5 years of frustration, what next?

[Herickman (Acanic)]

(Sorry if this is the wrong category, couldn’t find a better one for this)

I’ve made several games since 2015, but something goes wrong during development and it just stops, recently I ran out of ideas and I don’t know what else to try that people want and doesn’t fail during the process, so I wanted to try making this post to see if I could get some responses that could make me think again and not end up living out of failures that I’m not proud of and I know it’s my fault.

here are some of the game attempts I tried to make and what thoughts I had that caused them to fail:

RSS Project (or Roblox Space Station) was a game inspired by space station 13, a roleplaying game in space that you need to make your work and not get killed by certain events and players, I ended up working alot more on remaking the map than the mechanics, resulting in an entire space station filled with nothing, and I also struggled with the atmospherics system like most of the ss13 replicas.

RES Project (a.k.a. Roblox Entertainment System) was a game hub that I would work on recreating classic games from the SNES and NES, the only thing that came out of it was OOF Man, a mega man game that had a massive optimization problem because I thought it would be a good idea to make the game maps tile based on 4x4x4 studs eventually making my computer struggle to run studio when opening a map folder in the explorer and just exploding with assets, I got to make a very simple demo before quitting and finished all the levels, but stopped on the tutorial map when I couldn’t handle the tile placement anymore.

Herickman’s hotel was a habbo hotel clone that I created at the start of the year, it worked pretty well but I didn’t knew how to build good furniture at the time and the room navigator broke because of an engine error (If I remember it has been fixed not long ago) and I got very anxious about its reception to the community, it felt like mosts posts near the ones I made had over 20-30 likes, and that kept me thinking that people didn’t like what I have created, and eventually I remembered that ScriptOn also worked on a similar game, so I constantly had thoughts of “why even work at this if someone better than you is already doing this, they can just go over your development speed and release it first with better graphics and everything”.

And last, Hunter Games: Reimagined was a game inspired by Hunger Games and it used alot of RNG to generate random arenas and it also had an “old school” style, using some 2011-2012 roblox UI to give some nostalgia to it, at this time I had a conflict with my thoughts over “get more people to know your game so you can get more feedback and eventually have players to actually play your game” and “don’t keep giving updates to people, otherwise they won’t play the release version because they already played everything before that” and I’ve gone haywire from there, some people got a star creator to favorite my game, but I just felt like it was not worth it and it was all fake to keep me working on something that won’t succeed.

After all of this, tried going to unity but ended up getting even more frustrated because I can’t make pixel art or model properly, things took twice as long than they used to in roblox studio.
Now I need some advice to know what people want and what do to next, I’m in fear that everything I try to make just fails because I can’t handle anything correctly.

[ParkCityUSA (CityofPark)]

Just start from the basics. The games aren’t failures, they’re lessons.

[Acr1t1cal (Man)]

Making big projects by solo is extremely hard. Maybe try to get Developer friends or hire someone, or make small project you can handle.

[chris_gaming489 (stupymcstupeltin)]

just try to find something simple to do like make models or just make a simple game and try to improve it little by little i started scripting in late 2018 and i quited in early 2019 and im back in early 2020 to try to start simple antoher thing to know is dont rush sometimes i rush and i get stressed when something dosent work then i just take a break

[82esPLUS158]

Sounds like you don’t plan your projects too well. This thread might help you out:
https://devforum.roblox.com/t/game-planning-and-sustainability/780223

Also, perhaps your frustration is due to lack of advertising strategies to some extent, like in your last game. Maybe one of these threads will help you overcome this barrier.
https://devforum.roblox.com/t/any-good-advertising-strategies/209165

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I would also suggest that you learn how to devote your time to different areas in your game,
Estimate how much time you need to build a map, or finish scripting a certain mechanic and make sure you don’t go beyond that time limit.

Before making a map, make a good layout of it inside your head and avoid perfectionism or you’ll end up wasting a lot more time than it’s actually worth. If you do a sloppy job at building, then you can contribute more time to the map after you’ve completed other aspects of your project.

Another piece of advice I think you could use is to find out what things you’re gonna need to be adept at to complete the project before you start working. For example, if you’re making a money/XP system, you ought to learn about datastores.

Last but not the least, don’t think of your failures as failures. Instead, think of them as stepping stones to success. And, as you go along on your developing journey, and learn new things, you might even gather the courage to come back to one of your older projects and finish what you started. This quote from Thomas Edison might inspire you

Also, I think #development-discussion is a better place for this topic.

[VegetationBush (FartedWayTooHard)]

Don’t always start on such a big project. I myself have played the Hunter Games: Reimagined and I can say that it’s pretty good, well thought out game. But, these kinds of games usually take a lot of work and when something goes wrong, all that work seems useless.

This is one of the hardest things I find myself as a developer do: Switching the mindset.
The main point of switching the mindset is to relieve you of any stress you previously had, and letting it go. It’s over now, there’s no point of worrying. Most developers also look big, and dram big, although that is good, we tend to over dream. It might not seem like it at first, bug these big projects usually never finish. The mindset I want you to consider is to make a smaller game first, then try making that smaller game get good. Then harness the motivation from the love you got from the smaller game to get motivation to work on bigger projects.

The little things in life really help out the bigger things. The river always flows to the sea.

[Herickman (Acanic)]

Thanks, I’ll try going back the the beginning, hopefully it works this time.

[imnotRummy (Rummy)]

Good luck on your second try, don’t give up