It's painful, when I think about it, how long it's taken me to get to this stage of being able to finally develop a game I know I can finish, and as complex as I wanted it to be.
-I bought dbclassic in 2000.
-Before that I had a bunch of years of programming in other languages.
-Sinse then I've had to learn a hundred different ways to optimise code, models, 3D etc. to squeeze as much juice as possible out of db.
-I've learnt to work around bugs.
-I've had to learn how to texture and generate textures, I've learnt how to model, how to animate and how to UV map.
-I've had to learn how to deal with increasingly large projects, and maintain structure, optimise, organise, structure and repeat.
-I've had to learn to plan to save myself time and heart ache. Planning everything in advance, down to which textures I'll need where, sort of detail.
-I've had to learn to test the engine before I dedicate work to the game. Just make sure the hardware and language can handle what I want to do, before I make 15 models and write 1000 lines of code.
-I've had to expand on complex Geometry, Calculus and Trigonometry maths knowledge in my own time, so I can figure out how to do the physics I've wanted to do.
-I've had to learn patience, to stick with a project, and I'm still struggling with this one. You need to take the rough with the smooth, as when you're doing everything yourself, a lot of it is boring.
And there's loads more ...
Sorry, this isn't meant to turn into a rant about myself. I'm just trying to say, now I'm finally making a game I can see myself finishing that I know will be good, solid, and quite professional, I can look back on what I've had to do to get there. I think about what it'd be like if I was just starting out and had never coded before, and it is absolutely rediculous how much you have to learn, if you want to do everything yourself. Learning all of what I've mentioned above, on your own, with very little help from other people, except for a few forum posts here and there is monsterous, and now I see why it's taken me so long (4 years - luckily I knew music/sound engineering before hand).
So I look at people who are just starting out from scratch, and I see totally lost causes, with a huge monster M3 of a road in front of them, if they want to be a one man game dev team, capable of making something decent.
Gahh, I'm really not trying to blow my own trumpet here. There are plenty of people here who have better skills than I, but no doubt they've worked just as hard for just as long, if not longer, and they'll probably think the same as me when they look at a newbie.
It just takes so much learning and work to make something good. Don't want to overuse the word, but it is monsterous. So good luck to all the one man developers out there. As Blackadder would say, "Your journey will be strewn with cow pats from the devils own satanic heard".
