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I'd like to rant about my gamedev experience. (5 years+)

throwawaydev · 2020-04-11T00:23:01

tl;dr: Made a lot of shit, some finished, some not finished. Actual vision never implemented because it's a fantasy mmorpg and I'm just 1 person and not 50 people. Might have run out of energy. No this isn't a recruitment post. Just my story. Full post: I don't know why I have the sudden urge to type this out. This could become a depressing read, or an enlightening one. I'm not sure the last chapter of this story is over yet. If you're sipping your tea, bored, looking for something to read, maybe this is for you. I'm not going to make a specific point and it's not a recruitment post. I just want to post this maybe for therapeutical effect. The real history of my gamedeving began in 2013 if I remember correctly. Technically it began much earlier, in 2003 I first tried to code but being a 16 year old teenager at the time, I really lacked the discipline, and the education. I always looked up to programmers and gamedevs, they possessed a magical skill, they could make anything they wanted. A bit later I was getting the education but still lacked the discipline. Around 2006 I first looked at the Irrlicht Engine and Ogre3D. For a moment I got quite excited when I managed to spawn that dwarf from the Irrlicht demo and that beautiful light effect. But I didn't have the skills to really work with it yet. Later I'd find the Unity engine. I'll get back to this later. The games I loved the most when I was still young and impressionable were fantasy games. Gothic 1+2 and Realms of Arkania to be precise. The worlds were very immersive and alive. I had so much fun playing that. But it meant more to me than simple fun, it was maybe a form of escapism or being immersed into something beautiful. It was art, not just entertainment. They had a quite complete world with complete lore, wildlife, plants, geography… like myths come to digital reality. The other thing that fascinated me were MMORPGs. I played many. And around that time, making an MMORPG was the hot shit to do. Forums were full of people wanting to make a fantasy MMORPG. Like later everyone wanted to make a Minecraft clone, then I also noticed a fad about Rogue-likes. But back in the day, the hot shit was MMORPGs. World of Warcraft never fascinated me, it was just a levelling mill, after level 20 I only continued because a friend kept playing this crap. I finally quit around level 50. I was into the ones that had more life in them. Social and pvp. Ashen Empires, Mortal Online, Diaspora, WW2 Online, to name a few. Sad to say that I also stepped with my toes into Eve Online. Terrible game mostly. Actually you didn't need to go into gamedev forums at all to find willing (but useless) team members, being in a game fan / player forum was enough. A lot of people were enthusiastic, “I can't do shit but I'm willing to learn”. Of course it never really led anywhere. Though I'm very impressed nowadays how much time and effort people are willing to put into modding existing games that they love instead of making their own. A lot of people seemed to have the idea that MMOs were never ‘done right’. Even before WoW. WoW was the most successful levelling mill but it lacked the depth, it was a superficial levelling mill. I think up to this day, the genre “mmorpg” was never done right. Like there should have been something for those who didn't like WoW, but it never really happened. But that's an uncertain feeling and one that probably bit me later. Around the year 2012 I began neglecting the rest of my life in favour of gamedev. In fact I didn't have much of a life, so I figured, might as well go back to your childhood dreams, work on something that I loved. That was when I first started programming for real on my own “serious gamedev projects”. I thought I was doing fine. I'm going to spoiler a bit: I wasn't doing fine. I'm actually not a great programmer. Not terrible either, I can get the job done, it just takes much too long. During the next couple of years I would learn to make everything that I wanted to make, I somewhat improved in programming. I can do what I want to do but it takes ages and basically, I'm a bad coder. I looked up what makes a coder bad and all the lists I found online were basically describing me for the most part. What I had going for myself were endurance and enthusiasm (and mental illness). I was constantly fighting against my own shortcomings, I was producing a lot of bugs and fixing them felt like progress - it wasn't. That's like throwing sticks into your bicycle wheel, then removing them and claiming it's progress. I also didn't work straight towards goals. One disease that my coding and design always had was, that I would make convoluted, bloated systems that seemed very “smart" to me but actually just added weeks or months of work for no real gain as far as the game went. Like many, many people in gamedev, I had mental issues. This has always hindered me. Only my last project had a proper scope. More about that later. So, the first game I began to make was a browser mmorpg written in php in a fantasy universe. It had a 2d map, it was turnbased, you could travel around, build towns, claim mines, get resources, build more buildings like taverns, town halls, there were mayor elections, laws…, in short, it was horrible. I quit after spending maybe half a year on it. Then I reorientated myself when someone told me about the Unity engine. 3d didn't seem so big and unachievable anymore. I spent a lot of time (sometimes 16 hours a day, 25 days a month, I had burnout episodes every now and then that kept getting longer, my productivity has decreased all the time) on making map generators, chat servers, login servers, sharded game servers, UI. I ran out of steam eventually. I was lacking art when I started. Much later, in another attempt to make that ‘never done right’ fantasy mmorpg, I learned learn modelling and even the basics of animation. But at the time, I stepped back again and made something smaller instead, a remake of a 2d space mmorpg that I played as a kid. To wrap this up, I finished that project. It took 7 months and was finished. But the gameplay… It was interesting in the year 2000. 15 years later, it didn't work anymore. I got good feedback on it by some people on reddit but it had some technical shortcomings which I didn't want to fix, I also had depression or something like that, so I took it down again relatively quickly. Another 7 months down the drain. After that I'm losing track of the order of events. What happened was that I worked on another interesting project, an MMORTS (yep, I'm flexible) in which everyone was one unit. This seemed easy to make, but again it was too big for me by myself. Up to this day I think that might be an interesting concept, especially if it's about tactics. It was basically a remake of WW2 Online but in 2d, made with Unity. I spent several months on that as well, then quit. When you make an online game, testing and debugging is a nightmare. Especially in the way that I did it at the time. I'd do shit like implementing registration and login before anything else, so every time I wanted to test something, I had to login. It made me ‘feel’ smart, but it was really dumb. There was one project that was going to be a certain hit I think, something way more casual and fun, it was a co-production with someone else and a singleplayer game, but sadly mental issues took over and I dropped out of that project. I think I may have been afraid of success even. I wanted to make something ‘smart’ all the time, that always got in my way. Well then there followed a period where I worked on ‘that fantasy game’ again. That MMO that was never done right. I did the best I could, as I said, learned modelling, animation, all while the burnout phases got worse. Eventually I suffered a back injury irl. After that, I couldn't take gamedev serious anymore, I couldn't concentrate on such tasks anymore. I thought to myself, why am I wasting all this time on gamedev. My life was a mess. It wasn't leading anywhere. I met a lot of people in gamedev with mental issues thanks to reddit. Gamedev seems to attract escapist personalities like cow dung attracts flies, to be blunt. I took a long break after that back injury. Eventually I made a browser game. It's a fantasy mmo, turnbased. It's very simple. I cut everything down as simple as possible. You can go to work daily and get some exp, money, you can buy stuff at the store or learn skills from a trainer. You can travel and rob each other. It took over half a year again, but it's done, I haven't published it yet. But it plays in the same world that I wanted to tell with the Unity game. It's a really cut down version of what I wanted to make and I really didn't care about the graphics, fully intentional. I'm getting exhausted from typing this. It must be horrible for you to read this. Let me wrap it up really. I don't even have a proper design. The stuff that I wanted to make, that fantasy mmo that was never done right, probably wouldn't even work today because players aren't willing to put that much time into an online game anymore. Actually the pvp fantasy mmo genre was never very popular, whenever people had the choice, they picked non-pvp servers. I have only this diffuse idea of what the ideal mmorpg should be like, and if that idea was actually verbalised to the dot of the i, I think it might not be so special anymore. Dreams don't make sense when they're actually told. Only when you dream them. Mostly everything has been made already, it would only be a new composition of things plus some extras. For example I always wanted to make a druid class that would pick herbs and some of them only grow during certain moon intervals in certain places. I want to get daylight done right, moonlight too of course. That's one thing that my previous attempts already had, great daylight. It needs to turn redder towards the end of the day. I want to make pvp combat where the level gap is artificially diminished so that 5 noobs could beat up a vet. I want to make magic weapons extremely rare and people mostly use realistic rustic weapons. Neat, modest graphics like in Gothic. Climbing rocks like in Gothic. Climbing was very important in older games and disappeared in the newer ones. I want these light effects done right. Modest and neat. I wanted to make a coherrent gameworld, a mix of a peaceful idyll and dangerous places and optical beauty. So you get a sense of safety when you come back from a quest. This might not translate well to a game where people log in to find action. I have only these diffuse ideas, a mood to create, a world to tell, but then to sit down and make it - I know how. Every step of it. Just to actually do it, it would take 200 years to even get to the beta if I work by myself. I'm not a great coder, not a great modeller, a terrible animator, and I lost most of my energy. I think my next slow steps will be to slowly publish the browser game. Maybe I'll try to produce extremely rudimentary demo content for yet another fantasy mmorpg project that plays in the same universe as this browser game. More a mood demo than a gameplay demo really. Sadly it's the genre that requires the most assets. Maybe I'll have to resort to Minecraft-like figures. I really don't know. Maybe I'll never do anything again, or I'll run a crowdfunding campaign. At least I won't spend another 5 years blindly chasing the dragon. And that's the story of how I have very little to show for my years in gamedev. I'm 32. At least I tried? Don't let these last words depress you, I'm just too good at finding fucked up puns. Ok, I had to get this out.

GDNet Lounge Community mmorpg fantasy programming

Started by throwawaydev March 23, 2020 08:26 PM

40 comments, last by Simitus 4 years, 2 months ago

Juliean

7,351

March 24, 2020 07:22 PM

NikiTo said:
What if i am used to declare functions inside functions, but C++ is a donkey at this? If there is something i can not do without some fancy C++ feature, i would spend a whole day of googling in order to learn that new cryptic feature. So far i haven't feel the need to learn anything new in C++.

Yeah, because you don't know that you could be working faster. Dunning-Krueger says hello. You simply assume that you are working efficiently, while at the same time you are not. And in your own little world it makes sense, because you don't know any better. But a good programmer is curious and is trying to get to work more efficiently. While you just say “its good enough”, while at the same time maybe working at 25% efficiency.

NikiTo said:
If you use global variables, in a team, you are a death body. The program does the same, but you are kicked out of the company. A standalone person can do it. No problem.

Using global variables has the very same effect as a single programmer as in a team. The only difference is that while working alone there is nobody to punish your for being bad. While at work you are expected to perform, otherwise you are rightfully booted out. So you are saying that you are fine with being a subpar programmer, just because you can get away with it.

NikiTo said:
For the time i figure out if some new fancy extra in C++ can help me or not, i can do the same with basic syntax. Most of the time i can't feel an extreme urgent need for the latest syntax candies. And it is a fact i can fake it all with basic syntax. If i can not, it is only because C++ is inherently bad at the things i try to code. I understand why you protect your own reality. I protect my own reality too. It is about opinions.

Oh, get that crap out of here. If a new feature in C++ allows me to type less code, have to remember less and is less prone to errors, than it is objectively better. For example, std::unique_ptr is objective better then managing raw new/delete in any way. I'm not talking about subjective topics like how to name your function. Again, it all comes down to you being narrow-minded. And thats a reality that you gleefully parade around.
(I'm going to stop this discussion now because I don't feel I can continue it without having to result to personal attacks, as you just keep repeating yourself and seem to be unable to look past your own box of half-knowledge. Feel free to live in that happy bubble of ignorance)

NikiTo

245

March 24, 2020 07:46 PM

@JoeJ Sure it is possible, but you had to trick the syntax and it looks ugly.

You can use functional programming in C# or you can directly write functional programing in F#. Functional F# and OOP C# can directly read each other of their classes. Directly. Because under the hood it should produce the very similar if not the exact same code. Or because of the abstraction. I guess they produce the very same code rather than relaying on abstractions.

I want to get back to the personal usage of the syntax. I work alone. I can do anything i want in C++. In a team i am a slave. But working alone, i am free.

And it is the same, thing. It is not fair to call me a bad programmer because i don't want to master C++. I know what i am doing. I am a noob in C++ but I do am a programmer.

You really consider i am a noob because i am not a master at C++. You don't need to explain me lambdas. Maybe you are not understanding what are you are doing now, but you are teaching me how to add 2 to 2 as if i were seeing a computer for the first time. And all this because you ignore all the other languages, but C++.

I used lambdas in C#. No need to teach me about lambdas just because i don't use them in C++. I know what is a lambda… Don't treat all the non C++ wizards as a noobs in programming. Non C++ masters, could be good programmers too.

@juliean you are super spoiled. You know nothing about tough life. Nothing about shark teamworking. You grew inside a paradise. A safe bubble. Are you programming in the company of your uncle? If you change your safe team, you are gone, dude. I will throw you to functional programmers and they will eat you alive. You are spoiled. I don't know how competitive are people in your place. I will send you to work in a team in the East and the sharks will eat you alive.

Green_Baron

221

March 24, 2020 08:05 PM

German saying: “Wie man in den Wald ruft, so schallt es heraus.”, meaning that the response of others depends on how one approaches them.

I have worked in quite a few teams during my life, in science and sport, hobby and work. Sometimes there is just that one who plays the angry bird or the disrupter, the know-it-all or the one who constantly eats up time of others, the choas dispenser or the motormouth, and all those shades of an individual who can or will not work in a team. The team could be much more productive if that single person would just quit. I must admit that on one or two occsions I had to quit because it just didn't work out, but that was not the rule.

And so it comes that people, who normally would be teaming up like dolphins, apparently, from one point of view, turn into sharks …

green.B3457

March 24, 2020 08:08 PM

Hello reader. If you can dream it, you can create it. Take it from a tortured soul with a tired old eye for patterns.

There is a distinct lack of enthusiasm and a more absurd lack of genius in the game development industry. It leaves genuinely talented people in ruin. This is the wasteful way of modernism, whatever that word means to you. This is prevalent throughout humanity and not just with games.

This can be proven by looking at the patterns of best selling games as the years go by. Clones and clones of clones. Hidden gems are mostly forgotten in time, as nobody has the brains or the time to understand the psychology behind it.

It is absolutely understood that you who have devoted years of your time to that industry are either falling flat or learning to bury your dreams beneath another’s concrete path.

The problem lies in the lack of communication and the absence of a clear platform for people to work together. Since I’m not here to trigger revolt, I will instead plant a seed of hope for you in the midst of this broken soul party: if your golden idea, the reason you are in this industry, is great enough, then there will be others who can help you as long as you can wed them to your path as you yourself married it… And if you cannot explain it well enough to pull together the right people, find the one who can.

I don’t say these things to make you feel better, I say it because I can tell Night from Day. Your clarity of mind is simply a side effect.

A Leader is simply someone that knows the plan.

None

NikiTo

245

March 24, 2020 08:09 PM

@Green_Baron Do you remember what i told you about giving quotes? I gave them a quote coming from the spiritual leader of free software, and they completely ignored that quote.

NikiTo

245

March 24, 2020 09:07 PM

I understand people wanting to expand the programming languages.

But modern languages are more prompt to make people fight.

If you work in a team moving sacks around, it is easy to make it work, because no much thinking is involved. But programming in a team is a highly intellectual task. Where minds clash.

Giving more extras to a language is not bad. But it gives more variation.

The >>very same thing<< can be expressed in many ways in the syntax. And a thinker can see something as good, while >>that same thing<< other thinker could completely discard. It is a war about the same thing. A richer language - more opportunities for disagreement.

And if you have two persons moving sacks around and one of them is stronger. The weaker one could feel smaller and less important, but he has an escape to calm his state of mind -
“I am weaker, but my wife is hotter than yours.”

When a composer and a painter work together, the composer is not feeling menaced by the painter. Because -
“ I can not paint, but i can play music. I feel worthy.”

What happens if two people work in the same intellectual area? -
“You are clever than me, but …..”
“Hahaha, you id--t, what? Even if you have a nicer wife, you are a donkey. Even if you can sing or paint, this doesn't change the fact you are donkey.”

It hurts not much if somebody lifts more sacks at work than you.
It hurts not much if somebody sings better than you.

BUT

If somebody is more clever than you, you have not a place to hide your self-respect.

Working in a team in intellectual areas is brutal and savage. It is were people feel the most offended. Where the most brutal wars happen.

(I have seen a woman in the metro who is considered to be a 10/10 because of her makeup. She was acting like a self proclaimed princess. Then she tried to unroll the cable of her earplugs. And she was unable to do it. Every movement that was knotting the cables more and more was provoking the princess to sweat. She started to feel s---id. She started sweating. Her self esteem crashed to the ground in few seconds. Her glued eyebrows started detach because of the sweat. It was painful to watch. It is important for us if we are looking nice. It is important for us if we are tall and strong and slim. But for humans the most important is their intellectual level. Inside a team, if you make ACCIDENTALLY other people feel st---d, they will devour you alive. Because you menace their very base state of mind. Self esteem, self acceptation.)

I would rather move sacks during the day and code at home after work, than working in a team as a programmer. I don't want to pay for it with my nerves, with my hair, with my health, no thanks.

Going indie is the only option for me as a programmer!

(I am working in a team with the guys who wrote all the libraries and APIs i use daily. But they are thousands of kilometers away from me, in a safe place, far from my angry swearing when VS crashes. This is how it must be done - every member of the team, never seeing the other, not knowing who the other is. Otherwise it is a massacre. Many people would gladly let themselves be massacred for the immense privilege to work for big tech companies. And for money. Not me.)

JoeJ

4,261

March 24, 2020 10:02 PM

NikiTo said:
@JoeJ Sure it is possible, but you had to trick the syntax and it looks ugly.

No tweaking of syntax in either case, and after you get used to new things they become natural, not ugly anymore.

I should know, because i'm lazy and resistant to learn new language features myself. For once, because initially C++ did not give much benefit over plain C for me, and secondly because i'm not very interested in programming languages.
But i adopted one feature after the other with time. Looking up how lambdas work takes 5 minutes. Then i use it once, forget the syntax, but can lookup my own code for it. After using it several times i have adopted with zero effort, and there's no going back.

But it's up to you what language you want to use. C#, F#, whatever you like.
Just, if you make wrong claims in a public forum, you'll stand corrected. And you tend to deal with this badly.

You mentioned before you want reputation from others about your work, and you care what other people think or say about you. Everybody does so to some degree.
To make your life easier, some suggestions from my side:

Avoid presenting your personal opinion on something as general truth. You are more often wrong than not. Beginners may read this and so experienced people will correct you to avoid misinformation.
Instead, just add ‘IMO’ to your claims, which relaxes the situation in the first place.

Avoid to add unrelated noise to proof your wrong claims. You can not add a quote of Torvalds and expect this gives you any backing. Torvalds likes to rant, and probably he criticized bad usage of C++, less the language itself.
If he himself prefers C over C++, i'm fine with that. Depends. Is he working on Linux Kernels? Probably C is no bad choice there.
But respect other peoples choices and opinions. Your personal truth is not general - it's subjective, and just one of many.

Avoid making claims about things you know nothing about. I assume you never worked in a software development team, and your assumptions about it are just noise.
Some Teamwork in schools may not represent reality of any business. I have only little team experience, but i never experienced any of the issues you mention.

Most important: Assume you could be wrong but someone else could be right. All the time. Be ready to take a step back, stand corrected, admit fallacy, even apologize if things got heated before.
And finally learn from your mistake. It's a very effective way of learning, and gives you and others respect, everybody is happy and things move on. In teams, forums, everywhere.
Or just be an ass and care a shit about others thoughts, expect they either just believe you, or they must be retards. Ignore them all and learn nothing. This works for many, but they also do not care about the water around them.

PeaString

March 24, 2020 10:23 PM

It takes years for a large team of veteran game developers to produce a MMO, and even those are a buggy, clunky, mess most of the time. You're grappling with one of the toughest, most demanding, types of games as a solo and then beating yourself up for it. I don't doubt your ability to program, or to make games even, I question your outlook. Of course your programming is slow when you're adding code into a project meant for a large team, comparatively your contributions are like drops of water into the grand canyon.

If you throw an untrained swimmer into the middle of the ocean he drowns quickly; its no wonder you're burnt out. If producing a MMO is your pursued magnum opus then instead of trying to grudge through it solo you should put yourself in a position to lead a team. That's probably going to mean years of working on things that are not even remotely related to your ‘ultima’ game, but that's the price of entry for this kind of ride.

I think you've only ever experience the worst part of game development and it has build this negative internal look about you as a developer. You could probably make killer games if you rethink your approach to developing your worlds.

None

NikiTo

245

March 24, 2020 10:33 PM

You are all right!
I am wrong!
You all win!
I lose!
Your personal experiences invalidate mine.
C++ is the mother of god of all programming languages.
You all did the most correct choice when deciding to work in C++.
Please, forgive me for attempting to challenge the correctness of your bright personal choices to dedicate your whole lives to the mother of god of all languages. I am unable to see the greatness of this decision. A monkey can not understand what gods think. Please, forgive me! I kneel on glass and kiss your feet while asking you for your forgiveness.

I don't want to disturb any longer your indisputable correctness, my Lords. So i will just change my password to something my defectuous brain of zero IQ can not remember.

Thank you again, for having looked down to me from heavens!

JoeJ

4,261

March 24, 2020 11:28 PM

NikiTo said:
Thank you again, for having looked down to me from heavens!

You're welcome. I'm glad to help. ;-)

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I'd like to rant about my gamedev experience. (5 years+)

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