Choosing Action Over Research

Today is the day of my coming out... as a hypocrite 😉

Because I changed my mind again on some things.

Here's how it happened.

Learning Godot was stressing me out. Not because the engine is bad, or hard. I was overwhelmed by the UI. On the screen, it looked like this:

But on the monitor's reflection, it felt like this:

You might wonder why since it looks like every other game engine.

Well, it does, and my reaction would be the same to every other engine.

I noticed that when learning Godot I did a ton of research. Research, tutorials, and courses make me take more notes than practice. It's something that leads to the excuse to just research more.

And you know what they say:

Research is a procrastinator's favorite excuse.

And I know that well, I am a PRO crastinator, after all.

So I learned about Godot but did not do much in it. You could tell there was no visible progress. (I mean, subscribers notice that for years now). That's why from time to time I feel tempted by MonoGame, only to feel overwhelmed by it as well (maybe it’s due to some archaic stuff).

An infinite loop of overwhelm.

After 8 hours of work, followed by commuting, and then spending some time with my family, I ended up tired when the 1-hour for game development came. Too tired to fight the overwhelm.

But as I tried to think of a solution I encountered this:

Here we go again, I hear you say.

But there was nothing bad in making a small pause in learning Godot, right?

So I checked that .NET binding and learned that it is as easy as adding a Nuget dependency. Easy enough!

Not to mention this wonderful collection of simple examples to learn from!¹

And a somewhat easy documentation.

After less than 15 minutes, I ran a window.

After the next step, I had game modes.

I FELT PROGRESS!

No alien IDE, just Visual Studio and C# code. What I like!

I know what I said about frameworks (which Raylib is), and I didn't change my mind on that.

But I also see how easy it is to escape to research when I'm waiting for Godot (pun intended) to become my second (programming) language. This is not Godot's fault, this is how I'm wired. Once I'm fluent with making games with Raylib I might even return to Godot for the same reasons I voted for game engines instead of frameworks. Time will tell.

Right now, I'm prolonging my Godot pause to see more progress in my lazy head.

The moral of my story is: if you read more than do, you might be suffering from procrastination excuse #1: do more research.

But if you don't make progress you might think research more is the right answer.

No, getting into the mud is the right answer.

Everything that stops you from it, must be eliminated!

It is a late lesson in knowing yourself, in my case.

But it's still early to become the Colonel Saunders of game makers!

Now. Get in the mud!

1. I say, my dear lad, every game engine and framework should invest in sites like this!