Menus, Music, and Madness

As June is coming to a close, my game finally has a menu, some music, some very basic assets to start me off, a main character, a name, and a rough storyboard from start to finish! Feeling confident about this game and I'm excited to keep moving forward on it. 

Since I'm so new to game development, I am not sure what a timeline should look like or how "on track" I really am for this. I have a very rough layout of when my personal deadlines are, but I am guessing that anything could toss the whole timeline out the window. 

Things I've learned thus far:

1) It's actually not nearly as hard as I was worrying about. I am an overthinker for sure, and I've tried to start with Unity Learn many times before. I found that Unity's layout was a little tough for me to start out on, and even though I plan to pick it back up and use Unity for my future projects, I've found that Godot is so easy to just pick up and run with. Things finally feel more intuitive and for a 2D platformer, I think this is the engine for me right now. Unity will have its day! Eventually... 

But the moral of the story for me is to pick whatever makes my life easier to get the job done. I've always had this idea of what a professional game dev looks like, but that steep cliff of knowledge has always made me shy away from actually taking the leap. Just finding something that's "easier" does not mean I'm bad at learning "the real stuff", it just means that I am starting somewhere instead of nowhere at all. 

2) I have ADHD and sometimes doing things in a "linear" style isn't really... what works for me. One minute I'll be coding, the next minute I'm trying to draw pixel art, and then the next minute I remember I don't know how to draw pixel art and I'm watching Youtube tutorials. It can be hard to just work one step at a time for me, but as I've continued to make progress, I have found a way to balance my ADHD tendencies with a functional plan to get from A to B. I have to allow for flexibility and freedom to move between the projects that I'm most motivated and passionate about working on, while also taking breaks to make sure I'm working on the baseline to-do list. Balancing freedom and discipline is basically the entire art of ADHD, but I've learned a lot about my productivity as I work on this big project. 

3) It is okay to take a lot of inspiration from other games! I always worried my ideas aren't "original" enough to put onto paper, but most games take a lot of inspiration from games they have loved before. There's always the personal spin to it or element of change, and that gives this new idea its identity. A pixel art, 2D platformer isn't original by a longshot and I worry about being lost in the mix of hundreds upon hundreds of other games doing it just like me.  But tons of "unoriginal" games are loved by many, and that's what matters the most to me. I want to make something that can be enjoyed and give someone a fun playing experience if they try out my game. I ultimately hope to touch lives with my storytelling through gameplay.