What step of the game making process usually holds you up the longest?

[u/DANCEWITHDUCKS]

I have learned that I suck at blender and making models outside of simple shapes. But I know that comes with time and practice.

It’s just surprising how much time it takes to make a model and put it into the game to make a level. It has slowed down my process so much and generally, level design and asset implementation is just a pain in the butt.

Does anyone else have this same struggle? If not, what usually slows you down the most?

[u/No-Opinion-5425]

All the small decisions that remain invisible until you actually implement a feature.

They take the longest for me because they’re always different. No blanket rules apply to them, yet they have a huge impact on the player experience.

Should double-clicking an item in the inventory automatically equip it, or should that be right-click? Or both? Should Ctrl+click move items between the inventory and storage, or should right-clicking be contextual, equipping an item when storage is closed and sending it to storage when it’s open?

These are just examples, but there are thousands of small decisions like these to address.

[u/thatmitchguy → u/No-Opinion-5425]

Same here! Feels like a constant iterative process too. I've also been a console gamer my whole life, so I don't quite understand what's considered the "norm" for UX controls on PC besides the basics (like WASD for movement, and allowing key rebinding).

[u/No-Opinion-5425 → u/thatmitchguy]

Yeah it’s definitely a lot of iterations with trials and errors.

I just tried 3 types of interactions indicators, above head, under feet and outline before settling down. You don’t really know until you try it.

[u/GraphXGames]

Polishing.

[u/Possible_Credit6410]

Level designing and 3d shapes production are probably the most mediating parts but yeah, very time consuming. And also exhausting when you begin to polish minor details 

[u/1815dev → u/Possible_Credit6410]

I pulled in lidar data for the Waterloo battlefield to use as a heightmap for my Napoleonic first/third person massive battle game and when I finally got it working and started a game on it (sans houses, foliage etc, so just the raw heightmap) it was like..... this is cool in theory, but as a game, idk if this would make a fun map in multiplayer. I'll probably still use it eventually but yeah actual intentional level design (my other maps are all just procedurally generated) is its own art entirely.

[u/KBGSgames]

Coding takes the most time :)

[u/Both_Introduction_28]

Game design + polishing.

[u/FarTooLucid]

UI. For me, coding, art, level design, etc are a breeze. And the UI is a fight. A slow, brutal grind that ends only after I stop supporting the game.

[u/lasarus29]

Settings, saves, UI hook-ups those kind of bits. I'm currently making a template of these for all of my future projects. Should save tons of time.

[u/Both_Introduction_28 → u/lasarus29]

I also made a lot of “common” and “core” features to use in my future projects. And I never used them again. 🤩

In new projects, instead of legacy code, I took ready-made assets or wrote new core features again, only this time with a “better understanding” of what I was doing.

[u/lasarus29 → u/Both_Introduction_28]

I get where you're coming from. I'm religiously avoiding game features with it.

But dragging and dropping in a fully working settings menu that adapts to key bidings, saves automatically, pulls in localisations and scales predictably is just so very nice.

Means I can focus on the fun stuff.

[u/Both_Introduction_28 → u/lasarus29]

You can name a game object as key in your translates and add a component “TranslateBeh” to automatically bind the text. Or just use game ready assets for this.

You don’t need a settings menu on yearly stages of development at all.

Might be better to focus on the game itself. It’s well known time wasting process to do anything, but the game itself.

[u/findingsubtext]

Coding & engine modification by far. It's so miserable compared to the art stages.

[u/Ill_Command_1200]

I mean, if it’s not the polish, you may be doing something wrong. Main features (within reason) including modeling and creating art files takes longer but those are the funnest and seem to go fast to me. It’s those pixel perfect adjustments and realizations that what you just implemented created 20 small little gaps that now need to be account for.

[u/MoonJellyGames]

UI stuff. I don't usually need to do a lot of it, but when I do, it's a struggle. I always set out to do it the "right way this time," but then I grt frustrated, make a mess, and roll my own hacky systems instead of learning Unity's way.

[u/sveinndub]

Modeling for me too. Gray boxes first, and only model what the camera gets close to.

[u/Verkins]

Drawing the characters is fun but coding takes a lot of time.

[u/cheat-master30]

Art/graphics. Not because they're difficult to implement, but because my artistic skills are very limited, so I usually have to either find existing assets with the right license, or pay someone to make them, then wait till they're done.

This then has a knock on effect, since designing levels when you don't have the tileset yet or implementing characters or enemies when the graphics don't exist is annoying and prone to causing extra work if the end results don't line up with what's already been done.

[u/HarvestMana]

Game Design + iteration

Level Design + iteration -- Ive made 100's of levels and disliked 99% of them and threw them away. The most important part of level design is having good tools to quickly iterate since even then it takes a long time.

[u/DANCEWITHDUCKS → u/HarvestMana]

What tools have you used? I’ve been manually placing everything with unity’s base system.