I've spent many years making games or at least that's what I told myself. 

From my younger years making pokemon clones in visual basic(why?) to a 4 player tank arena game for my high school programming class(Unity thankfully although they really wanted me to use visual basic again, glad i won that fight but that's another story) .

Many years of starting a project getting it to the stage where all I needed to do was add more models, textures, maps, items(you know. The actual game) the programming was done. 

yes I can make the core systems, the inventory, the networking, the way the feet move and the sounds they make. Generally the things players expect but won't care how you make as long as it works. 

The hard part that everyone eventually finds out is actually making the game. Not the first few test items for your inventory but the hundreds of them. Not the one test level that perfectly shows off your work but an actual world to explore or levels to beat. 

I'm old enough now to realise the dedication (insanity) required to finish a project, you can't rely on motivation or inspiration. It's going to feel like walking through mud at times, procrastination and feature creep will hold you back.

This post was spurred on by a realisation I had the other day. When I sat down to make another map. I realised I required more rocks. Before I knew it I had made a procgen boulder system. 

https://gyazo.com/ae9c2b9bf947506894be3f2dbdc0058d

I realised I was procrastinating. Making a thing that players won't care about, a system only I will see and appreciate. Did I learn something? Yes I messed about with splines and mesh generation. Did I get a map done? No! Did I learn my lesson? Haha of course not. I then went on to make a cave generation system using drunkards walk 

https://gyazo.com/090be1f5a4a120e15a95370ce4f86f39

https://gyazo.com/24fda21082651f8deb5778497411eba4

Spent way too long getting it to look nice, turns out you have to add your triangles in opposite orders depending on where you want your normals to face (for outer walls facing inside and inside walls facing outside) something like this. 

 triangles.Add(bottomLeftIndex);

 triangles.Add(bottomRightIndex);

triangles.Add(topRightIndex); 

 triangles.Add(bottomLeftIndex);

triangles.Add(topRightIndex);

triangles.Add(topLeftIndex);

 }else{

// Modified order to flip the face direction 

 triangles.Add(bottomLeftIndex);

 triangles.Add(topRightIndex); 

 triangles.Add(bottomRightIndex);

 triangles.Add(bottomLeftIndex); 

 triangles.Add(topLeftIndex); 

 triangles.Add(topRightIndex);

https://gyazo.com/ed6c5518d4bd233eef9a60eae55ed100

The almost finished project will always be just that, almost finished. If I hadn't caught myself this time I could have easily spent several more days perfecting something that probably wouldn't ever be perfect (to me anyway) 

Will it speed up development, probably. Did I need it? Not really. Was I procrastinating, Yes. I spent a total of 20 minutes doing what I had planned to do before being side tracked with a week of maths rocks. 

Will future me learn from this? Current sleep deprived and brain fried me hopes so. Hopefully this post hits home to me as well anyone else stumbling upon it.