No Zero Days - The Path to Game Dev Glory

no zero days so what does this even mean it's quite simple actually and if you're serious about this journey of making games then this concept is absolutely vital to understand now for those of you who are new here my name is John stay skull I've been a professional game developer for about ten years working on a combination of commercial and indie projects I'm currently working on a Viking adventure platformer called blood and mead about a drunken Viking who is travelling across the world oh and make sure you subscribe to the channel as I've plenty more game dev related content tutorials dev logs and all that good stuff alright so know zero days it means do something every single day to move forward in your chosen direction so what does that even look like and why is it important first of all we know what a perfect indie dev game dev day looks like and how it feels you are locked in the dev zone undisturbed your mum girlfriend boyfriend brother sister dog I'm not bothering you with peasantry non-game dev related information and importantly you are not bothering yourself with social media and other time stealing shenanigans because that's what they do they steal your time you are in the elusive flow State everything seems effortless but those magical glory days are few and far between right most days of the week you will be inundated with the real-world problems and distractions and things to do perhaps you're at a job all day maybe you're driving a bus or making sandwiches and especially right now there's so much chaos in the world that it's easy to get caught up and distracted so then the end of the day comes right it's night time you have no energy your brain is absolutely fried and your day is done commiserations to you in those cases you've just had a zero day so what's the big deal well it's about momentum if you're familiar with physics you might also be familiar with Newton's laws of motion now Newton's first law states that every object will remain at rest unless compelled to change its state by the action of an external force now what this basically means is if you sit on your ass watching TV and YouTube and your Twitter feed all day well that my friends is what you're going to be doing Newton's second law states the velocity of an object will change when it is subjected to an external force so you are here at a you're trying to get to B which represents your goal starting a game finishing a game starting your own game gets to do everything outside this relationship different daily distractions people are trying to push you in every which way diverting you from this trajectory slowing down your core journey in this case game development which is a pure expression of your identity it's very important to us and though you may have been on a great roll months of solid work all it takes is a few consecutive days of distraction from that A to B journey to start the process of complete derailment two days leads to three three to five and before you know it you haven't touched your passion project for a couple of months you then try to return only to be confused by the state of the project maybe the code is hard to read because you've been away from it for so long so instead you decide it'll be easier to go watch some YouTube and then you are done that's it because it took momentum to get up that hill to where you were think of a truck with a heavy cargo or load it can't just stop halfway up the hill then later expect to be able to start from there and continue going up no no it needs momentum it's gonna have to go all the way back down build up speed to work through the gears and then get to the top the truck is you that cargo is filled with your dreams and expectations so that's the analogy you're trying to get up is Hill if you stop during those hard moments then you're going straight back down and you may not even try going up again because you realize how much work you've potentially undone and to try to traverse that train again all that energy we have a mental finite mental energy that will be used up so why is this a to be derailment happening why are all these external forces trying to pull us from this path and this is very important so listen up it's because well the universe doesn't owe you anything nobody said it's going to be easy and life in a sense by definition is hard and most people don't want you to succeed and as high as that might be to hear or believe it's absolutely true and it's even more true with people who are close to you in your personal circle and it's up to you to cut straight through that clutter and because you can't change all that external noise easily but what you can change is yourself your actions and how you respond to all that external influence so no zero days is a philosophy that I live by that allows us creatives to stay on that track and avoid the derailment that these external forces will try to bring on us it's a trick or a hack so once again it means every single day doing something a little to keep that momentum going not breaking that momentum chain it can be as simple as one line of code one function one graphic edits or doing something in Photoshop or if you are having a particularly difficult day full of distractions that won't bring you to the computer then use the computer up here you have the most powerful computer and canvas here to play on forget retracing r-tx graphics cards your one is much better so use that space sit down take a moment and just work through problems in your game maybe think of new enemy types new items or new mechanics that you can bring to your game because all that is still work it's all counted and perhaps those conceptual steps are even more important than those that are done on the computer is initially because they lay the foundation for what your actions will be and with that said if you're going to do this kind of conceptual work it's very important that you write this stuff down because it's very easy to forget the stuff that goes on up here and it's changing so rapidly that you might have one great idea a new great idea comes along and pushes that old one straight out so eventually one of these glorious productive game dev days will emerge and you're like wow four hours of dev time you get some great things in but it's those smaller little sessions that you did daily soak some conceptual some little things like I mentioned they are keeping the momentum going linking the big milestones in your game together keeping it on path keeping it on track keeping it from derailing so start fighting back against the time thieves in your life do a little something every single day because if you aren't moving forward you are in fact moving backwards because time is moving forward it's not gonna wait for you and if you're unlucky you may one day open your eyes and realize that life has passed you by it's important that you do your very best to live the life you deserve to live and that is to fulfill those innermost goals and dreams that is possible they a scenario it doesn't defy the laws of physics to fulfill that no matter how hard or how unimaginable some of these things are and gamedev can take you there game to have changed my life dramatically from me just being a noob making some flash games in my mum's house to getting my first game dev job to working on my own games each one of those things was me fulfilling my dreams and no zero days is definitely one strategy to help achieve those things so thanks for watching guys and a big thank you to my beautiful patreon and the supporters who have been graciously donating to me every month I really appreciate you guys thank you very much if any of you want to help support this channel and the work and content I create I'll put a link to the patron down below doing so will also give you exclusive discord access to a support channel where I can help you in more depth with your games and it'll also give you access to a repository of different game making tools and scripts that I've been adding to every month all right guys all the best see you in the next video and good luck on your game dev adventures [Music]

Channel: Lost Relic Games

Views: 16,767

Keywords: game dev, game dev tips, indie dev, tips, game development, how to make games, how to get into game development, game design, game development beginner, game development college, unity game dev, how to learn game dev, tips for beginner game devs, tips for starting game dev, unity, godot, starting first indie game, Motivation, advice, productivity, dev log

Id: K_anK7PVBLs

Length: 10min 8sec (608 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 25 2020