't have any background in 3D modeling and the use of any tools. I suggest you learn blender and start off with the tutorial of 'Blender Guru'.

Blender has lots of shortcut keys to manipulate all therein, so it's better to open up a text editor and write all the shortcut keys you'll learn. Trust me, they are extremely helpful.

2. Udemy

I would like to take the learning seriously so I decided to spend some buck to a full course, so I enrolled myself in the 2D and 3D unity course by 'Ben' and 'Rick'. I start off with the 2D game development course. I spent weeks following the tutorials here and there, doing the exercises, answering the quizzes, and so on. 

Enrolling such course is great for complete beginners, and when I say beginners, including beginner in programming who don't have any background knowledge in it at all.

But for me, who have been coding for a long time. You might get bored easily, but it's up to you.

I was not able to finish the 2D course. I just finished about 25% of the course and I feel that I'm not satisfied with the things I learned. I feel the learning phase is very slow.

So that's when I started to create a game of my own, my very first game in unity. No tutorials, no advice. I'll do what I wanted to do, I'll create my own problems and solve them, and thus the birth of PolyDungeon.

And you know what, I learned faster and more effectively doing my own game instead of following other's games. Because when you create your own game, you do all the things yourself; planning, conceptualizing, game design, mechanics, so on and so forth. You'll learn how to solve problems every time, and that's when I started to enjoy game development.

Other people might find enrolling online courses beneficial, but this is completely optional.

3. Youtube Devlogs

By watching other game developer's devlogs, I get fueled with inspiration and motivation to work on my own game. Sometimes you get to compare your work with the others, but it's not a matter of quality or followers. It's a matter of the progress you made in your game. Even if you're the most skilled person in the world who can create the most stunning game the mankind will ever play but will not be able to finish and release to the people. It does not matter.

Here are some game dev YouTubers that I find inspiration throughout my journey.

- Ask Gamedev

- Extra Credits

- Game Dev Underground

- Thomas Brush

- Blackthornprod

- Jonas Tyroller

- ThinMatrix

These game developers not only share their progress in their own games, but most of them give advice on game development. Some other channels offer game jams where other game developers who follow their channel get to work on a game for a week or so, and showcase it. Other YouTubers offer "I play your game in my channel" such as Jonas Tyroller who plays the games of his followers and gives feedback about it.

4. Practice and Prototyping

When I was starting to learn the engine myself, I created several prototypes such as 3D movement using wsad keys, camera controls, animation, collision detection, and so on. All of these are for the sake of testing and learning, at the same time while doing this you get to learn how it works and how to implement it. 

This is the most important part of learning game development. It's not enough for someone just to sit all day and watch others create their own games, or even follow and create their games like how they did it on a tutorial. It's all about YOU wondering how something works, researching about it, and finally implementing it. Once you have done it. Then that's where you learn effectively. Soon you become dependent and able to solve your own problems. Remember google is always there, just ask him.

Whenever something struck your mind like 'how did they do that?', 'how does that work?'. Make those things as leverage to make something like it and figure out how to do it. That's practicing and at the same time prototyping. You will be able to use the things you've learned in your own game one day.

5. Just create your first game

Just start making your first game. Plan for something you have in mind whether it's a 2D game, a 3D game, a first-person shooter, an RPG, a visual novel, it doesn't matter. JUST DO IT. You might not be able to create a very good game at this point but what matters is the work you're gonna put in your game, the learning, the knowledge. the skills.... and all of these are priceless. The journey of game development a long road of learning and challenges, and it's all up to you to persevere.

Experience game developers often tell beginners to make their first game 'small', and I agree to them. If you're going to make your first game, better plan for something small first like a simple top-down maze. Avoid fantasizing for a game that you think will yield millions of dollars like Fortnite. Creating an online battle royal is hell. Remember that these AAA games are made by thousands of people behind them with millions of dollars budget. Take those into consideration.

So what is the most effective way to learn?

For me, the most effective way to learn is #5. Creating your own game, and when I say your own. It must be something original, not a flappy bird or any ketchapp clone. Once you start making your game it is the start of committing to a long term learning process, and the more you build your game, the more you learn.

In summary, how someone learns is something someone's own personal preference. It actually doesn't matter where you learn,  how you learn, or whether or not you have background knowledge in some aspect of game development. It's all about committing and taking learning seriously. Even the best indie game developer out there doesn't stop learning. Embrace learning and knowledge, these are the tools you can use to be a better indie game developer one day.