I am already familiar with some basic functions of Godot, but I am a little scared.
I am afraid of failure. I am afraid that I have done something meaningless again. I am often criticized in some strange places and receive unfriendly comments. I am afraid of failure again. . .
I really want to do something. . .
I can’t explain it clearly. I want to find where I belong. I want to live a more meaningful life.
#I have been looking for this for a long time, when I was in elementary school. . .
This is something a LOT of programmers face. Even I do very often. I notice myself working on less important parts of my game to avoid having to work on the important bits to delay it as much as possible, because I’m afraid of messing it up or it not being good enough.
However, we all need to deal with this feeling in different ways. And the best way to do that, in my opinion, is to embrace it. Nothing you make will be perfect. Ever. Not even the best programmers out there will be able to make a system that is 100% without flaws. But the more you fail, the more you’ll learn. You will look at what you made and you will be able to tell “okay, this approach didn’t work well because of X and Y thing.”
Next time you make something like that, you’ll know what to watch out for, and you can try a different approach.
I know it’s not easy, but you will notice that with each iteration, you’ll do better and better. And game development is very much an iterative process. Team Fortress 2 went through MANY iterations before it became the game we know and love today.
If you feel overwhelmed, I’m sure you heard this before, but it’s a genuinely good advice to try and break down a massive problem into tiny pieces. That way you can get started with something simple, make it, and move onto the next part. Trying to tackle everything all at once will almost never work.
Taking a little break can help too. Sometimes if I struggle with a specific problem, I often get up and just go on a short walk.
And of course, don’t be afraid to ask for help from others. Ignore those who insult. Others can give you an entirely new perspective on a problem that you might’ve been trying to solve in one specific way.
Don’t think you’re not good enough because you fail. You will fail, but what matters is that you get back up, and you’ll learn from it all. That’s what matters the most. You’ll do great!
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Thank you. I posted something similar to the Godot Discord chat yesterday, and many people comforted me. This community is much better than I thought. I hope I can overcome the biggest difficulty of English.
I am much better now, thank you very much
I would also repeat something that i heard recently, “perfectionism is the end of progress.” To me it is better to get to your goal with problems then to never finish…
The rest of the rant is just a rewording of @tibaverus words, since they are very true and i have climbed the same mountain.
Going ahead with something imperfect, just get it working, will allow you step back and analyze areas of your work as a whole and make better decisions on how to improve your work and skills. In the end, especially for games, no one will know how it was written, or know how inefficient it is, as long as its purpose is portrayed sufficiently.
This can even be an incremental thing, small prototypes, little systems, etc. @tibaverus is completely right, specifically that failure is the best teacher. When you start asking yourself “there’s got to be a better way.” There usually is, and this is where you will push yourself to overcome a problem, maybe learn a new technique, and improve your skill.
My first prototype failed miserably, as it was my first hands on foray into OOP design patterns. (I typically program in C which doesnt have classes). It was a suffocating experience. But after i programmed myself into a corner and progress came to a grinding halt i went seeking answers, and luckily the Godot community has put together a nice collection of best practice guides that helped me get back on track and understand the tenants of OOP and the Godot engine.
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What may help you overcoming the fear of messing sth. up:
make copies of your project. A LOT of copies. At least once per day you work on it, better after each important change. And if it becomes more complex, place a textfile in the folder where you make short notes on what you have changed at what date.
I’m quite new to godot code, have to rely a lot on try and error and fucked up my project yesterday in a way I couldnt undo. But I realized that the start of the fuckup was originally not what I did yesterday, but already the stuff I changed the day before.
So I just loaded the copy from 2 days ago and continued from there (and deleted the already fucked up copies, while saving the good parts beforehand). Yeah, was quite some hours for nothing, but at least I don’t have to start from zero.
Thats generally something for life: If you are not used to something, you will probably fail. Maybe multiple times. Then you try a different approach again and again until you get it right. And then you are good at it. Don’t be afraid of other criticizing your work. Most of rude ppl either had the same issues before and don’t want to admit it, or you doing sth. they never did themselves and want to hold you down, so you don’t get better than them (or sometimes they simply don’t understand it). Sometimes they might have a solid point within their rude critique, but to analyze that costs time and nerves. The only criticism you should (nearly) always at least think about, is constructive criticism that respects you as an individual and your work.
Sometimes you can prepare a bit for new stuff you’ve never done before. Like asking other more experienced ppl. for advice or think about what could possibly go wrong, and then do some safety measures beforehand so you reduce the risk. But sometimes you can just try your best and if it doesnt work, take a short break and try a new approach^^
You should try a version control like Git. Make feature branches instead of copying folders and undoing and redoing changes is easy.
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