When learning a new domain, there will always be things you spend a lot of time and effort figuring out only to find out someone else has already spent a lot of time and effort figuring out. This is fine and unavoidable; if you wait to start building until you’re sure you know everything you will never build anything. IME this tension never goes away entirely.
So if you find you’ve reinvented the wheel, don’t beat yourself up about it. Now hopefully you know a little bit more than you did about what a wheel actually is, how it functions in a video game, and when to use off-the-shelf wheels vs building bespoke wheels (do not pardon the pun it was intentional and I can take the heat). This is how you go from being a novice game developer to a better game developer.
Occasionally you may even stumble across a new way to make wheels that has never been done before, and the state of the art moves forward a tiny bit. It’s rare, but it does happen.
This is my stance on wheel reinvention. And my pitch is similar. I offer it to juniors when it feels like they’re setting impossible expectations for themselves. But I just have to say.
If you wait to start building until you’re sure you know everything, you will never build anything.
Is excellent phrasing that I don’t think I’ve ever used. The truth of it is self-evident to any senior, but juniors should be able to grasp that “more” rarely increases certainty, so for training and discovery the best you can shoot for is “enough.”
When learning a new domain, there will always be things you spend a lot of time and effort figuring out only to find out someone else has already spent a lot of time and effort figuring out. This is fine and unavoidable; if you wait to start building until you’re sure you know everything you will never build anything. IME this tension never goes away entirely.
So if you find you’ve reinvented the wheel, don’t beat yourself up about it. Now hopefully you know a little bit more than you did about what a wheel actually is, how it functions in a video game, and when to use off-the-shelf wheels vs building bespoke wheels (do not pardon the pun it was intentional and I can take the heat). This is how you go from being a novice game developer to a better game developer.
Occasionally you may even stumble across a new way to make wheels that has never been done before, and the state of the art moves forward a tiny bit. It’s rare, but it does happen.
This is my stance on wheel reinvention. And my pitch is similar. I offer it to juniors when it feels like they’re setting impossible expectations for themselves. But I just have to say.
Is excellent phrasing that I don’t think I’ve ever used. The truth of it is self-evident to any senior, but juniors should be able to grasp that “more” rarely increases certainty, so for training and discovery the best you can shoot for is “enough.”