Game Development Programmer's Obligations

[A-Man]

I have been doing programming for a while now, and I've found myself to be mostly working in indie game teams (working solely on the programming portion). I really enjoy taking that role (and it's probably the only thing I can help with), but I can't help but feel that I am really slow at doing my job and always dragging the whole team behind. Why? I couldn't figure. I've seen programmers whom are constantly caught up with getting all the concepts given to them in the game within a day or two.

So I've given it some thought. Too much thought actually. And I was thinking that maybe if I switched over to using some of the ready, popular game engines out there, like Unity or Unreal Engine (especially the latter since it's completely free now), something might change. Perhaps it wouldn't really make a difference because the earlier problem was merely due to lack of experience?

[Hellblazer]

Maybe it is because you have lack of experience, you are a bit slow, still new to the work as compared to others or MAYBE lazy . It can also be due to that everybody does their work in a hassle and you do it perfectly, slow and steady Maybe you will overcome it when you will keep practicing and get a habit out of your work, just like spriting and dc'ing.
Also, ill go with A-Laboratory

[YinYin]

So I've given it some thought. Too much thought actually. And I was thinking that maybe if I switched over to using some of the ready, popular game engines out there, like Unity or Unreal Engine (especially the latter since it's completely free now), something might change. Perhaps it wouldn't really make a difference because the earlier problem was merely due to lack of experience?

Starting on an engine is always faster. Unity is full feature free now as well btw.
I'm a little confused though why you would be deciding on the platform/engine?
Your indie teams don't seem to know what they are doing if they don't have that figured out.

[Bamboori]

i guess using ready to go engines makes a lot of things easier. after you learn all the nifty tricks and bits to do in your engine, you can realize game concepts within hours (given the right engine). but an engine also limits you.

im happily working wit game maker, because i solely aim to make 2d games. the engine wouldnt be capable of much more like n64 graphics 3d wise.

for the rest of the team (artists, story developers etc) the engine you use usually doesnt really matter as long as you can make a game with it that meets everybodys expectations.

i think you would be well off discussing with your team what the finished game would need and eiter take an existing engine or, seeing your a-engine, make one yourself.

what ive also heard is that a lot of programmers use ready to go engines for prototypes to show to the team how the current game would look like, and later on recode the game in a "proper" way (quotation marks because often an engine suffices).

thats just my general idea of how to work these things out.

oh also im jealous of your productivity xD sounds like you are actually completing games

[bashscrazy]

I'm currently making a 2D brawler similar to LF2 for my university class using Unity.

One thing I like about it is that during a particular point in an animation I can easily call a method in the script by just using an animation event. Got around some hurdles with that shiiiiii~

___

One thing about your game programming though is that you are making your own engine! So there will be people using it to make their own games. And with your engine you can make various different games by just changing the sprites and some "data"

And you can make several different games much quicker that way (they will be similar but at the same time different).

Nah mean? Like right now your engine is being used to make a One Piece game, but it can be used to make a DBZ game. An original brawler, etc. YEYE!

[Som1Lse]

I really cannot tell what you are doing wrong, as I have not got the slightest idea of what your code looks like, how it evolves over time etc. If you want you can send me some of your code, and I'll try to review it; other than that the only advice I can give is based on my own experiences, which may be completely different from yours.

One of the most useful things I've learned is to not try to write something that is perfect (or even good) the first time, but instead just try things out, and then fix things later on. In your case you are working on a 2D brawler game and as a result a lot of things do not even have to particularly well optimized, so do not fall into the trap of trying to optimize everything, as you will certainly fail to do so and just end up unproductive.

[Boop]

My experience with game engines is pretty bad. Especially Unity. There is too much dragging/dropping/clicking/double clicking in different windows/tabs/views. It took me forever to do anything. If you switch to one of those engine + IDE things, your productivity will most likely drop significantly until you learn where "things" are. I never had patience with such things.

If you are making a 2d game, I would just use something like SDL(2) rather than a full blown game engine. Just my opinion/experience.

Edit:

Looks like this is no longer true according to vv

[YinYin]

My experience with game engines is pretty bad. Especially Unity. There is too much dragging/dropping/clicking/double clicking in different windows/tabs/views. It took me forever to do anything. If you switch to one of those engine + IDE things, your productivity will most likely drop significantly until you learn where "things" are. I never had patience with such things.

Nowadays there are very few things you cannot access via the script - my scenes are almost blank and I create most things via script in my current unity project. Granted you have to learn the inner workings of an engine to use it. Not too hard with auto completion and direct short cut from the editor to the online documentation (select + ctrl shift # and you got yourself the required information).

edit: you may still be better off not using unity for a 2d game - don't know about that

[Rhino.Freak]

As far as I know you, the problem might be the way you organize the codes.. Lol I know I'm not contributing much by this but I have seen your .DAT files and even luffy's .a file was messy.. Might be that it slows you down in general?

[Ariel]

I know nothing about programming
But what I can understand from ur problem is that u don't get excited enough to work(I think so)
For my painting when I get bored sketching people and faces I go and try some thing new
Maybe environments

My point is, if u just get less excited to work on anything , leave it for a while and try something new, than come back to it if u want to
So yes, try this Unity thing it might change ur attitude