Gamedev: the Great Reset

Phew, it’s been quite some time since I’ve come back to this! I felt like I was on a roll when I was working on Boba Tycoon but I honestly feel like I fell off (because of some sickness) and avoided coming back because things felt unsolvable. I have partly attributed this to relying on Claude AI for answers. It, at the time of use, gave me a big early boost, but struggled holding on to context and ended up sending me in circles many times, despite trying to feed it context that I wanted to learn, and not just be fed code that “might” solve my problem. It used a lot of tokens and I was not about to spend any extra than that first month I decided I’d pay for it.

I can easily see how people exceed tokens and feel like they now are locked in to this system that “knows what’s going on” and may feel like they can’t progress without it, because I have now been there. And I don’t like it.

I realised that using it made me feel faster, but it didn’t actually make my brain any better at reasoning for finding the answer on the internet. So I, after trying to use it for that one month for game dev, and even tried to use ChatGPT as a coach for learning to draw fundamentals better, feel I have given it enough chance and it has wound up disappointing, and made me feel like I am better off without it. I already did not like the idea of using it for all the of the reasons you can think of, but now, giving it a chance, wanting to believe it could help me, I have decided it is not worth my time, effort or money trying ot coax this autocomplete machine to give me the right answer. If it works for you, then that is lovely. But it does not work how I want it to work, and it probably never will.

The Great Reset

I have contemplated writing this entry with this title many times already, mainly with the theme of coming back to Boba Tycoon, but I think there may have been a different issue that arises in many things I try: my ambition exceeds my skill level. It is unrealistic for me to believe I can just make any game with any feature I want without having experienced the smaller problems that come before the complex ones I really want to make. This has been a problem in many things I’ve done - drawing, knitting, 3D modelling, etc. I have learned through a few different methods that breaking complex things down makes them easier, but even easier than that is to start with those smaller parts them add them together.

Before coming back to Boba Tycoon, I want to do a challenge I have seen before but have dismissed many times.

20 Games Challenge

This challenge has been around for a long time and I’ve seen it but decided it would have no value for me. So why now? I think I have realised that I’m not really making progress on the 3-4 beginnings of games I already have. Usually this is because I am not experienced enough to know what problem I am even trying to solve. Sometimes I think a tutorial will help me, but the learnings from those don’t always stick, and probably it’s because those are fed to me. They are also normally incomplete, or they are a full length of set features I may or may not care about, and may struggle to apply to my own game ideas.

This Challenge is more like a guide, or roadmap of curated games that I will go and find the answers to by searching, rather than the answers coming to me. The curation part is important, because it slowly ups the complexity. I am also compelled to try this because it is the opposite of what my automatic thought is: “This is a waste of time and I should just work on the game I want to make”. For a while now I have thought about what are the things that keep us stuck, and I decided to see what happens if I choose to do the opposite of what I normally do, it seems I break out of the rut I am in. I’m not perfect at this and I don’t actually try it that much, but when I do, it gives me much more experience and information than if I were to stay doing the same thing I always do.

So: I have seen this page multiple times and instead of my usual “Nah that’s not for me,” I’m going to give it a crack. I also have never actually finished a game, just started many, including all the ones I followed tutorials for. I have also noticed that I allow myself to be interrupted in my goals to make a game each time I make it - to be specific, I will set out to make a game, and then either someone else convinces me to start something else because it will be better in the long run, or I hit a road block and convince myself that I can’t do it.

So I just want to finish a damn game. And get used to finishing them, and not pretending I have to polish them to the nth degree before I ever show it to anyone. I am finishing these for my own enjoyment and learning, not to showcase the genius unicorn game dev I want to believe I am.

And because I like writing this blog because it helps me think, and since I have been introduced to the idea that Thinking is Writing, I notice that when I write down my thoughts (typing or handwriting but I much prefer handwriting) I become more focused, less fuzzy or frazzled, and I find myself in Distractionland much much less. Distractionland seems fun but you can stay there forever and never get a single bit of progress out of it. When I really examine Distractionland, it is more of a numbing feeling than a fun feeling. When I write, I feel like I am experiencing my thoughts and feelings more than I am looking outwards for something else to tell me how to feel.

That was a side note. What I wanted to say was, I’m coming back to this blog to write my process as I do these 20 games. Who knows how long they will take but I don’t want to rush them, and I don’t want to drag them out either. The writing helps me focus and ground my thoughts instead of having loose worries fling my thoughts around. And even as I choose the first game, I feel resistance to choosing Pong instead of Flappy bird.

Which tells me I should choose Pong.