When I was in school and university I worked like crazy to get good grades; my family was also very disciplined on the matter, they'd forbid me use of my PC or any kind of gaming when I needed to study (they didn't care if I read novels, but that pastime quickly became less fun as games and shows became more entertaining). Sadly my grades in school were terrible, but my university grades were thankfully phenomenal (probably because most stuff was practical). My university was also heavy on homework as well, so I was studying a lot and gamed less. The structure provided by university and school made committing to studying a lot easier, but after getting a job where I didn't really need to study and don't take any work home with me, over a decade later I find myself more remorseful than ever that I didn't learn game development.
When I entered university I considered taking computer science but was scared that I couldn't make it and decided to study finance instead; the salaries for most people in computer science related careers is probably terrible, along with working conditions, but I still regret not taking it.
I'm trying to commit to studying game development but I've become extremely averse to hard work (thankfully my job is relatively stress free) and I get bored easily from studying. The further I got into game development though the more I realized that it's not some arcane, esoteric matter and is very approachable (mind you recursion, which is probably very important to learn, still makes my head spin, though I feel I would've grasped it better in my youth when subjects such as math and the logic behind it came easy to me. Also trying to really grasp and comprehend the logic of using increments that increment while something else increments to draw a 2D plane or picture is still hard for me to really understand well), the problem though is that the more I delved into it the more I realized that when I finally try to make a project, it's going to take a lot of work. It feels like getting the frame-by-frame character animations just right alone is annoying, along with making the landscapes, attaching a weapon to a gun arm in just the right location, and having to deal with sprite sheets, and....just everything ahead just looks like so much work. I'm somewhat tempted to move to 3D game development instead to cut back on some of the tedium, but I'd still like to make games similar to rogue legacy. Regardless though of which style I go with, it's all looking like hard work all the way through.
Every time I sit down to study, I feel like I'd reeaaally rather watch and eat something (yes I'm fat); it just feels so hard to overcome my aversion to hard work/study.
I'm also keenly aware that not working on it isn't making me happy and is instead making me miserable about not doing it, however knowing that hasn't helped me overcome it.
Start small. Start simple. Don't try to make your magnum opus right away. Make clones of simple games like Tetris. This will build the fundamental skills that make larger projects faster, easier, and less daunting.
Also, don't try to do everything from scratch. Game engines (like Godot, which is free and my personal preference) will handle a lot of the tedious low-level stuff like graphic rendering for you.
Thanks, I'll try to return to the tutorials and force myself to finish learning the development course. I'm using unity because indeed I don't want to get dragged down into the complexities of building my own engine; I tried watching someone's video on youtube as he made his own game engine and it just looked like he had to figure so much out (but also that he knew some pretty complex concepts as well) and so much that I recall unity already does for you.
