Being The Dreaded "Idea Guy"

[ZooNamedGames]

20 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

There are people here on the forums that might take you up on your offer, and if they don't, they will probably point you in another direction. Do research. Create a design document. It's hard to start, very hard to start, I know. But once you do, you'd be surprised at how far you can go.

I'm pretty sure a large number of indie developers thought the exact same thing. But, if you start small, you could grow quite a lot.

Well if I get a bite, then easily my effort in the subject will triplicate. 

[Kieve]

3 hours ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Well one realistic issue is by the time I've gotten the (mediocre) skills to do it, I likely moved onto others making the time and invested effort worthless.

Ahem:

8 hours ago, Kieve said:

Stop trying to find reasons not to try.

If you try and fail, you learn from the experience. You make another attempt, a little wiser for it.

As one creative to another, I know the feeling. I really, honestly do. I've left a long string of broken, failed, abandoned projects behind me over the years. Novels, films, mods, music, games, artwork, even wire sculpture. My muse is a fickle wretch and she rarely provides me enough inspiration to completely follow through with anything. "After The Storm" was on hold for over a year before I got back to KSP. There's a little clockwork spider still waiting for me to animate him. I'm over 62k words into a sci-fi novel... and have been stuck there for the last six months. My FTL mod has been in limbo for ages, and will probably never see the light of day. The list goes on.

But do you know what they all have in common? I learned something new from each one. When I was twenty, I didn't know the first thing about texturing, 3d modeling, rigging, animation, programming, or game design - and the book I was writing at the time? Complete garbage! Ten years later, I can do all these things, and while I'm no industry expert - you'll never see me credited to some triple-A title, certainly - the potential is there. All it takes is a willingness to learn, to fail, to make mistakes.

STOP telling yourself "this is worthless, I'm wasting my time, I can't do it, I don't have the skill..." Those are all BS excuses. I know motivation can be hard to find sometimes, but until those "big ideas" of yours are worth your time, they sure as hell aren't worth anyone else's. Don't say "I can't," because what you're really saying is "I won't."

Click here. Start somewhere. See where it takes you.

[ZooNamedGames]

24 minutes ago, Kieve said:

Ahem:

As one creative to another, I know the feeling. I really, honestly do. I've left a long string of broken, failed, abandoned projects behind me over the years. Novels, films, mods, music, games, artwork, even wire sculpture. My muse is a fickle wretch and she rarely provides me enough inspiration to completely follow through with anything. "After The Storm" was on hold for over a year before I got back to KSP. There's a little clockwork spider still waiting for me to animate him. I'm over 62k words into a sci-fi novel... and have been stuck there for the last six months. My FTL mod has been in limbo for ages, and will probably never see the light of day. The list goes on.

But do you know what they all have in common? I learned something new from each one. When I was twenty, I didn't know the first thing about texturing, 3d modeling, rigging, animation, programming, or game design - and the book I was writing at the time? Complete garbage! Ten years later, I can do all these things, and while I'm no industry expert - you'll never see me credited to some triple-A title, certainly - the potential is there. All it takes is a willingness to learn, to fail, to make mistakes.

STOP telling yourself "this is worthless, I'm wasting my time, I can't do it, I don't have the skill..." Those are all BS excuses. I know motivation can be hard to find sometimes, but until those "big ideas" of yours are worth your time, they sure as hell aren't worth anyone else's. Don't say "I can't," because what you're really saying is "I won't."

Click here. Start somewhere. See where it takes you.

I looked into a class and they're all booked and solo, well I got to "hello world" once but I keep forgetting how to get it written.

I wouldn't keep telling myself before I start something that it would be worthless if I had done something successful. From my life experiences, that's its better to not get emotionally hurt by what always happens. So again I'm sorry, but my life has proven the opposite is true.

Some people just arnt cut out for what's in their head. I hate to keep making excuses but so far they've made more profit than the alternative. 

This again is diverging into my other thread. So I digress.

Edited September 2, 2016 by ZooNamedGames

[KSK]

OK, sympathy hat on first. Sounds like you're definitely going through a rough patch and, without wishing to pry too deeply, is there anyone you can talk to in confidence about some of it? It might help a bit. Having known a couple of people with depression, I'm not going to bandy that diagnosis around without knowing exactly what's going on but you do seem to be going through something a bit more serious than regular teenage angst. 

Good luck with it and with finding a way out of it.

On the perils of being the ideas guy - there are situations where this can be invaluable and situations where, as you've noted, people just aren't interested. Troubleshooting specific problems, brainstorming for new directions to approaching a given problem - or finding new problems to solve - for those kinds of situations, having an idea guy around is exactly what you want. Likewise, there are many situations where you need 'the vision guy' as well as 'the details guy' to get anything done. In my opinion though 'the vision guy' needs to be able to articulate how to implement that vision, at least to some extent. Do this well and it's called a strategy - and there are plenty of opportunities for strategic thinkers. Do it badly and it's just a wishlist of stuff for other people to do, which isn't particularly helpful.

I had a boss like that in one job - he had a 'strategy' for everything but offered little guidance on how to implement them. With a different team it might have worked. Me - I just felt woefully out of my depth and unsure what the flarp I was supposed to be doing. Not one of my more successful career moves.

Being the ideas guy can also involve knowing when to push your own ideas and knowing when to sit back and go with other people's ideas. Sometimes you'll find that people will talk themselves around to your way of looking at things anyway and sometimes a gentle nudge here or there can be more useful than insisting that people listen to you - cos you're the idea guy dammit! I work with a couple of very distinguished academics who work very much like that. Plant the idea, let them circle around it a couple of times and by and large they'll get where you want them to go. It takes a bit of patience (and can lead to some interminable meetings) but it does work. 

Finally - being the ideas guy in a creative context can be extremely difficult partly because creative folks aren't generally short of their own ideas and partly because the initial 'big picture' idea is only the start of the process.

Take writing for example. I've had a great idea for a story - and I can maybe set that idea down in a paragraph or two, maybe a list of bullet points. Converting that outline into enough of a plot to sustain a story, let alone figuring out the page by page detail of characters and their actions that make up that story, requires a lot more ideas and a lot more work. People rarely take kindly to suggestions from other people (however well intentioned) that result in more work for them personally.

I've seen this a couple of times over in the Fanworks forum, where people have thrown out a top level idea for a story for somebody else to write. I can't speak for everyone of course but my own response to that sort of suggestion would be a more-or-less polite variation on the theme of 'nice idea - why don't you go away and write about that.'

Heck you know this - and I know you do because you've already told us about it. You know how hard it is to get an idea out of your head and into a tangible form, let alone a tangible form that's anywhere near as good as you imagined it in your head. How would you respond to another ideas guy telling you about his or her great idea - that they just need some help to realise? And by help it turns out that they mean 'you do most of the work after they've done the hard part by giving you the idea.'

 

 

 

Edited September 3, 2016 by KSK

[StrandedonEarth]

I went looking for a specific Thomas Edison quote and found a whole page of them, most of which apply to this thread. This is the quote I was looking for:

I also consider myself an idea person, although precious few of my ideas have seen the light of day. OTOH, on a few occasions I have come up with efficient and effective ways to get a task done, and basked in the kudos that followed.

Don't get discouraged if you can't seem to form things to your expectations. As a teenager, some 30ish years ago, I was frustrated in woodwork because I couldn't get the wood into the shape I wanted, and pretty much gave up. Fast-forward 20 years, and I was helping a friend do some framing, and things seemed to click. Now, with a few tools and scraps of wood, I can easily slap together something that fulfills a purpose, with my biggest project being a play fort for my sons. It may not be pretty, but it does the job. Step aside, Art, it's (as my brother said) "It's a work of Paul!"

Which comes around to another thing which I've had to learn over the years: realizing when something is "good enough." I'm a bit of a perfectionist, and perfection can be difficult if not impossible to achieve. My wife would get annoyed by it, but eventually learned to embrace it when she saw some of the results. But the flip side is that perfection can be time-consuming, with the potential to waste a lot of time fiddle-flapping around trying to make perfect something that is already good enough. This is an important consideration in a factory setting with production quotas, as there often isn't time for perfection.

I have heard that one reason the Americans were able to push back the Germans in late WW2 is because they had more tanks. Not better tanks; not better-built tanks, just more of them. American tanks may have broke down more often than German ones, but there were always 10 more Shermans to bring up the rear. Because the focus was on pumping out more tanks, not finely crafted works of art.

What I'm trying to say is, don't worry if your first efforts aren't perfect. Just worry about getting things "good enough," and worry about perfect for later efforts, if it's even possible. Kod knows, KSP isn't perfect, but it's good enough for thousands of hours of enjoyment (except maybe on XB1).

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

On 8/31/2016 at 9:04 PM, ZooNamedGames said:

Nice WarGames reference- catch is I don't have access to any classes. All I have is self teaching and I tried that and bombed. 

[...]

Have you tried https://www.edx.org/?

They have free online classes that are good, in almost any area, including programming.

[Robotengineer]

1 minute ago, Mad Rocket Scientist said:

Have you tried https://www.edx.org/?

They have free online classes that are good, in almost any area, including programming.

And www.coursera.org. 

[Waxing_Kibbous]

I'm just going to throw this out there:

compared to 10, 15 years ago it is incredibly accessible to make content, you just have to get over the initial learning hump to the point where you are comfortable in the working environment, then learning new things gets way easier. This will take a few hours, but it will happen. I taught myself Blender (Blender 2.4x BTW, which had a notoriously brutal UI) by making a simple project with set goals. I made a character and animated him, and I set it up like so:

Modeling- keep it low poly, learn about good topology.

Textures- learn about UV textures, sub-surface scattering

rigging- have IK/FK switchable arms, face rig

animating- do some walk cycles then a lifting animation, learn about lighting/rendering

Chunking it up like this, with a simple project, got me to a point where Blender itself became so natural to use I changed the shortcuts in other programs to match Blender's, and suddenly the wiki and tutorials made sense. Doing a little research and setting up some achievable targets on a small project is a good way to get your feet wet.

* as a side note I made my first character in a program called Animation Master on a G3 Mac, 350MHz processor, 256MB RAM and a 8MB video card. The Blender example was done on a first gen Macbook. Talk about underpowered machines! 

[ZooNamedGames]

I'm going to say this first- I want to simply explain why there's been a delay in me reply to some of your comments. It's simply because I wanted to give a good response and I wanted to wait until I had time when I could stop and think and provide a sufficient response.

---

18 hours ago, KSK said:

OK, sympathy hat on first. Sounds like you're definitely going through a rough patch and, without wishing to pry too deeply, is there anyone you can talk to in confidence about some of it? It might help a bit. Having known a couple of people with depression, I'm not going to bandy that diagnosis around without knowing exactly what's going on but you do seem to be going through something a bit more serious than regular teenage angst. 

Good luck with it and with finding a way out of it.

On the perils of being the ideas guy - there are situations where this can be invaluable and situations where, as you've noted, people just aren't interested. Troubleshooting specific problems, brainstorming for new directions to approaching a given problem - or finding new problems to solve - for those kinds of situations, having an idea guy around is exactly what you want. Likewise, there are many situations where you need 'the vision guy' as well as 'the details guy' to get anything done. In my opinion though 'the vision guy' needs to be able to articulate how to implement that vision, at least to some extent. Do this well and it's called a strategy - and there are plenty of opportunities for strategic thinkers. Do it badly and it's just a wishlist of stuff for other people to do, which isn't particularly helpful.

I had a boss like that in one job - he had a 'strategy' for everything but offered little guidance on how to implement them. With a different team it might have worked. Me - I just felt woefully out of my depth and unsure what the flarp I was supposed to be doing. Not one of my more successful career moves.

Being the ideas guy can also involve knowing when to push your own ideas and knowing when to sit back and go with other people's ideas. Sometimes you'll find that people will talk themselves around to your way of looking at things anyway and sometimes a gentle nudge here or there can be more useful than insisting that people listen to you - cos you're the idea guy dammit! I work with a couple of very distinguished academics who work very much like that. Plant the idea, let them circle around it a couple of times and by and large they'll get where you want them to go. It takes a bit of patience (and can lead to some interminable meetings) but it does work. 

Finally - being the ideas guy in a creative context can be extremely difficult partly because creative folks aren't generally short of their own ideas and partly because the initial 'big picture' idea is only the start of the process.

Take writing for example. I've had a great idea for a story - and I can maybe set that idea down in a paragraph or two, maybe a list of bullet points. Converting that outline into enough of a plot to sustain a story, let alone figuring out the page by page detail of characters and their actions that make up that story, requires a lot more ideas and a lot more work. People rarely take kindly to suggestions from other people (however well intentioned) that result in more work for them personally.

I've seen this a couple of times over in the Fanworks forum, where people have thrown out a top level idea for a story for somebody else to write. I can't speak for everyone of course but my own response to that sort of suggestion would be a more-or-less polite variation on the theme of 'nice idea - why don't you go away and write about that.'

Heck you know this - and I know you do because you've already told us about it. You know how hard it is to get an idea out of your head and into a tangible form, let alone a tangible form that's anywhere near as good as you imagined it in your head. How would you respond to another ideas guy telling you about his or her great idea - that they just need some help to realise? And by help it turns out that they mean 'you do most of the work after they've done the hard part by giving you the idea.'

 

 

 

Yeah. I'm in a really thick patch... but I'm trying to work through it. I shouldn't be bringing it here. It's unfair to this community and moreover people come here to get away from those problems, and I'm bringing it here. I have @Deddly and @adsii1970 thankfully, and I am seeing a psychiatrist. Of course I'm still a mess, but I am trying to improve. I usually go in cycles and I was likely at one of my lows.

That I have seen in my time. I occasionally do have uses and I try to use my creativity as much as possible :/ .

Everything else you said is all fair points. I wouldn't want to be driven by someone else.

9 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

I went looking for a specific Thomas Edison quote and found a whole page of them, most of which apply to this thread. This is the quote I was looking for:

I also consider myself an idea person, although precious few of my ideas have seen the light of day. OTOH, on a few occasions I have come up with efficient and effective ways to get a task done, and basked in the kudos that followed.

Don't get discouraged if you can't seem to form things to your expectations. As a teenager, some 30ish years ago, I was frustrated in woodwork because I couldn't get the wood into the shape I wanted, and pretty much gave up. Fast-forward 20 years, and I was helping a friend do some framing, and things seemed to click. Now, with a few tools and scraps of wood, I can easily slap together something that fulfills a purpose, with my biggest project being a play fort for my sons. It may not be pretty, but it does the job. Step aside, Art, it's (as my brother said) "It's a work of Paul!"

Which comes around to another thing which I've had to learn over the years: realizing when something is "good enough." I'm a bit of a perfectionist, and perfection can be difficult if not impossible to achieve. My wife would get annoyed by it, but eventually learned to embrace it when she saw some of the results. But the flip side is that perfection can be time-consuming, with the potential to waste a lot of time fiddle-flapping around trying to make perfect something that is already good enough. This is an important consideration in a factory setting with production quotas, as there often isn't time for perfection.

I have heard that one reason the Americans were able to push back the Germans in late WW2 is because they had more tanks. Not better tanks; not better-built tanks, just more of them. American tanks may have broke down more often than German ones, but there were always 10 more Shermans to bring up the rear. Because the focus was on pumping out more tanks, not finely crafted works of art.

What I'm trying to say is, don't worry if your first efforts aren't perfect. Just worry about getting things "good enough," and worry about perfect for later efforts, if it's even possible. Kod knows, KSP isn't perfect, but it's good enough for thousands of hours of enjoyment (except maybe on XB1).

Yeah that's something I've heard. That is something I've heard that my skills will improve in time, but I really just want to skip these next few years and get to the fun part; USING what my education has been leading up to. School has nothing for me as will college, so might as well.

7 hours ago, Mad Rocket Scientist said:

Have you tried https://www.edx.org/?

They have free online classes that are good, in almost any area, including programming.

 

7 hours ago, Robotengineer said:

And www.coursera.org. 

in gaming programming? The language and what needs to be given is vastly different. Understanding yes I need to know the basics before I can get into gaming code language, but nonetheless.

[Camacha]

On 01/09/2016 at 5:08 AM, ZooNamedGames said:

Every day, I wake up and think of a new world and idea I'd love to make real but then I'm reminded- I can't.

Guess what? We are all the same. None of us were born with the innate ability to do the things we are amazing at. It took us hard work and many hours of being terrible at it. Most of us had to work long hours to get the very tools we needed, too. It is time to stop feeling sorry for yourself. You are the only obstacle between you and your dream. With the internet and even the most rickety computer, you have a bigger wealth of information and better tools than almost anyone in history.

I certainly do not want to turn this into an in-my-day-story, but when I started out programming I had nothing but a terribly unhelpful help file and some very outdated books about quite another version of the language and IDE. It often took days of trial and error to figure out why a command would not run properly. Now, you boot up your browser and get explained how to make things tick in minutes. You have access to huge amounts of high quality information and tools without ever leaving your house. We live in an amazing era with opportunities never seen before. You just have to do the work.

 

17 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Yeah that's something I've heard. That is something I've heard that my skills will improve in time, but I really just want to skip these next few years and get to the fun part; USING what my education has been leading up to. School has nothing for me as will college, so might as well.

Fortunately, you live in the perfect era. Instead of having to pick (or worse, having one picked for you) an occupation before your age reaches the double digits and having to work long, tiring and unhealthy apprenticeship years before being allowed to even come close to the fun stuff, you can dive right in. You have the tools and information available to just get started. Few, if any, generations in history have had this before. After you get in and realize you are in way over your head, you can chip away at these skills in a top-down-fashion, rather than having to build a huge collection of skills in a bottom-up-fashion. You can start seeing results having fun right away, as long as you let yourself.

The only requirement is doing it and being willing to fail. The only way of not failing is not doing anything and even then you will be failing at life.

[Camacha]

27 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

in gaming programming? The language and what needs to be given is vastly different. Understanding yes I need to know the basics before I can get into gaming code language, but nonetheless.

There is no class of programming that can be distinguished solely as gaming programming. Games require several skills and techniques, that all have applications in programs that are not games. If you can program well, you can program a game. If you can program a game well, you can code other programs too. There are no programming skills that apply to gaming and gaming only.

[Bill Phil]

So you want to skip the hard stuff and get to the good stuff? That's not something that'll happen, unless you're extraordinarily lucky.

Programming games, especially good ones, is not an easy task. That's usually why there are teams of programmers for the big ones. It's hard for a single person to do. You shouldn't expect it to be easy.

[ZooNamedGames]

18 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

So you want to skip the hard stuff and get to the good stuff? That's not something that'll happen, unless you're extraordinarily lucky.

Programming games, especially good ones, is not an easy task. That's usually why there are teams of programmers for the big ones. It's hard for a single person to do. You shouldn't expect it to be easy.

Skip the next 4 years of aviation college. Not programming.

[Camacha]

6 hours ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Skip the next 4 years of aviation college. Not programming.

Do I understand correctly you want to learn to fly? If so, be sure to absolutely own the skills involved. Do not take any short cuts. People will depend on you in a physical or financial sense. If you want to mess about, you should not think of becoming a pilot. Be the very best pilot you can be, or do not be a pilot at all. Doing anything in between is a liability and toying with people's lives (including your own).

[ZooNamedGames]

2 hours ago, Camacha said:

Do I understand correctly you want to learn to fly? If so, be sure to absolutely own the skills involved. Do not take any short cuts. People will depend on you in a physical or financial sense. If you want to mess about, you should not think of becoming a pilot. Be the very best pilot you can be, or do not be a pilot at all. Doing anything in between is a liability and toying with people's lives (including your own).

I do. I'm fully capable and have been wanting to my entire life. Heck, I went to visit a nearby college who was kind enough to let me try and use one of their simulators, and I flew so well that he thought I had been in a simulator like it before. There arnt many shortcuts for piloting as compared to other occupations.

I also get the odd sense you find me unsuitable. Like I wouldn't fully rationalize what choosing my life's career would entail. 

[Snark]

In all the wordage I've seen thus far, if I had to pick the one thing that really stands out as crystallizing the issues here, it would be this statement:

On 9/1/2016 at 4:04 PM, ZooNamedGames said:

Well one realistic issue is by the time I've gotten the (mediocre) skills to do it, I likely moved onto others making the time and invested effort worthless.

^ This.  This right here.  This is the problem.

Paraphrasing what @Bill Phil said:  You can't skip the hard stuff and get to the good stuff.

Anybody setting out to do something new is going to suck, at least for a while.  It takes work to get up to "mediocre".  Then it takes a lot more work to get good at it.   There is no short-cut.  You have to put in a lot of hard effort to get somewhere.

If you spend an afternoon listening to Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, and get all excited, and think "oh boy, I'm gonna learn electric guitar so I can sound like that!", and then you get one and it sounds terrible, and you practice for a month and it still sounds terrible... well, guess what?  It takes a lot longer than a month to sound like Jimi Hendrix or Eric Clapton, even if you actually have the talent.  If you give up after a month, you're not going to get there.

A common theme that I keep hearing in just about everything you've said in this thread is that you blame "failure" on a lack of talent or ability.  My friendly advice is, you should take that as a red warning flag.  It signifies that you're associating success with "talent" rather than "hard work".  Talent can be important, yes... but most of success is the hard-work part.  You can't skip it.

For example:

On 8/31/2016 at 8:25 PM, ZooNamedGames said:

I have tried before and my products end up poor at best.

...I suspect you're using a different definition of the word "tried" from what a lot of the folks on this thread are using.  If you're 19, you haven't been around long enough to have "tried" multiple things.  Dabbled, yes.  Put serious effort, e.g. years?  There simply hasn't been time yet.

You're focusing exclusively on the goal, which is self-defeating and practically a guaranteed "failure" for anyone.  You're looking at the end result of polished professionals and judging your output against that, which is a fool's errand.  You're not going to make something awesome until you have put thousands of hours into it.  I'm not engaging in hyperbole, here.  I mean, literally thousands of hours.

For example:

On 9/1/2016 at 9:07 AM, ZooNamedGames said:

I could try for 10 years and still come up with a product that people say "eh" to.

...there are a few really important problems with this statement.

• First:  The word "try", itself.  I've seen you use the word "try" multiple times.  That's a really unfortunate word choice, and an unfortunate habit of thought.  I'd suggest that you train yourself to stop using it; it leads to unproductive, self-defeating lines of thought.  (Yoda had some pretty good advice.)  The word is "work", not "try".  Using the word "try" implies "a thing that I may succeed or fail at, and if I fail it's because of bad luck or lack of talent."  No.  That's not how it works.  You don't "try", you work.  And then, when you fail, it's because you didn't work enough.  And, unlike a failure at "trying", that's a failure you can address:  work more.
• Second:  With all due respect, you haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about.  If you've never worked at anything for 10 years, then you don't know what the result of working for 10 years looks like.
• Third:  You're focusing on "winning", i.e. on the end goal, to the exclusion of all else.  Realistically, that's going to keep you from getting to a place of awesomeness.  Unless you have superhumanly iron willpower (which I doubt, because almost nobody does-- I sure don't), you're not going to stay motivated to work on something for year after year, including the not-so-fun parts, unless you really like the process of getting there.

That last point is often overlooked, but is extremely important.

For example:  Suppose your field of interest were creative writing.  You're not going to become a great novelist without writing a whole lot of crap fist, and writing that stuff is going to be a long hard slog, and you won't stay motivated to do it unless you just really love the act of writing.  (The reason you won't stay motivated isn't because there's something wrong with you, personally.  It's simply because you're human.)  You'll only keep at it if you actually enjoy the writing itself (including the crap that will never see the light of day).  If the reason you're writing is that you want to write a big successful novel... well, you'll never stick with it long enough.  It's fine to have that as a long-range, gosh-wouldn't-it-be-nice-if kind of goal, but it can't be your reason.  Your reason for writing has to be "because I like to write."

To take another example, that may work a little better (since you've mentioned it here):  computer programming.  Yes, it would be really cool if you could produce an amazing game that's really successful, someday.  But you can't do that unless you develop computer programming expertise, first.  And computer programming isn't for the faint of heart-- I can say that with assurance, because I've been a professional software engineer for longer than you have been alive.

When you program, the large majority of the time you spend in front of the computer working with code is not going to be joy-of-creation stuff.  The overwhelming majority of the time-- and I mean lots and lots of time, here-- is going to be tedious, irritating, repetitive, tearing-your-hair-out, why-the-hell-doesn't-this-damn-thing-work debugging and analysis.  The kind of thing where you spend a whole frickin' day banging your head against some intractable problem, and when you finally find the answer it turns out to be some stupid one-line mistake in your code, which your eyeballs just skated over the first 99 times you reviewed it, and which could have been easily solved in thirty seconds if you had just noticed it sooner.

And that's not just when you're starting out.  That's what it's like all the time.  Forever.  Even if you're really good at it and have a lot of native talent.  Even if you've been doing it as a full-time job for over twenty years, like me.

And what's the payoff?  Writing a fantastic game?  No.  Well, maybe, eventually, after years of hard work.  But initially?  No, the payoff in the early phases is that after you've gone through all that toil and sweat, you produce a childish scrawl of a program that works, but looks pathetic next to a polished, shipping commercial product.  Heck, look at @AmpsterMan's post earlier in this thread.  His initial ambition isn't to write the next KSP, it's just to write a frickin' tic-tac-toe game.  And you know what?  That's a great ambition to start with, because it's realistic.  This is a guy whom I've talked with quite a bit, I know he's smart and hard-working, but he's setting his sights really simple to start with because that's what you have to do.

So.  If programming is so slow and tedious and aggravating, and if the realistic expectations for payoff are so humble (at least in the first few years), then the obvious question would be:  Why on earth would anyone other than an idiot or a masochist (or both) take it up in the first place?

The answer is:  because you find it incredibly fun.  Which most people wouldn't.  For most people, it would be an act of deliberate, extended, self-inflicted torture.  But for a few weirdos (like me), the act of programming itself is a kind of nirvana, a rush that is impossible to describe to someone who isn't wired that way.  "I... can... make... this... creature... DO MY BIDDING!"  You have to love that.  It has to be its own motivation.  You have to get a thrill out of making that tic-tac-toe game work, regardless of whether anyone else ever sees it or not.  That's the only way, realistically, to keep the motivation to keep plugging away at it year after year, even in the early phases when you're not making money or getting recognition for it.  Heck, I love programming so much that after working at it all day long on my day job, when I come home and want to relax... I then do it for fun, unpaid, by writing KSP mods.  Because, well, I'm a nerd. 

Find the thing you love to do.  Because you enjoy doing it for its own sake, even if nobody were ever to notice what you do.  Then do that.  And keep doing it.

So really, it all boils down to this:

• As long as you keep using the word "try", you're handicapping yourself.  Train yourself to avoid using that word, even in thought.  Use "work" instead.  The proverb "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again" is a toxic one, IMHO.  It should be, instead:  "When at first you don't succeed, keep working."
• Don't shoot for something that you don't actually enjoy the process of.  You need to be working on something that you actually enjoy working on.  Otherwise, you won't keep the motivation to keep working on it for long enough to get results.
• Don't expect too much too soon.  It takes years to get good at something.  If you give up after a few weeks, you'll never get going on anything.
• It's okay to have grandiose "end goals" as a vision.  But that can't be your primary reason for doing what you're doing.

 

[StrandedonEarth]

49 minutes ago, Snark said:

~snip~

 

Excellent post. Too bad I can only give it one 'like'

[pxi]

On 4/9/2016 at 2:28 AM, ZooNamedGames said:

in gaming programming? The language and what needs to be given is vastly different. Understanding yes I need to know the basics before I can get into gaming code language, but nonetheless.

One thing that anyone who has used more than one programming language quickly observes, is that there is generally very little that differentiates programming languages.  Programming is more about understanding paradigms than understanding looping structures.  Between the 5 or 6 languages I've dabbled in from the 8-bit era to the present day the major difference between them I've noticed is going from procedural to object-oriented code, which still isn't very different when it comes right down to it, it just requires thinking about your code a little differently.

I pretty much wasted a year of my life on a course which purported to teach web-design back in the late 90's.  I'd have been far better served going into computer science, but I chose to chase the new thing.  I assumed we'd be learning javascript, database-driven webpages and the like.  Nope, just straight HTML.  The next year I looked at the stuff the next batch of students were putting up on the college webpage, and I kid you not, half of them were uploading their images in bitmap format.  My point is, be very careful what you choose to spend your time studying, and where you choose to do it.

If you want to get into games programming, you would be far better suited doing a formal programming course rather than a games design course.  There are no specific 'gaming code languages', there are however languages that are frequently used in game engines like Unity.  You may however come to a point in your career when you need to go beyond using a third party game engine, and write your own specialized engine.  At that point you might well be thankful you invested the time doing a course that taught you more than to use A* for pathfinding.

EDIT:

Great wisdom from @Snark here:  ( I'd quote him directly, but the editor keeps eating my edit :/ )

Quote

When you program, the large majority of the time you spend in front of the computer working with code is not going to be joy-of-creation stuff.  The overwhelming majority of the time-- and I mean lots and lots of time, here-- is going to be tedious, irritating, repetitive, tearing-your-hair-out, why-the-hell-doesn't-this-damn-thing-work debugging and analysis.  The kind of thing where you spend a whole frickin' day banging your head against some intractable problem, and when you finally find the answer it turns out to be some stupid one-line mistake in your code, which your eyeballs just skated over the first 99 times you reviewed it, and which could have been easily solved in thirty seconds if you had just noticed it sooner.

One of the things that I'm most proud of programming-wise consists of four lines of code.  To get those four lines took over a week of RTFM, spending upwards of 18 hours a day scouring the internet for answers to questions I didn't even know how to phrase properly.  There is some joy-of-creation to be had, but be prepared for a long pregnancy and a difficult labour in the process of birthing it.

Edited September 5, 2016 by pxi

[Camacha]

On 04/09/2016 at 2:23 PM, ZooNamedGames said:

I do. I'm fully capable and have been wanting to my entire life. Heck, I went to visit a nearby college who was kind enough to let me try and use one of their simulators, and I flew so well that he thought I had been in a simulator like it before. There arnt many shortcuts for piloting as compared to other occupations.

I also get the odd sense you find me unsuitable. Like I wouldn't fully rationalize what choosing my life's career would entail. 

I am not saying or implying you are unsuitable. It is just that, being a former pilot, I want to make very sure you do not take your I am just not that kind of guy attitude into the cockpit. Becoming a pilot means learning a wide range of skills, all of which are as important to master as the next. There is no picking, there is no choosing. There is no I will pursue that subject only pass/fail because it is not my thing. You have to commit to becoming the best possible you can be in every single area. Even in the areas you have mastered, you have to continuously be critical of your own performance and strife to improve yourself. I just had a great flight; what elements could I do better? As soon as you become complacent, things start coming apart.

This is also why having talent can be considered dangerous. Being talented helps, but it does not relieve you of doing the work and going through the grind. You still need to commit a 100% to everything you do and learn. Even when you actually are a pilot, reviewing and improving your skills and knowledge is part of the job. As soon as you stop doing that, it is time call it quits. You never stop learning and you never stop striving for perfection.

If you are willing to go through the motions and commit learning every single skill involved the very best you can, you can and should become a great pilot Flying an aircraft is a pretty amazing experience and the things you learn will help you in other areas of life too.

[ZooNamedGames]

17 minutes ago, Camacha said:

I am not saying or implying you are unsuitable. It is just that, being a former pilot, I want to make very sure you do not take your I am just not that kind of guy attitude into the cockpit. Becoming a pilot means learning a wide range of skills, all of which are as important to master as the next. There is no picking, there is no choosing. There is no I will pursue that subject only pass/fail because it is not my thing. You have to commit to becoming the best possible you can be in every single area. Even in the areas you have mastered, you have to continuously be critical of your own performance and strife to improve yourself. I just had a great flight; what elements could I do better? As soon as you become complacent, things start coming apart.

This is also why having talent can be considered dangerous. Being talented helps, but it does not relieve you of doing the work and going through the grind. You still need to commit a 100% to everything you do and learn. Even when you actually are a pilot, reviewing and improving your skills and knowledge is part of the job. As soon as you stop doing that, it is time call it quits. You never stop learning and you never stop striving for perfection.

If you are willing to go through the motions and commit learning every single skill involved the very best you can, you can and should become a great pilot Flying an aircraft is a pretty amazing experience and the things you learn will help you in other areas of life too.

I've been willing the rest of my life, I don't know why I would stop now.

[Camacha]

Just now, ZooNamedGames said:

I've been willing the rest of my life, I don't know why I would stop now.

Maybe you can use some of that conviction and determination for some of your other projects too  

[ZooNamedGames]

20 minutes ago, Camacha said:

Maybe you can use some of that conviction and determination for some of your other projects too  

Can't quite make the same financial invest in both them and piloting.

[Camacha]

Just now, ZooNamedGames said:

Can't quite make the same financial invest in both them and piloting.

Money is not the difference between failing and succeeding. Determination is. Even with the most rickety computer, you have tools and information at your disposal that very few none of our ancestors had. Please reread one of my previous posts where I outlined this You have everything you need. Now you just have to do it. Remember, the Google guys built their first server out of Duplo in a garage. It is not their money that made them great, it was their idea and hard work that led to the huge empire they have now. They actually tried being the idea guys, but nobody thought their idea was useful. So they did what people always have to do: they rolled up their sleeves and went to work. At first, they built a crummy server out of toys in a tiny work space. After a lot of spit, polish and hard work, they are one of the dominant companies in the world. They literally changed the world as we know it.

You will never become a pilot by just spending cash. Of course, to become one, you will need to spend cash, but it is the hard work you put in and the skills that you learn that will make you a pilot. In the case of programming and game making, you are lucky; you do not need an expensive aircraft to learn. You just need a computer. What are the odds! You already own a computer! You are good to go!

[ZooNamedGames]

1 minute ago, Camacha said:

Money is not the difference between failing and succeeding. Determination is. Even with the most rickety computer, you have tools and information at your disposal that very few none of our ancestors had. Please reread one of my previous posts where I outlined this You have everything you need. Now you just have to do it. Remember, the Google guys built their first server out of Duplo in a garage. It is not their money that made them great, it was their idea and hard work that led to the huge empire they have now. They actually tried being the idea guys, but nobody thought their idea was useful. So they did what people always have to do: they rolled up their sleeves and went to work. At first, they built a crummy server out of toys in a tiny work space. After a lot of spit, polish and hard work, they are one of the dominant companies in the world. They literally changed the world as we know it.

You will never become a pilot by just spending cash. Of course, to become one, you will need to spend cash, but it is the hard work you put in and the skills that you learn that will make you a pilot. In the case of programming and game making, you are lucky; you do not need an expensive aircraft to learn. You just need a computer. What are the odds! You already own a computer! You are good to go!

Issue is if I can't run a game that I'm making on my 1.5Ghz computer then why should I be making one? Guess now I'm starting to realize my realistic limitations.

[Camacha]

1 minute ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Issue is if I can't run a game that I'm making on my 1.5Ghz computer then why should I be making one? Guess now I'm starting to realize my realistic limitations.

Make a game that does run on a 1,5 GHz computer. There were - and are - a lot of fun games that do not require a lot of processing power. In fact, there are plenty of hugely computationally intensive games that are no fun to play at all. Stop coming up with problems and start coming up with solutions. Just go do it. You have everything you need to start right now.

Did you read the linked post too? People are giving you good advice here, it would help you to read everything (not just my posts) carefully and with attention.