DEV Community

Cover image for Stuck in Fun Land and unable to program my game
Jack Le Hamster
Jack Le Hamster

Posted on

Stuck in Fun Land and unable to program my game

Both figuratively and literally, I'm stuck in Fun Land and unable to work on my game engine. I guess I could have brought my laptop and code in the corner, but my niece would think I'm a big anti-social nerd. So instead, I'll be wiping out a new dev log post on my phone, and be a small anti-social nerd.

Now this is also an issue that applies to developing a game engine on your own.

Stuck in Funland

I've been doing nice progress on my game engine. Yet, I'm nowhere close to having a game. The reason? That's right, I'm stuck in fun land.

One thing game devs forget when working on their own, as opposed to be part of a large team, is that there's a bunch of boring stuff that needs to be worked on. Somebody has to be doing those.

So while my game engine still didn't have a game loop, I spent a large part of my gamedev time:

  • adding fun shader effects
  • refactoring my code to make it look nice
  • tweaking the controls to make it look smooth when navigating an empty world
  • optimizing performance even though there are two objects in my scene.
  • just staring at the screen. (Takes up 90% of my time)

While it's still a step up from being stuck in "bug land", you'd still want to move on from it, but the dangerous part is that you might not want to.

Find a definite goal

While I was working on that game engine, I took a detour doing a game jam and completed a whole project.
None of that work involved that engine I spent month building, yet it turned out pretty decent.

This told me that I can't just build my engine in a vacuum, imagining what features could be useful. I need a specific game that the engine can produce, and build the engine towards that game.

The new game direction

For the first project, I am now trying to build a JRpg, modeled after the first Phantasy Star.

That might look ambitious, but I already made a project that resembles that before.

As I set my specific game goal, I immediately stepped out from Funland and already started tackling one task I dreaded to do: the menu interface!

While that's not super exciting to build, it's needed, at least for a game like Phantasy Star.

By just copying that game's interface, I can at least cut down time on decision making (which is the 90% of time staring at the screen part). Do yeah, huge time saver.
I can go back to be more creative once I have the first game out of my engine.

Main takeaway

Being stuck on fun land might be pleasant, but as far as contributing to finish a game, it could be as bad as "bug land".

At least, you know you want to get out of "bug land" so it's a drive to finish the game, whereas being stuck in "fun land" is a trap. You might want to stay there forever.

But game dev is like any other work, you sometimes need to do the dirty work, unless you're able to work in a team where someone else is willing, or hopefully enjoys, doing that dirty work.

Image of AssemblyAI

Automatic Speech Recognition with AssemblyAI

Experience near-human accuracy, low-latency performance, and advanced Speech AI capabilities with AssemblyAI's Speech-to-Text API. Sign up today and get $50 in API credit. No credit card required.

Try the API

Top comments (0)