DEV Community: Cedric Marcellin

Coming back to my game-dev hobby after a burnout

Cedric Marcellin — Tue, 21 Jul 2020 03:43:04 +0000

The game is available on itch.io. it's Free, on Mac, Windows and Linux.

Before we start

The focus of this article is burnout.

I do not speak about a lot of technicalities behind the game, unity or code, but if you have questions about these, I'll be more than happy to answer.
I'll also make a post mortem on the game later.

I don't want to say "You do this, you think that" because everyone will have different ways of going around burnout, and it's a topic with very personal nuances for every individuals.

I want my perspective to help you, but it's still just my perspective, nothing is absolute in what I say.

Everyone got their own way of doing things, and I want to respect that.

Also if you have tips on overcoming burnout, feel free to share them :)

The burnout part

I make games in my free time as a hobby.

After working on Teddy's Crew I took a break.

Of 4 months.

It wasn't so much linked to the game itself, I loved working on it.

It's just I had some work related issues and other things running in parallel, add you know...the entirety of 2020.

My brain made that weird parallel between game development and pain.

I had a lot of resistance to overcome and I'll tell you what I did to overcome it.

Getting back to it

I accepted that I needed rest.

I tried to force myself back to it many times, and then blamed myself for not succeeding in doing so.

It's very counter-productive, and only put me further away from doing what I wanted.

I had to accept that for the moment, it was a no-no,
and I tried to figure out why.

I Let my mind wander, did some meditation,
started to make daily diary entries,
and slowly tried to figure out what my brain is being reluctant to say.

I used to care about what people say, now I care more

That's the main thing my brain wanted to say.

Ideally, you shouldn't care too much about negative comments,
lack of feedback, or the feeling that no matter what you post on the internet it get thrown into the void, never to be noticed again.

But I did. I still do. Depending on where my ego is sitting it goes from "Lol it's okay :')" to soul-crushing.

I can't help it.

I share what I do for a reason, and the act of sharing often feel pointless when absolutely no reaction come out of it.

Did I ever solve that?

No. And I won't. I think. I tried.

But the thing there's reaction to what I post.
There's pretty always has been, and a lot of them are positive.

I need to actively acknowledge them.
I need to shift focus on them.

Be it a friend of a friend telling me "That article inspired me to make games" or someone sending me screenshot of their high score on my game.

Or just that one guy who put a 5 star review because he saw you've updated the game with their feedback in mind.

I need to stay closer to reality,
and not let my brain create a narrative
where everything I do is worthless.

Ok that's cute and all, but how do you get back from a burnout?

Smaller projects

The second obstacle to making game was that I had 2 projects that took me 6 months to produce.

With that in mind I'd just assume everything I do next would need the same amount of time, blood, sweat and tears.

So after watching How to Become a Really Good Game Developer In Under a Year by Miziziziz I realised I do not have to.

Setting hard limit like "One Hour, One Day, One Week" or 5 levels max simplify a lot of things for me.

I did a very tiny game in a couple of days.
Was enough to learn a lot about unity,
and was enough to get back into some sort of momentum.

Smaller checkpoints

Another really good tip I got from another youtuber, Jonas Tyroller, is that you can finish your game...multiple times.

The TL;DR is to imagine if you had a 2 years project:
instead of working with the intent to only deliver when you are 100% done in 2 years, cut down your project into smaller iteration of 3 months.

1st one could be a one level playable demo,
then 2nd has more levels and mechanics,
and it goes on and on until you are satisfied
or ready to move on.

That way, in the case you do move on before reaching 100%,
you could still have delivered a game that represent a part of your original vision.

It's a shift of mentality that helped me with how to tackle my games from now on.

I did just that with Road to Dakar, except the first version was after a month of work, and the latest one is 2 months worth :)

Here's how it looked a month ago

That's all for today

Hope you find all of that useful, and like I said earlier, if you have any tips of yours, feel free to share them down there :)

What I've learned from my 2nd Game | Teddy's Crew

Cedric Marcellin — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 15:11:21 +0000

Brief project recap

Teddy's Crew is an old-school action arcade game developed in Phaser 3.

It's my 2nd game project and it took me roughly 70+ days of work across 8 months.

It's a simple game where you try to survive as long as possible an endless wave of enemies.

The game was named Teddy's Crew as a pun with the name of a certain actor. Initially I wanted to have a cast of bears that are descendant of Teddy. Current game have one character : Torb, the fire type bear.

Before you start reading

There is a specific context to this post-mortem: I am developing games as a hobbyist, in my free time, over the span of several months usually, for the sake of it.

If it's something that you're interested in doing but you've been hesitant in starting, don't let this article deter you. I'd say you're better off reading What I’ve learned from my first game | R0d3nt since it deals more with creating a game for the very first time.

With that said, I don't write these to discourage people.
I try things, then I make mistakes. I try to learn from them,
then I share my experience.

What is down there are problems I've faced and solution I wish I had when I faced these.

What went well?

Completion

The fact that I was capable to "finish it" (again) is success to me.

Unlike R0d3nt, I started really small, and tried to build up from here, so it was in a serviceable state really early on in development.

I've made a big part of the art, and I've learned a lot on how to add finish and pizzazz to a game. I do believe it's a more polished product than R0d3nt, even though it's also a smaller package.

I am very pleased with what I did, and I want you to remember that before reading the next section.

What went bad?

Feature Creep

The game did start with a simple design : you are a bear, you fight fishes. Then I went and included experience, levels, a combo system, etc...

I wanted to add a character selection screen, each bear would have their own set of skills, making each character feels like their own mini-game within the game.

More enemies units were planned, items drop were planned, Boss were planned. Until they were finally chopped off. It's all here for the curious.

In the beginning, you feel invincible : Of course you're going to do all of that, you see how fast you're going through your task, there's no way you will just not reach the finish line.

Feature creep is exactly that: a creep. It's not obvious, it's slowly seeping in your mind, telling you "do better, or else", "you can't just stop here", "it's a little bit embarrassing to show this after 8 months of work, isn't it?" and then you hit roadblocks :

A feature that just won't work correctly
A bug that keep reappearing
The rebuilding time + testing become tedious
The voice in your head reminding you that it's not "good enough" to be shown just yet

Each and every minor inconvenience pile up and suddenly working on this passion project become a chore. As you slow down you realise : it's going to be way longer than expected.

It become harder and harder to justify working on a free game during your free time. It's still work after all. A lot of it too.

People around you keep giving you input on how better it could be. They don't mean anything bad, most of the time it's helpful.

It's just that collectively, it piles up fast, and you're suddenly expecting a lot more than anticipated.

You're not an indie studio doing a 19.99$ game, yet you work like it.
You're not going to put on the app store, yet you work like it.
You're not going to make money out of it, yet you work like it.

All that passion, all this momentum, all this adrenaline from the beginning is just gone, and it's next to impossible to keep going.

Work is in the way too.
Life is in the way too.
A lot of things are in the way actually.

So what do you do?

You aggressively cut corner. You wrap the project up, and you move on.

Remind yourself for next time: you're the one on the driving seat.

Not every feature you learn to make have to be part of that game. If it makes no sense in that game, drop it. You already learned how to do it, you'll do it again when it make sense. It's not wasted effort.
Not every input your friends make, no offense to them, have to be valid for that game. You're the only one who know the scope of it. Games always have potential, they'll always have space for more, it's up to you to know when it's ok for your game to not be more than it is.
Not every dream ideas you have have to make it for that game. Games with the strongest identity, they don't have myriad of features, it's a limited amount of mechanics you wrap the game around. Be aware of your game identity, be mindful of the features you want in, and more specifically out of it.

If you have a clear idea of what your game is supposed to be, say no to extra features:

You have your reason, it's your project, don't let anyone/anything get in the way of your creative process.

And if you don't have a clear idea of what your game is supposed to be :
Take your time in pre-production. Even for some of the best studios out there, pre-production (design, sketches, ideas draft and whatnot) can be 1/3 of the time spend on the game.

Speaking of time I have mentioned that I'm embarrassed of the time this game technically took.

In a "Do what I say, not what I do" fashion I'd like to tell you, and myself : "It doesn't matter".

You have your reasons, you have your own pace, and you have your own idea. At the end of the day, if you deliver it, count it as a win. It is one. A big one.

If you have to take your time, then take your f*cking time.
If you want it simple, then keep it simple.

It's okay. It's more than okay. You've done it. Appreciate it.
And take care of yourself.

Until next time,
Best,

Tuskat

What I’ve learned from my first game | R0d3nt

Cedric Marcellin — Mon, 02 Sep 2019 12:51:36 +0000

Brief project recap

R0d3nt is a 2d platformer developed in Phaser CE edition.

It's my very first game project and it took roughly 5-6 months (3 in 2017, 3 in 2019)

It's a game where most of the time 10 to 40 enemies run after you and you have to use the environment against them to even these incredibly unfair odds.

The game was named R0d3nt because of the amount of enemies the player has to face. Rat flood popped on my mind while looking at 30+ enemies running toward me.

What went well?

Completion

The fact that I was capable to "finish it" in itself seems like a success to me.

If I had a percentage of how finished it would be right now, I'd say it's around 70-75% done, but the remaining percent would probably not transform the game.

It might sound like a filler point, but if you ever want to make games you have to realise finishing is notoriously hard. It's a marathon, and not everyone reach the finish line.

Locked the scope

A lot of things were planned originally. Too much actually :

wall jumps mechanics
melee attacks
more units types
a final boss

When I came back on the project, I dropped anything that was Work In Progress or wonky, and made a list of features needed in the Minimum Viable Product and stuck to that.

It's something that I thought I did correctly, seeing how much I actually chopped off the game.

Some feedback led me to realise I could have focused even more on the main selling point of the game, which is to lure/strafe around enemies and use the environment against them.

What went bad?

(In)Consistent development

So as you saw above, the game was kind of cut in 2 periods of 3 months of development.

That is because I completely dropped the project back in 2017 and didn't touch it until May 2019.

I was initially working on it during a period where I did not have a full-time job : turns out balancing work/life/hobbies was quite difficult for 2017 me.

I'm glad I've somehow found a pace again : I'm rather slow compared to your usual game dev, but I will work on my games at least on a weekly basis, I've never failed to do so since I started again to work on this hobby.

Progress is progress, like one of my friend says, so find your own pace, no matter how slow it is, just make it consistent.

On my end, every Sunday I go to the same place, meet the same friend, and work on game project : small habits like these can add/restore lost momentum.

Reception

We've recently reached 315+ views in the last 3 months. Plays sessions are roughly around 150. I think this is a decent score for a game with barely any exposure or advertisement.

Feedback about the game were very mixed : it's definitely one of these "love it" or "hate it" kind of games. It "disguise" itself as an action platformer, but it's more puzzle oriented. Each level has a sure fire solution that do not require much reflexes.

On some occasion people feedback were aligned with my design intention and it felt amazing. I had friends trying it and sending me screenshots and videos. It's the little things...

Then there's the complete opposite where the game would be seen as unfair, cheap, meh, etc.

Feedback like this is important, regardless of the messenger tone and state of mind, because it always contain an hint on where you can improve.

Just make sure to take a step back and appreciate what you do. It's difficult to not be swayed by people or your own negativity.

Lore (or lack thereof)

I have a story, I do. But it's nowhere to be seen in the actual game.

I think lore/story is what helps building identity.

Without any of it, it's much more difficult to immerse people.

Tips for the future?

Pre-production

The game pitch when I started was pretty much "I wanna do a platformer omg :v".

I think without proper pre-production, you'll dive into the development without really knowing what you are doing, and so you might ask yourself "why am I doing this" more often than not.

I do not think you need to spend too much time into pre-production, you shouldn't get too attached to your project when you're a beginner, but I think take enough time to know :

What the game is about.
How you want to structure it.
What you want the experience to be.
What you want the experience to not be.

It should be a huge help in the long term because you'll ask yourself a ton of questions all the time, and if you already have prepared answers you'll spend less time doubting.

Dev-logs

Show your game progress as early as possible. It could be gifs, it could be videos, just try to show your progress.

Play-testing

I'll be honest with y'all : your game should not be a secret. The moment you have something playable, let people play it.

Unless it's flappy bird kind of complex with flappy bird level of success, no one has the time/energy to copy your game.

Even if they did, it's not going to be "your" game.

Codebase

Start small. Iterate fast.

Get a starting template you feel comfortable working on.

Don't feel bad for borrowing from templates/boilerplates.

There's no point reinventing the wheel every-time you want to make a car.

However, understand the code you borrow.

What's next for R0d3nt?

R0D3NT development is discontinued until further notice. If anything had to be done, it'd be a redux or a sequel. I'd lock the game solely around strafing enemies.

Game would be slowed down, levels/assets would be much smaller to fit screen and let people think. I'd drop the 'reaction' aspect of the game as well.

Maybe someday you'll see "R0D3NT TURBO" or "R0D3NT II" and think "Woah that's amazing, I wonder what the first one was like".

What's next for me?

I'm currently working on another game. One of the main reason I discontinued R0d3nt was that I had others ideas I wanted to explore.

Another reason was that I wanted to start fresh and improve on my code quality.

I don't really know how to label it yet, I'd say arcade top down action? It'll be "chill" and cute, and this time around I'll be the one making assets.

Keep an eye out for details on upcoming game dev related content.

Best,

Tuskat