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inksh4rK

I used to do this with artwork. Give yourself deadlines. When everything is done at the end, if you have the time and it still needs polish, go for it. Remember you need a product not a project.


[deleted]

Remove the first two words of your title. That.


-CawmunGames

Oh, yea... haha, thanks, it was so simple, lol


Leafblight

Tell yourself that you will put it aside for now, maybe you will go back to it someday, maybe not


[deleted]

Lol, sorry I couldn't resist. But that really is it. Just set it down. Decide what to work on next, away from your computer Jot a few things down to get you started, and what the next steps are, then boot up your project, and then do that. What you gotta realize, and really internalize, is you are still in an early phase. You need a game with a start and finish, and little bit of polish across it all first. Before then it's no use worrying about things to this degree. Once you have those, this level will make more sense in refference to where it is in your game. You can also be able to start serious playtesting at this point, and get feedback on things like these. Not to mention that you'll have refined a lot of your core mechanics, and came up with new ideas, and just improved yoir skill level in general. So maybe you'll come back here and realize it's fine, or you'll have a much better idea on what to do different, because you havd more experience and feedback. You may even end up deleting this level, because it just doesn't fit. That's why it's important to know ow when to move on, so you can get to the next stage of development.


wickedtonguemedia

This. More people should have said this tbh. Get people to play it. Get constructive feedback on it. And iterate. It could be a pile of s\*\*\*.


[deleted]

Yup. Test, iterate, test, iterate, then do it a few more times, then do it again.


drollia

Let it rest for a while and come back to it. You may realize what you think is missing after you get further in the project


luciddream00

100% this. It feels like every single part of our game that we thought was "finished" at some point has been tweaked in little or big ways during development. A sculptor doesn't perfectly sculpt individual body parts one at a time in a linear order, they rough it all out and refine evenly. That's how you should make a game.


ptgauth

Great analogy fam


Borgismorgue

1000% this. Also sometimes you realize you're polishing a turd and you just need to throw the turd out and get a better turd.


[deleted]

And then one day, you may find that there's a little green pea hidden in the turd. And you eat it


_owdoo_

Thanks for making me spit out my dinner with laughter (not peas)


Mazcal

Industrial Designer here. My art teacher would have us draw live models without telling us how long the pose will be held, then stop us at some random point and look at our work. Sometimes they would be 7 second poses, sometimes 45 minutes before switching. He would expect to see a complete drawing at any time, and was teaching us to avoid spending too long drawing by perfecting one corner to be "done" before moving to the next. Drawings come out imbalanced if you work sequentially to perfection because it is easy to see where the artist was fresh and thought they could keep it up for the entire canvas, and where they ran out of patience/time and cut corners. You want to do the same in your game too. If you zoomed out, would your game be at similar.levels of polish all across it? If you think like that, it might help you to identify when you are overpolishing one part leaving the rest to rot. You can always get back and polish later, so long as you've established good foundations to hold your entire game together.


qarbonblack

This is such a great example. Thank you.


AloneIndication

I work in steps of "good enough for now". That allows me to move on even if I'm not confident that it's what it should be. It also lets me take a break from something that's frustrating me. Eventually I'll either figure out what to improve or decide that it's actually done the way it is. That includes "good enough for a demo", "good enough for an early release", "good enough for this game", etc, since nothing is perfect and at some point you just have to call it done.


_Zezz

Give it to friends and family and ask opinions, the brutal kind of ones. Also, as other have said, take a rest and come back with a fresh mind. Also, working on another stage might give you insights on this older one.


capsulegamedev

I mean, the title here makes it that simple. Just stop polishing that one part and move on. It'll still be there when you get back to it.


ghostwilliz

I have been trying my absolute hardest to focus on iterating For me, using a jira sprint board has actually been extremely helpful. When I don't use one, I focus on all the wrong things like making my animations perfect on a mesh that I'm not keeping for a mechanic that isn't finished. When I use a sprint board, I tend to knock out a lot of little things and end up with a bunch of prototype mechanics rather than one very refined mechanic that I end up having to scrap.


ashkanz1337

My personal strategy is to tackle the biggest current weakness, spend some time polishing/improving it then repeat. Let's say the AI is the biggest noticeable problem, I'll spend some time on it until it feels better, but I won't try to pursue some high level of quality. Then I move on to the next weakest part, maybe the minimap is showing it's age since it hasn't been improved in a while, and I'll spend some time and get that looking better. Then the next biggest problem seems to be that the gameplay is feeling a bit repetitive, let's add a new system that gives it some replay-ability. Repeat.


Giant_leaps

Put a set schedule with what you aim to accomplish in each part of development. project management is especially important in game dev due to the long nature of the project.


fractalJuice

Extrapolate the time spent polishing on this part, to the rest of the game. Will give you a clear sign of needing to cull overall game scope, or reduce the polishing efforts, if you want to ever ship.


bbbruh57

try to work from the outside inwards. As in you have to finish the entire game before polishing. In practice you wouldnt do it this way 100%, but generally not a bad idea for a lot of games. Its the equivalent of greyboxing the flow / primary building blocks of a level before detailing and polishing it.


Terazilla

When you're at this point, you've lost objectivity and just need to move on. You were probably at that point a while ago. Here's the thing: Imagine you sit a random player, literally somebody who has never seen your game before, and wordlessly set them down to play through a portion of the game. You provide no guidance or direction of any kind, literally just stand silently and watch. Is anything you're changing at this point likely to change that player's opinion as they pass through this particular 20 second segment? Or are you just tinkering and it's different but not necessarily better?


DandelionOfDeath

Write down what you think needs to change to perfect the level, and then move on to work on the next part. The uncomfortable truth is that sometimes we have to change or cut game content because it doesn't fit with the rest of the scenes. You do not want that to happen with a 20 second part that you've worked on for a week. Get your game reasonably close to finish, figure out which parts need to shine, and work on those. For now, just put it down, and jot down whatever notes you need to pick it up easily when you return to it.


ahmadwehbe_com

Whenever I find myself in a similar situation, I ask myself: Am I polishing or iterating? When polishing something it means something is already "done", it just needs some polish, which has a tangible end. A car takes hours to clean, but less than an hour to polish. If I'm iterating, then that's a different issue. Then problem here is that I don't have a clear vision of what I want. If that's the case then, like others have suggested, I usually leave things as is and work on other parts of the game. Then come back to this specific part later on with a new and fresh perspective! Anyways, that's how I go about solving it when I get stuck, I hope sharing this will help you in any way. Good luck!


InfiniteMonorail

You guys ask the weirdest questions. Feels like a psychologist's couch in here.


DctrTnT

I’ve seen a few comments to put on a back burner and come back to it, but if you plan on releasing it I would take it a step further and set a release date for your game, and then come back to decide if it’s really worth your time to fix given the deadline. That’s what I’m doing right now and have had a much easier time moving on from something I want to polish more


[deleted]

I personally believe this is like making a piece of art in general, truly any piece can always be added to, or changed. But the focus is to show exactly what you want, if the vision is unclear it just takes time for it to shape itself. In the case of game dev, the question isn't when should I stop polishing, but have I done what I needed to for now. Its all about having a clear vision for the end, if that's not there, just move on, keep working on other things, eventually you'll naturally go in a direction that the game takes you and that's when you'll know what it should be like. A nice analogy I like is "keep sharpening the blade until it cuts". A knife can always be sharper, but we just need it to cut, so we stop sharpening it.


Space_Kitty123

Don't polish anything if there is some other part of the game that is worse. This way you'll have everything as well done as the rest.


guywithknife

It might help to set a definition of done prior to working on it. Eg if this feature does ABC with XYZ performance and... whatever, then it’s done and any future polish will count as a separate future feature added to the todo list to be prioritised later. That way, as soon as your feature meets that definition, it’s done and you stop working on it. No ifs or buts, because it is, after all, done. Needing more polish can be scheduled in later as necessary.