Comment by TulliusCicero
9 months ago
Interesting, I almost find it the opposite right now. Learning the engine is a pain in the ass -- it's not particularly hard, just tedious to learn all the APIs and quirks -- and then when you're initially building the thing, "it's not fun yet" for a quite a while. But then once you have the fundamentals down, you can add more abilities and characters and other features, that's the fun shit.
I was working on the AI last night, and since I already had one functioning AI agent, it was pretty easy to spin up variations that behaved in moderately different ways, which was very fun!
I've only been dabbling though, and still sort of in the prototype stage, not quite a full game yet but getting there. Maybe I'll feel more like you suggest deeper into development.
I think the period between having a playable alpha and a polished release is the part people hate.
Or just grinding out content to make the game longer.
I hope you enjoy the process and succeed as a game dev.
Thanks!
Right now, the idea of creating new content being "grinding" baffles me, but that's as a hobbyist developer of course. I'm sure I'd feel different if I was in a big company doing it.