What do you do when your project doesn't work out the way its supposed to?

[FreedomFighter777]

I've been working on a game (yes a game) for a few months now. Until last semester ended I didn't have much time to work on it. However I took a break from school until this fall and I've been working on it lots.

I'm emulating the control scheme from a game I like and I decided to improve on it rather than simply clone it.

That's where things went south. The first feature I decided to implement I spent a eight days on {ending with today}. I stopped working on it today because I looked up a reference video from the game on Youtube.

It turns out my way of doing things was needlessly complicated and near pointless!



I'm super bummed out right now but I don't want to stop work on it!!

I know the obvious answer is to just take a break, but that's the easy way. The other important takeaway is adequate forethought, critical thinking, and planning would be a few things I ought to do in the future to avoid this.

Perhaps the easier answer is to begin working on creating art for it. As it is right now every object in the game (including the bullets, yes the bullets) are primitives.

I just thought I'd share and get some opinions on this.

[Bodzilla]

Analyze what your doing, is it the best way to do it? can you think of a better way? what aspects of what your doing do you like, what aspects dont you like?
is it worth continuing or scrapping the project and starting again?

Ask yourself these questions, learn from your mistake, then either start again or fix what you have, but always move forwards.

[FreedomFighter777]

That's some good advice! Thank you!!

[FreedomFighter777]

Sorry to double post but I wanted to share something new!

I had an epiphany today, too. I am absolutely dreading, yes, dreading going back to work on that project. I gave up on the one feature I wanted to implement, put myself through hell and abused my own psyche just trying to get it working. I'd love to finish this project (at some point), I really would, but right now the thought of the nitty gritty scripting/programming makes me dreadful.

In fact I've got a few ideas for another project I've wanted to make for some time now, and I think this one is going up on the Unity Asset store, and I'm going to proceed with work on the new one!!

[JackalStomper]

this is why version control exists

[FreedomFighter777]

Version control? Whatzzat? xD

For the record I actually stuck with the project. Been working on it for several weeks / months now. It would be nice if I could progress along it more quickly though... :/

[Zeph]

http://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Getting-Started-About-Version-Control