Should I try be a game developer?

I have schizophrenia and all my life people have told me I can’t do what I want in my life. They said I couldn’t go to college. Well In 2009 I moved to California from Kentucky and went to college myself. That was before I was diagnosed though. I went 3 semesters. I only need my programming classes and 1 math class to finish my degree. I quit going after I got a student loan. Then I defaulted on the loan. Now I think I have to start repaying the loan in order to go back to college. I’m very good with computers. I’ve been learning programming on my own. I’ve never made anything yet but I just play around trying to figure out how to do new things. I know a lot about computer parts and how to build a computer. I know which parts are the best and I know where certain individual parts fit in with other parts as far as performance goes. People say I can’t work. Why? Because I don’t know anything about working they say. Maybe it’s true that I’m not well suited for certain types of work. I’d like to do something I’m interested in so I will be more likely to excel at it. We’re not all meant to be doctors or lawyers or coal miners for example. Would you like to see a doctor who hates his job? I don’t think so. He might not be as good as someone who loves their job. I’ve been trying to make my own 3d games on the computer. I’d like to sell the games I’m working on at some point. I use Unity and use the free assets. Mostly it’s just something I do for fun in my spare time. I can work on it for hours and hours because I have a lot of spare time. The main problem is I just get it in my head that it’s just too much work and I can’t handle it. So I quit but I always go back to it because I love doing it. I think It’s because I have so many ideas and don’t know how to connect them and put everything together and it all hits me at once. So I think it’s too much. So I quit. Well now I’m thinking about focusing on just little things. Instead of thinking about creating an entire world at once I’ll just focus on a little part of it at a time. Just something I can make and show people and have them think Wow. That’s amazing. And if that little part is amazing I can make everything that way. It might take years to make something really good but I think I can do it. It’s like a puzzle except I have to make all the pieces and put them together myself.

6 Likes

You can do anything you put your mind to

You sure should. Do you have any screenshots of your work? That is if you’d be okay with sharing.

Should you try ? Yes !
Will you succeed ? Maybe !

Here is what I can tell you:

  1. In software development there are some principles like DRY - Don’t Repeat Yourself or Don’t reinvent the wheel so you don’t have to make all the pieces yourself ! You’ve mentioned Unity which is a very popular game engine so try to complete as many Unity tutorials as you can.I’m sure you don’t want to rewrite Unity from scratch.

  2. If you think it’s too much you have at least two options: Divide the large problem into smaller pieces and solve them sequentially or assemble a team and delegate work or both. You should also use project management tools like Jira and version control systems like Git or SVN.

  3. You also need to cultivate some virtues like wisdom, patience and perseverance. In order to get more knowledge is better to separate learning from the actual development. You need to have patience to reach awesome-level results. The most important thing is not to give up.You should start small and slowly improve(step-wise refinement and granular improvement if you want fancy terms).

I gave it a try… started with the OGRE 3D engine and tried to build a multiplayer spacesim game, something like Freelancer.I figured out I’m not good at 3d artistic stuff so I used some free models I found online.After several months of coding and learning, OGRE proved to be a bad choice because it’s just a rendering engine(no sound, no GUI, no networking not even physics). This large project became an abandonware but it helped me because I gained a training position at a game studio in my hometown using my “spacesim” as a portfolio. At training, I stated to learn using the Ureal engine and everything was nice until my voices came back, telling me what to do and what not, pulled the rug under my feet and ending my gamedev career. I also had some awful hallucinations where many game characters became real and stated torturing me so I gave up on game development. For me it ended up bad but I was not that involved in gamedev and it doesn’t mean it will be the same for you. I’m now learning web development thinking it’s less risky with less fantasy and monsters and maybe someday I’ll make a living out of it…

Good luck !

6 Likes

If you were bit by the game dev bug, I would say give it a shot ! Put in the hours and work smart. As the guy before said, don’t reinvent the wheel. You might even find complete source code for Unity projects close to what interests you. Then you modify the relevant parts and boom. In some cases it’s way faster than building a complicated game from scratch.
I have developed a few android games before when I had a lot of spare time. It was fun indeed !

I believe in you! I think you should do it. I couldn’t do it and I’ve learned some programming. I guess I’m just not into gaming like I was when I was younger. I think it’s very competitive; they work you hard and the pay isn’t what people think – from what I’ve read.

I want to do websites like wordpress and stuff but I still need to learn a lot more stuff.

I still am like 1/3 done with cs50 and I want to finish it by next year. They have a web programming class after that. I also bought two courses from udemy (10 bucks each) on web development that I haven’t done yet.

I guess there’s automation and stuff that is threatening web development, but I rather do that than gaming. I want to make an extra few hundred a month and still keep my benefits. I might have to go through DOR or something and stock shelves instead, I don’t know. I’m almost 30 and I’ve lost a lot of my brain capacity, will power, and endurance. I’m burned out!

I’m also a college dropout with just a high school diploma. I was a math major but dropped out 7 years ago due to stress and psychosis.

I need a stress free job like stocking shelves, doing something at home online, or doing nothing at all. There’s going to be a point in my life where I cannot do nothing! I need a few hundred extra dollars on top of my benefits each month to survive and live comfortably.

I don’t hear voices but I have paranoia and cognitive decline and low self-esteem and the works. I given up on myself many times.

I have communication issues that bother me.

Good luck. I think you can do it.

I don’t hear any voices on my medication. I always quit taking it though for some reason. But sometimes my own thoughts are just as bad as voices. It’s like they’re not really my own thoughts and someone is controlling my brain and making me think those thoughts. I don’t really have anything but demos make so far. I’m just getting things ready and learning. I just learned how to make AI move around where I want and stuff and make it do whatever I want. I made a zombie chase and attack a robot and made the robot run away from the zombie if it gets attacked. In my game I want AI to interact with other AI. The thing I still am learning is the health system and how to make things die in my game. I’ve also been learning how to create worlds. How to make trees. How to make grass. Next I’m going to figure out how to make buildings. I’m using free assets from the Unity store instead of doing my own scripting and stuff. I’m using grass, trees, and stuff like that from the free unity assets. Also the AI is from an asset. AI behavior made by Walker Boys Studio. It’s free now but it was $100. It just took me a while to find and figure out how to use the asset. I’m still not sure how the health and attack system works. After I get things figured out I can finally start on my first level. I want a first person shooter game, a platformer, and a survival horror game. Maybe also a fighting game if I can figure that out. I thought about giving one game aspects of each type but I don’t want a game that the player doesn’t know what kind of game it is.

1 Like

Well I just thought I’d give another update on this. Instead of using so many of the free assets from the Unity store I’m learning how to script in C#. To start out I’m making my own script that can move the character around. I don’t need to use my own script for this because there are several free assets that can already do it. I’m just doing it for the learning experience and so I can say I can do that on my own rather than depend on someone else’s scripts that I might not fully comprehend. I’ve made excellent progress. Also I figured out how to make my own textures, my own humanoid 3d models, and I learned how to rip the clothes on zombies. It’s actually very simple to make a human character or a zombie the way I learned to do it.

2 Likes

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.