From Tutorial to Creation: Overcoming Creative Blocks
Gamedev Dairy #96
TL;DR
A story that likes to repeat itself
How did one go through school with that problem?
How to organize your knowledge?
A story that likes to repeat itself
Whether it's on discussion forums, blogs, or social media, a certain story keeps repeating itself. And if I can't find it, it means I should write it, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.
What's that story?
I finished a tutorial, and I'd like to start making a game, but my mind is blank, and I don't know where to begin...
In a sense, I’m going through this myself.
How did one go through school with that problem?
And I realized why learning new skills used to be much easier.
Ready?
The solution is simple. In school, we took notes during lessons, whether was it from materials dictated by the teacher or written by them on the blackboard.
We used notebooks, which we revisited later to learn or refresh our knowledge.
Digression
As I reflect on this, I understand why phenomena like live webinars exist. It always annoys me that not only are you often required to be present at a specific time, but there's also no chance for a break. You feel just like you're back in school. Or you've given up on the technical conveniences of the era.
End of digression.
What does my learning look like today?
I read a tutorial, and simultaneously do the tasks it contains, and each page feels like a checkmark unfairly rewarding me with dopamine. After completing the course, I try to do something in the editor, but instead of accomplishing something, I stare at the blank page as if I were a writer looking at an empty sheet.
It would be nice to have a cheat sheet, but the truth is I haven't made one.
I mean, I made some notes on my faithful Remarkable 2 (I won’t stop recommending this), but they're more like one of those mind-dump books. They require a complete rewrite anyway.
Despite all the efforts made by creators when writing tutorials and documentation, it often isn't enough for there to be a benefit from revisiting them.
I can understand that. I don't know any programmer who enjoys writing documentation 😉
Or perhaps it's intentionally done to force us, beginners, to organize our knowledge?
How to organize your knowledge?
Creating a notebook for handwritten notes used to work in the past, and it will still work for many, but I'll go in a completely different direction. My tool of choice will be Notion.
The foundation is understanding the basic concepts of your engine, which happens to be the easiest part.
Proof that you understand this is the ability to break down your game idea into its fundamental components described by engine concepts. The smaller the tasks, the better.
And there's the crucial third point: every repeatable action should have its own document. Until I can do it in my sleep, this will come in handy.
What are repeatable actions?
Adding a signal
Scene instantiation
Utilizing a signal
Anything that can be useful to a beginner who can handle engine concepts like Godot.
What else does someone who knows the concepts and can break down projects into fundamental components need? Not counting a kick in the butt 😉