[ca6d8815]

Good tips... but in reality if you're working full-time (especially in a software related role), you may find yourself depleted before you get to the keyboard.

It took us 5 years to finish our game (everyone started from 0 knowledge on how to make games, so it was a rocky road), and for the last 1.5-2 years my life was absolute hell.

I'd push hard at work for 9 hours a day, eat, then push hard on the side project for 8-9 hours a day, sleep, wake up, and just keep going. One day a week maybe I'd just sleep. Not having "pure energy" for the side project meant that everything suffered.

We had to learn-by-trial virtually _everything_, I don't recommend ever doing a big project that way.

If you want to finish a game, choose a small game. Start doing game jams. Practice _finishing_. You can do more and more later.

Or, go for it, do it our way, all in to win (win is subjective, the pride is real, the monetary result didn't really do anything meaningful for so much investment). I wouldn't do it this way again, but I understand people who do.

All that said, the joy of doing something for us by us is not something I've encountered in my 15 year career yet. So... if you've never built something (and truly finished!), but you want to try... go for it.

[capableweb]

> I'd push hard at work for 9 hours a day, eat, then push hard on the side project for 8-9 hours a day, sleep, wake up, and just keep going. One day a week maybe I'd just sleep.

No wonder you feel like hell, where is time for people, leisure, exercising and all the other activities that will help you move faster by feeling better? The true optimization for becoming a more efficient person is to do less of the thing you're doing most of, and do more of the other stuff you do less of.

[the_only_law]

This has been my line of thought for a while. You spend a minimum of 8 hours working, and ideally you get 6-8 hours of sleep. Let’s say you have a couple more daily responsibilities that take 2-4 (could be commute, cleaning, some other maintenance).

There’s almost no time to do anything, and some of the hours you have left may be at non-prime times of the day.

> The true optimization for becoming a more efficient person is to do less of the thing you're doing most of, and do more of the other stuff you do less of.

The problem is this means sleep or work. I’ve opted for the former, and suffer for it. Sacrificing working, at least any notable amount, just means trading time-loss for money-loss which may or may not work depending on person.

[Zababa]

I've heard this called before the "4 hour life", you have 4 hours every day for yourself: https://medium.com/@pskallas/4-hour-life-glossary-4740bca641...

[ericmcer]

I wouldn’t mind if it was my 4 best hours a day, but it’s the 4 hours after work and dinner when my energy levels allow for a half effort workout and a bit of reading or TV.

[cecilpl2]

One of the best things I did for myself was moving all of that free time to the morning. Now I wake up at 5, have coffee, exercise, play or work on whatever hobby has my attention at the moment, then work all day. I have loads of focus and attention and energy for my fun things.

Evening is pretty much make dinner, eat, relax for a bit and be in bed reading by 8.

[prawn]

This can be a good strategy until you have young kids. After then, they often hear you get up and then seek you out to get help making breakfast or want to sit on your lap.

But otherwise, it prioritises your side project while you're fresh in the morning and puts relaxing (movie/TV/etc) for when you're fading at the end of the day.

[doix]

I recently found myself in the same position by being in Asia while working for a European company. All my free time is in the morning without having to wake up early (in the dark). I go surfing or swimming/gym and then work 12pm-11pm with some breaks for lunch and dinner. I go to bed straight after working, which means I've stopped drinking. It's made a huge difference to my quality of life and I hope I can keep this up forever. Having to wake up and go straight to work seems like a depressing thought now.

[stevofolife]

Generally true. The next step of optimization would be automating parts of your job so you can reduce 8 hours of work to like 6 hours of work. Now you have more time for yourself.

[Zababa]

Well, unless your job requires you to be present for 8 hours, in which case it's harder to use those 2 new hours.

[Viliam1234]

If presence is all that is required during those 2 hours, there are some useful things you can do: Think. Make plans on paper. Study.

[penjelly]

except in practice this never works. you cant automate all tasks, even as a programmer a lot of time is spent architecting or debugging, even requirements gathering in some cases. Those details aside, if you automated hours of your job away youd then be asked to do more work (or if you own the place youd probably want to improve your product more anyway) instead of just sitting around working on your own projects during business hours, which some businesses would fire you for or at least theyd claim your work as their intellectual property.

[skhr0680]

Even if you don’t go as far as working on side projects at work, automating even 30min-1hr worth of manual tasks can leave you less exhausted when you get home.

[ghostbrainalpha]

You don't have to tell your office every time you automate a task do you?

[taneq]

So you can do 2 more hours of work, you mean?

[chii]

> you can reduce 8 hours of work to like 6 hours of work.

even if you assume this is possible, why would your boss pay you for the 8 hours when it clearly is possible to only pay 6? You end up back where you're started.

The issue here is that the income you generate from your job is not enough. I dont know what the solution is - but under a capitalist world-view, the only solution is to own more capital, get that capital to produce your income stream (dividends or capital gains or whatever), and thus, give yourself back time.

AKA, this is called retiring, and if you can do it early, you end up with a better life, able to spend your energies on activities you care about (such as making this game).

[philh]

This doesn't acknowledge weekends, which if you have the same 8 hours sleep and 4 hours "not for yourself", add more than 50% to the time you supposedly have "for yourself". (4×5 + 12×2 vs 4×7.)

Which doesn't necessarily change the point, but I'm not sure what if anything the point is supposed to be, and it seems an important omission.

[cableshaft]

Don't usually have much extra time on the weekends. Weekends are for making up for a week of the house getting dirty, relatives and friends wanting to meet, extra long walks for the dogs that only got short walks during the week, errands that got put off, some catchup sleep, actually relaxing a bit since there wasn't much during the week, etc.

I might have 2-3 hours each day (of energy and motivation) to work on projects but not 8. Of course I never have 4 hours during the week either, I'm lucky to get 1 in usually.

[chii]

> relatives and friends wanting to meet

which is why some people who have the discipline and self-control to do a big personal project often have to neglect friends and family - it's a sacrifice.

[penjelly]

youre not alone. Unless i actively maintain my apartment itll deteriorate over the week (i even meal prep weekends to alleviate some) i do agree with others though. More time spent disengaging from the work your doing may actually net you a positive in the productivity dept

[andrewzah]

Weekends aren't necessarily free time.

Saturdays and Sundays are chore days, or family days, or simply resting, or ...

About 4h remaining for yourself is still fairly realistic.

[Zababa]

I assume that for most people the "not for yourself" time is bigger on the weekends, it is for me and the people around me.

[TeMPOraL]

Indeed. In my case, ever since I became a parent, I consider weekends a total write-off.

[throwaway2331]

One simple trick to exit the labor class; investment banking MDs hate him; "how can one man achieve so much?":

Work less, but keep clocking the same amount of hours.

A lot easier to do with WFH, but still achievable if you're in an office cubicle.

Impossible to do if you work a trade/labor-intensive job.

[bobobob420]

Or open office where everyone can see your triple monitor screen and it’s a company work station so you literally can’t do anything else, can’t even open a personal laptop. Any cellular data reception is very bad.

[jrumbut]

I worked in an open office for years and never understood how people did things besides work. I tried 100% remote but that got lonely.

Now that I have an office, it's like I'm living a completely different life where there's energy for meaningful activities after work. I get so much more done. The socialization is down from 2019 but there's a feeling to being in a building full of people that's different from being stuck in your house all day.

I can't imagine accepting an open plan office job again, the money would have to be life changing. I suspect cubicles would be fine.

[jrumbut]

Edit: when I said "did things besides work" I meant "did things outside of work" not "goof off at work"

[cardosof]

Just wanted to mention that this is getting harder and harder - companies will just let you use their approved hardwared, full of monitoring software to keep you in line. And it will get much worse, as in Mana by Marshall Brain

[feoren]

That is literally illegal, at least at my job.

[friedman23]

In my experience, sacrificing sleep is extremely counter productive. You could probably cut out 1 to 2 hours of work, get 8 hours of sleep a night and be just as effective at your job as you would have been getting 6 hours of sleep a night.

[threatripper]

10 hours work 2 hours commute 8 hours sleep 2 hours food and maintenance leaves 2 hours to do all the rest.

[ZephyrBlu]

> No wonder you feel like hell, where is time for people, leisure, exercising and all the other activities that will help you move faster by feeling better?

You can't do all of that and have a job and also make significant progress on a side project. There isn't enough time in the day.

https://blog.asmartbear.com/two-big-things.html

[jbluepolarbear]

I work 1 hour a day on my personal projects. It’s slow going but I make steady progress. I read about someone doing it 10 plus years ago and I’ve stuck with it. Of course I miss someday, but I try and get at least my 1 hour a day.

[core-utility]

This book Finish by Jon Acuff is a great book on practicing finishing. He also has Start for the very opposite.

https://www.amazon.com/Finish-Give-Yourself-Gift-Done/dp/052...

[mehphp]

I've ironically only read about half of Finish

[bink]

As long as it was the second half you should be good.

[nwsm]

This sounds like something I'd do

[xNeil]

Funniest comment I've read in a while :)

[_benj]

Just picked up the book and seems to be taking about me in specific!

Thanks for sharing it :)

[sabjut]

What I learned from other people who have success in their side projects is to choose a workplace that allows you to do a sub 40 hour work week. Of course you would have to live a tad more simply than your standard upper-middle class software guy.

[Auracle]

I specifically started doing photography so I could do game development in the off-season.

It turns out it’s hard to completely drop projects in the spring/summer and pick them up in the winter. I’d love to keep pecking at them over the photography season but I have a hell of a hard time getting anything done when I can only dedicate an hour or so an evening to it.

[corpdronejuly]

I feel like the value for you there is to incrementally add a little bit and keep your project fresh in your mind.

[penjelly]

this is what i believe. even 10 minutes daily for me can work wonders. it puts me in that headspace even if i don't get any hobby work done.

[watwut]

> Of course you would have to live a tad more simply than your standard upper-middle class software guy.

Actually, many software jobs are like that. All it requires is for you to not be ambitious to create. You can have very good salary in many companies while slacking a lot. Sometimes you might have to be in office for a lot of hours, meaning doing leisure, socialization and side project in the office.

[vikingerik]

It's worth mentioning the common advice here though: do not use company time or equipment to work on a side project, since that may give them a legal claim to ownership of the work if they ever find out.

The specifics will vary greatly depending on your employment agreements and legal jurisdiction, so make your own decisions regarding your own situation (doing it on company time might be the lesser risk compared to not doing it at all), but do be wary.

[learc83]

If you’re salaried, there’s no such thing as company time, so that’s not a meaningful distinction.

[mediaman]

If you are doing it in a company office, using company property, during hours the company expects you to be working, do not expect to use "well, I'm salaried, so it doesn't matter" as a legal defense and win.

[learc83]

Company property is a completely different issue. Whether you do it during business hours or not is irrelevant.

If you’re salaried, you’re always on company time, so whether the company owns it or not is up to the laws of the state and the agreements you signed when hired.

[abnercoimbre]

What if you did most of your project outside the company, but only very small parts of it on company property? Can they still claim complete ownership?

[ultrasounder]

I totally can attest to it. Work for a subpar legacy medical device company where my input is constantly less than 40 hrs a week thereby allowing me to learn skills like React and solidity to consider opportunities in web3 which wouldn’t be remotely possible with FAANGMULATAD

[snarf21]

Yeah, this is my issue. After a long day of (sometimes pointless) software dev, strapping in for more is draining. So as a contrast, I design board games (not digital) as my hobby. It is very analog and tactile and so energizing partially from just being a nice change of pace.

Your advice to start small is spot on though. I would even say one of the best first things to do is start by making a game mod. You don't have to invent so much, you just get to enhance. You get to something playable much quicker and learn about all your false assumptions.

[paulryanrogers]

Fair warning, game mods can take over your life too. Though I'd agree they can be easier and often can build on the community of the game your modding.

Another risk with mods is the game owner can shut you down at any moment, if public. I'll probably never do another mod or reuse someone else's IP for anything beyond very small prototypes. There are just so many tools now that you shouldn't have to.

(Star Wars Quake 1997-2002)

[throwaway894345]

I've had good luck with using my best time/energy for hobby projects and what's left over goes to work. Of course, this assumes that your hobby project is more important to you than whatever might be achieved by putting your best energy/time toward your job, but I also think a lot of people over-index on "whatever might be achieved by putting their best energy/time toward their job".

[yamaneko]

Can you elaborate on how you design your board games? How do you approach it?

[snarf21]

Sure, but let me first say there are tons of great podcasts about board game design if you are just getting started. Ludology, Building the Game, Fun Problems, etc.

I have played lots of board games so I have a good mental model of different types and the components needed. When I get an idea for a theme or mechanism, I build it up mentally first. When it feels like it might be fun or interesting, Then I'll start making some crappy cards or tokens. Some people will just write on note cards but I like something that feels more real. So I'll make some mostly text based images from a template. If they are cards, I'll print on paper and cut them out, then use CCG (MtG) sleeves and cheap playing cards to sleeve my paper. This lets them be shuffle-able. For other components or boards, I'll print on card stock. If I need something heavier, I'll print on adhesive label paper and then stick that to foam board or cardboard. The next and most important step is play test it with anyone and everyone you can.

Glad to provide more information if you're interested.

[xwdv]

You guys realize there’s software engineering jobs where you might only do 4 hours of real work a day?

And now with remote work being a norm, sometimes it feels like you barely work at all, and yet still accomplish the same amount of work as before.

Get paid for the value you bring, not the time you spend.

[awkward]

Keeping the side project work different from day to day work is huge, too.

- Frameworks are great when you need to keep a team to a standard, and keep standardized answers available. There's no way I'm going to debug someone else's dependency errors on my own time though.

- Dev tools and automation are nice to have, but if I spend a whole night fixing tooling that's time I could have spent on the project. Some loose unit testing and tools that work without configuration is all that's I'm willing to use.

- A while ago I would have said that paid tooling is worth it if it saves you time. Open source and freemium products have gotten good enough now that that's no longer the case for a small enough dev team.

[e19293001]

> Practice _finishing_. You can do more and more later.

This struck me. Thank you for the reminder.

[bick_nyers]

I followed that exact same lifestyle for 2 years (and also 2 years prior of us not knowing what we were doing), I would consider it impossible to have any relationships, romantic or casual. Now that I am older and have more responsibilities, I don't think it's something I could pull off.

Learned a lot though, got pretty good at programming because of it (I am early in my career).

My thinking now is that if I want to make a somewhat complex/ambitious game, I will need to take the route of other successful artists, become independently wealthy first.

[BongoMcCat]

Just out of curiosity, when you spent 9 hours at work, was that in a software field?

If so, why would you choose to do the same thing 18 hours a day for 5 years?

[ca6d8815]

> Just out of curiosity, when you spent 9 hours at work, was that in a software field?

Yes, however the day job and night project were _completely_ different disciplines. Someone wrote that gamedev isn't really software engineering... I'd agree with that (not putting it down, but its not like anything I've done).

> If so, why would you choose to do the same thing 18 hours a day for 5 years?

Those long days came in the last 1.5-2 years. Why? I don't think we would have finished otherwise, or at least not anytime soon.

We found that momentum for us was critical. If we took it easy, then it slow days would turn into slow weeks and it would turn into slow months. We wanted to finish at some point. Even when we had a slow week or day, or when we'd go do something that wasn't the game, there would be a shadow of guilt that we are not finishing. I think that is personal, everyone does this differently.

And the second why? The reward loop of doing something with a realtime 3D game is simply joyous. I would sometimes have _so much fun_ making the game that on the good days I dreamt of quitting the day job and starting up a studio full time.

When the dust settled though, it took me almost a year to think about using the computer at home for anything other than playing a game or reading news / experimenting with homelab stuff. The burnout was harsh.

I don't regret it... but I'll never do it like that again.

[pizza234]

> Someone wrote that gamedev isn't really software engineering

Could you elaborate on that? I find this perspective very interesting.

I had a brief experience with gamedev, and I've actually found that even the smallest bit of game engineering is significantly more challenging than (I suppose) "x%" of web development.

However, on the other hand, the engine is only a part of game development (and can also be underengineered, and I think it generally is), so maybe this is actually the reason why you/other people don't consider game dev software engineering?

[ca6d8815]

> Could you elaborate on that?

I can try, but I may not do the idea justice.

When I was working on the game, the only thing that mattered was the _game_. Was it fun? Intriguing (we are a story based walking simulator)? Original? In line with our story structure (we wrote the story side by side of making the game because sometimes the best words on paper just couldn't be translated by us to a player experience)?

You make changes non-stop to iterate and tweak and perfect. You learn quickly that someone's gut feeling can kill an entire chapter of the game, or change the ending completely.

At some point, my code was just a tool in making the game. I didn't see myself carrying this codebase further to other projects (we built the game on Unity so already writing an engine was "solved"), so it just turned into working prototype after working prototype.

Your code doesn't have to solve for all the corner cases you may miss in QA, because in our game the state was almost guaranteed at different parts of the play through. You need to remain extremely flexible with your design and code because its possible the game shifts drastically under your hands, more so than I've ever experienced at an already-chaotic "big" company.

So it just stops mattering that much. At least for us. We didn't have a team for code (just me), or a separate art team, or a separate story team, or even a single game designer throughout the project. Everyone wore almost every hat, and you lose the grace of planning and process.

It's more a feeling than something I could quantify exactly. An interesting reflection is that I became more rigorous and detail oriented at the day job after the wild west of my game code.

[animal531]

I think I know what you mean, but I'll counter and say that instead of just focusing on completing the game one should pay some attention to longevity and re-usability of your codebase.

For example I have things like a KD-Tree implementation/wrapper that will always be useful, a maths library, a HexGrid component I use a lot, wrappers for rendering a lot of things fast, an entity system for units/objects, a generic framework/layout for code/objects in Unity etc.

But having said that, it really depends on the type of game that you're making.

[BlargMcLarg]

On top of what the others said, you basically answered it with "However, on the other hand, the engine is only a part of game development". Game dev is one of the most technically complex subfields of software dev, but it still pales in comparison to the total package of disciplines (and skill levels in those disciplines) to make a game.

Compare a basic CRUD webapp to a game. Most webapps won't need stellar art, it just needs to look okay and have some logos or default assets. Games often need to run their own assets for uniqueness, have way more freeform art, you name it. That includes pixel art, the often lowest barrier to entry. Animation? Webapps generally don't need animation beyond some default practice tweening, most games require animation to make things feel smooth and actually give the feeling things are happening, on a vastly higher level than simple tweening of color and position of some flat objects. Audio? Where the average person hates the embedded autoplay video/audio, games generally require at least sound effects, preferably a sound track too. Storytelling? Unless you count the average buzzword-filled marketing video as storytelling, webapps don't need that. Marketing, collaboration, etc. are all factors that come to play as well depending on corporate size, so depending on your goals, you will run against those too.

There is much more too. Psychology can play a huge part if you don't just blatantly copy existing things, and it is far more difficult to map a vague "I like this / I don't like that" than a business requirement. If you don't require animation, in all likelihood you're either creating a game in a genre where other demands are higher (visual novels with higher storytelling and individual art asset demands), or you'll be outcompeted if you don't have something to stand out, in which case one could argue the load is shifted to other disciplines anyway.

Maybe most of all, you generally don't need to develop content in most webapps: you are enabling users to create content themselves, whereas in gamedev, you are more often providing them with content. Of course this comes with exceptions (What about Sims? What about Rollercoaster Tycoon? What about mods?), but most games deliver at least some content developed by the makers of the game themselves. Or you spend days agonizing over algorithms to generate content in a way that makes it fun, making tons of art assets players can fiddle with, etc.

[Sohcahtoa82]

> Could you elaborate on that? I find this perspective very interesting.

In addition to what others have said, game development places a massive priority on optimization and performance.

You have to write code that updates game state and renders a scene in under 16 ms. CONSISTENTLY under 16 ms. Otherwise, you get stutters and choppiness as it fails to maintain 60 fps. If you want to please your top-end PC gamers with their 144 hz monitors, you need to render each frame in under 6.9 ms.

With a web app, you can make up for underperforming code by scaling horizontally. That's simply not an option for game development.

[ajuc]

Normal software engineering is 95% glueing libraries together.

Gamedev is mostly about iteratively changing some equations to make the thing behave like you want it to behave.

Disclaimer: I never worked commercially in gamedev, but I wrote a lot of games as a hobby. Most of them unfinished of course.

[Viliam1234]

> If you want to finish a game, choose a small game.

I know a few people who tried to make a big game first. None of them finished.

Even a small game will take much more time than you imagined, because there are so many details to consider. (Then it gets faster, because you can reuse the ideas, maybe even parts of code.) It is easier to try new concepts in a small project.

[devwastaken]

For games we don't have to start from scratch either. If you want a little multiplayer game people can have fun in, vrchat is a good platform for it. Gets the game into the hands of people and you can even just join them. A lot of stuff already handled for you.

[marceldegraaf]

Out of curiosity: which game are/were you working on, if you can share that? Thanks!

[ca6d8815]

This is the game we made, The Shattering: https://store.steampowered.com/app/596000/The_Shattering/

[ffitch]

Sounds like very intense five years! I understand you wouldn’t do it the same way again, but still, was the result in any meaningful way comparable to the effort?

Do you feel comfortable sharing game name?

[ca6d8815]

Yes, the result was something I have never achieved. I've been a part of a lot of projects, successful and not, but always as a participant and not as a true stakeholder.

Going from start to finish on something, and then getting the opportunity to hear from fans (and critics alike), it is still making me smile a year and a half after launch.

When they say "money isn't everything" in this case its true, but I had I (and still have) a day job. If I had bet the monetary-farm on the project, I'd be singing a different tune.

The game name is "The Shattering", there's a link below somewhere to it on Steam :)

[afterburner]

You worked 18 hours a day? Yes that is obviously hell.

[markus_zhang]

Agreed. It's a LOT difficult to finish something, especially something to sell.