Mistakes That Every Game Developer Makes

how do i code instead of procrastinating about coding when it comes to writing a game is it good to plan I've only ever done really fancy projects not projects not programs how do not procrastinate that's a that's a big question you if you find the answer please tell me share it with the world you'll be a million you'll be rich I mean planning is good I guess it just depends on on what you're writing what you're doing you know as Jason said earlier you should always ask yourself what your Trump what you're doing and why you're doing it and so if if your idea is um oh look well I'm just wondering how other programmers create a game do they sit down and plan it before writing it yeah I mean there's a hot there's tons of ways to approach it I mean you could be someone who you could be the kind of person that can just sit down code for hours without getting distracted and knock out a really cool you know game and maybe that's how you uh you operate otherwise I mean some people really need to plan if it's something if it's a project that you're planning on starting a business around you know your this is a game that you really need to sell and turn into you know something that's profitable it's probably recommended that you do some planning ahead of time set expectations set you know milestones things like that but if you're just like I'm trying to have fun and learn you know it's a hobby you know if you're just a hobbyist then you're probably fine just doing whatever works for you sitting down and coding something up and sharing it with your friends or whatever but you know it is a little there's a lot of moving parts you know to this question because it just depends on the context of where you are what you're trying to accomplish basically I'm gonna go a little bit hard on this one and have a have a hot take that might rustle ruffles and feathers and one so get ready in my opinion there are two things that most productive or artistic people in general get wrong there's fundamentally misunderstand or lie to themselves about and the first one is that I work better listening to music this is factually wrong under every single considerable test been done people are slower with music the one exception is if you're doing something like folding envelopes if you can get your brain into a rhythm great your bit faster but anything that requires even a fraction of cognitive load music will make you slower now funnily enough things like classical music make you less slower but they do make you slower there is nobody nobody has been proven to work faster with music that being said I work with music because I enjoy it but I'm not lying to myself about the fact that it's making me better or faster or whatever else so like don't don't not listen music because you want to be whatever but if you're like an imperfect test of this is if you are if you're working on some code and as a book you can't solve and you listen to music be honest with yourself do you pause the music because you need to concentrate better and if so that's funny yeah so that's one and two people who jump in and start writing code are fundamentally less productive than people who plan first mmm-hmm and this goes for every single facet of life now there's a fine line between over planning and using planning as procrastination tool versus just getting work done and the line I would say is you need to plan enough to know what your point is because what people do wrong and this is again you'll see it all the time no matter what your profession is there's a concept of doodling now doodling is great when you're in school and you're playing and you just drawing whatever but I saw TED talk recently where someone was talking about this he basically learned how to draw in the space of six months and sort of went in depth on how to maximize his efficiency with it because he was focused and he wasn't yeah what's the word purpose for well to be honest he did one of the oldest trick in the book and I've done this myself with a friend of mine is you make a bet for something you really don't want to lose so in my case it was five hundred dollars in this guy's case it was a thousand dollars I think was the blender guru because he did the same thing it was yeah it was actually thank you yeah yeah yeah yeah he was he was learned to draw so he decided he was good he was good at modeling what you want to learn how to draw yeah exactly that's perfect as it was but general point is that he did this because you then have to if your goal is now maximize work you have to try to get as much done as you impossible how do you do it well you sit down and write your goal down now when I say write your goal down I don't mean go away and spend six months you know making a business plan what you want to do is make your goal for that month that week and that day and that's it for your month what would I like to have done by the end of the month what I like to have done by the end of the week what are the next actionable steps and this is the other trick don't write down I will have my game running right down I actually I wouldn't write the code for my movement system and then break that down with actions and past or whatever so long story short if you just start typing you could make a game you're not gonna make a game you're gonna faff around for a while you'll have fun doing it but by the end of it you'll be like did I learn anything did I get anywhere that I just play around now this isn't to say you can't play around to find fun like if you if you say I want to build a system where I can shoot bullets that is my goal at the end of the day I want to write some code where I click my mouse and then bullets fire you can then say after you've done that I'm gonna spend three hours messing because I want to check speeds and rates of fire and I want to find the funnest thing but you have to write it down first if you don't start your day with a goal you have no way of measuring if you did correctly do your goal so just literally like the answer is always planned and fought plan to do precisely what you need to get done don't use it as a procrastination thing and don't think just because you are writing code you are doing work they are not the same thing they're varied deceptively not the same thing you could you could code for four hours and go that was great oh I just spent four hours making an animation sister for my UI when I meant to sit down and write my movement code because it was boring or I was getting stuck and so I decided to distract myself so yeah plan do plan always plan I saw I saw a really good Tim Ferriss video the other day that really kinda opened my eyes to something that I was doing and that's just because you're being productive doesn't mean you're being effective and you know I see that with with the whole YouTube you know making YouTube videos I can be very productive in a week and for a long time every video that I put out I would work to caption it I would do captioning by hands I would recut it for Facebook I would create a a gift for like Twitter specifically and reddit anyway I was doing all these auxilary tasks outside of just making a video to put on YouTube that you know made me feel very productive but if I look back at all the analytics me cutting those Facebook videos if I look at the percentage of viewers I get from Facebook it's less than 1% so I'm being productive but that's not effective that's not an effective use of my time and the same thing goes to coding or creating a game you have to think about what you're doing and I think I saw someone in chat saying that they love to to optimize before they move on I mean optimizing you'll feel very productive you know you might you might say hey look this list isn't great I'm gonna I'm gonna make my own optimal data structure so that it so that it's very optimized whatever it's just not effective if you think about what the ROI that return of the return of interest return on interest is it's just you have to weigh those constantly and that brings me back to another thing that you were saying Jason about setting you know I think a daily weekly and monthly the point of those things is that you can always check in you cut you have to constantly be checking in it's it's it's like a feedback loop just like when you develop code you write code you check it and see what it did and then you move on from that and I don't think enough people do that with their lives you know you do something you needed to check in with yourself and say what did I do wasn't worth it what did I get out of it and should I do it again or should I say that this was not effective so yeah those those sorts of things definitely are valuable and if you're the kind of person who's like me and hates wishy-washy sentiments with very hard to quantify suggestions well you actually want to give me a ten step guide for me to do this so I can actually be more productive there look that's a good one so that is that's my number one suggested if you want to get better at everything organize your time manage your projects do stuff this is your best bug late let me recommend that you buy the book because or get it on Kindle because the audiobook is awful it's so boring like it did I went for walks with it and it took me a long time and then when I was done I bought the book [Music]

Channel: Infallible Code

Views: 13,478

Rating: 4.9293284 out of 5

Keywords: unity game development, unity3d, unity 3d, unity, game development, gamedev, game dev, game programming, game coding

Id: IL_u_DynHE0

Length: 9min 32sec (572 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 07 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/nadmaximus]

Just find a different video that says it makes you more productive.

[u/Lone_Game_Dev]

It depends. When I'm listening to music, I often start to pay attention to the music and daydream(or nightdream in my case) about epic boss battles, lore and such. It can distract me from my task, but it also inspires me.

When people are making too much noise and I can't concentrate, music also helps me to cancel out the noise.

[u/HyonD]

Could people stop making statements as they have found the ultimate truth about every topic?
There are so many factors impacting our everyday life, that I think it is closer to truth to just say : "It depends" even if it is broad and useless as f***.

[u/SmarmySmurf]

Like most things, I would think it varies by person, music, noise level, and task.

[u/Nydergondh]

If i am doing light work ( like something I alredy know how to do or how I plan to do it) for me its okay, mostly because it help keep my brain active and motivated.

But when it cone to do bug fixes or try some stuff I never done before, even though I want to hear something, I found out that for me, is best to turn off my music and go to hyperfocused state. This way I can think way more clearly.

[u/khedoros]

Without music, I've got the buzzing of the electrical closet, constant foot traffic going past my desk, coworkers talking around me, the train rushing past, and so on. If I put on an album that I already know well, or some trance with a good beat and no lyrics, it's much less distracting.

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[u/Hexegesis]

I need total silence when I code; any sound, even music, is very distracting. Everything else, though - sure. When I 3D model I usually put an episode of something light on and half-watch/listen while I work.

[u/slim0lim0]

There is no one size fits all. Personally, I find listening to the music of games that are a bit of an inspiration is always a booster. I'm one of those people that can listen to the same song over and over though, so my mind doesn't get too distracted as long as its happy.