Date: 2023-02-25
Well this has been a frustrating week. I'd say in past experiences, this was the moment I broke and decided I didn't care to make games anyways. Damnit, this process is difficult. I like when people say that things worth doing are difficult. It makes me feel like the headache and frustration is worth it.
I was partially derailed on my process to to learn about Unity's "New Input System," (which is not very new - Brackey's has a video from 4 years ago). I began looking up some plugins for audio design, which was more interesting, but a much biggere topic than I can handle at the moment. I've seen FMOD at the start of some games and wondered what it was. Apparently it's a newer audio design environment that more closely resembles Unity. A competitor, which has been spamming my inbox letting me know that it's now free for indie developers, is Audiokinetic's Wwise. Apparently, this one has more of a feel to a digital audio workstation (DAW), and is well suited to large projects. I have tinkered briefly with a DAW and decided it was cumbersome and overwhelming. I just wanted to tinker with audio equipment and make sound by experimentation. Unwieldy software feels too much like work. I'd like to return to FMOD, but not right now.
So this new input system seems to be the way to go. I also have reservation about trying to build a game in 2023 relying on old, and depending who you ask, outdated methods of controlling player input. Just mashing together the Dawnosaur player controller script, that I don't fully understand, with the new methods of gather input, that I also don't fully understand, has allowed me to enjoy a week of negative progress. I could not get Unity to recognize the very first part of this process with "using UnityEngine.InputSystem". I tried everything I could find on the internet and ultimately decided that I was better off making a new project and starting over rather to identifying the underlying cause. I wasn't terribly interested in gathering suggestions from the Discord channel, which honestly may have been the next best step. I'd already spent hours trying to test suggestions from every forum page on the first few dozen of search results. They all basically said the same thing, which had me thinking I had reached a dead end. The stupid part is how there is almost no problem when I created a new project.
I hate his kind of approach, because if I encounter a similar problem down the road, then I'll be in the same ignorant position. However, for my mental state, I'd rather be moving forward and practicing than not moving at all. It was cool having what felt like a pretty good player controller. Unfortunately, I really don't have a good grasp of how the script works. I would have liked to have written everything myself. Maybe I'll be able to piece things together little-by-little to better understand how things work.
This week felt like I was asked to build the foundation for a house, and I tried to set it up with sticks and duct tape. The realization that I had very little idea of what I had changed in the project over the last several weeks to get a cube moving and jumping around the screen makes me appreciate the forced return to a new project.
In addition to more practice, this week has been an exercise in tempering expectations and managing frustration and impatience. I know this is going to be a long journey.
Who needs another Discord channel? Email me!