This is the first time I'm writing a post on the Oneiro page that isn't a change log. If you're looking for the change log of the recent version, you can find it right below this link on the game page.

This post is going to go over my personal realizations with game development and the recent version of my game. This is meant to be a more personal post, so I won't type as professional, keep that in mind. I'm sure other game developers will be able to relate to motivation loss and I want to share my personal thoughts on the whole issue. I'll be going over my recent life in the past 1/2 year, to full year.

Disclaimer:

As a short disclaimer  to let you guys understand a little more about my current point in life, I'll summarize it:

2019 graduate from High school, who decided to quit a job and put off college to work on Oneiro.

Whether or not those decisions were smart or not, I'll get to in a bit. I figured that was important to mention.

Oneiro Version 0.7.5:

Alpha Version 0.7.5 is the most recent update of my first person roguelite I'm solo developing, and it is- by far- the most underwhelming update in my opinion. I am well aware of that. The change log is awfully small to be a months worth of work, and the most important change is probably a single enemy type in the game.

I'm aware that I could have delayed the update to have time to make the update more exciting, but I decided against it. While this update is underwhelming, I still have a schedule to uphold. In my head, I still need to update Oneiro once every month. It keeps me in check, and it helps me realize when I've been slacking off.

"Solo" Developing:

When I say "solo" developing, in case it isn't 100% clear, I mean I'm trying to do everything by myself. No commissions for art or anything, no non-copyrighted audio/models, no friends helping with development directly. Just myself(I do need to mention that I accept suggestions from players and friends. That's the only exception to this). That's important to keep in mind. I'm sure what I'm about to say isn't groundbreaking by any means, but it is always important to keep in mind and any other solo devs can relate: When you are a solo dev, nobody is going to tell you to work. Nobody will check in with your work. Nobody will care what you do, so long as you deliver the product by a given date.

This is something I've kept in the back of mind and never really fully understood until recently.

During Version 0.7.5:

The development started out by adding visual hand models for the player. This was a success. The next goal was to revamp the pause menu and main menu. This too was a success. and then... I tried to add keybindings. And good god was that an absolute nightmare I put myself through. 

Before I keep explaining this, I feel the need to mention that I'm- admittedly- a little rough on myself, and convince myself to finish something before I can move onto something else. Even if that "something else" is very important like eating, or sleeping. Hell, there's been a few times in the past where I straight up faked being sick so I would have an excuse to stay home from school to work on a game. I wouldn't say I'm "proud" of any of that, but I find it hard to walk away from the project when I know something is broken or just not finished. I'm still trying to find a balance with this mentally speaking, and I'm hoping that writing this post will help me realize that major flaw with myself.

Back to explaining the keybindings. My initial goal for the keybindings were to have limitless keybinding options. Covering not only keyboard/mouse buttons, but also stuff like the positive Y axis on the mouse, or positive/negative X/Y axis on both joysticks separately. This might have been a little ridiculous, yea, but it was the goal I set for myself, and I wasn't going to stop working at it until I got it perfect. (Before you ask, yes, I did look for tutorials, and none of them covered X/Y axes like that.)

It took me (probably) about a week and a half- we'll say 10 days- before I couldn't handle it any longer. I didn't really get much sleep through that time, and to be honest, my diet wasn't really ideal. On the 10th night I said- verbatim- "F**k it. Screw keybindings.", and scrapped the idea from the update list. 

Am I proud of that? Hell no.
Am I glad I decided that? Yes.

See, it took me a while, but I did realize that I work and work until I'm satisfied with my product, and I realized that's not healthy at all. 

This took out a lot of time for development, and honestly made me lose a lot of motivation to work on the project knowing full well that I couldn't reach my initial goal for that one aspect.

This leads me into the next section...

Motivation:

Motivation is tricky. It's what fuels a person to do their best, or to even do anything at all. It can bring to life new and innovative ideas, and it can make any dream come true. Motivation is powerful once you have a lot of it, but it's not just a on/off switch. There's several days where I have a little motivation, and fewer days where I have a lot of motivation. Personally, motivation equates to productivity which equates to me being a happy individual and content with my life choices up until now.

Motivation is different for everybody obviously, so I can only speak for myself.

There are certain things that will kill motivation, and certain things that will generate motivation. Finding those things is yet another difficult part of the puzzle, and a lot of it depends on how you take an experience in, how you look at it, and how you connect with it.

Take the keybindings example from above: I did not tackle that experience well. I fully admit to being too ambitious, and unknowing of my own limits.

Plans:

For me to continue exactly what I'm doing would be be an idiotic move. I need to change aspects about my life to deliver quality monthly updates to Oneiro. 

Currently, my days don't have any schedule to them. This can, of course, be a good thing. Some days I get really into game development and knock out a weeks worth of work within a day, and it feels great when it happens, however, it should also go without saying, that there's several days where I get very little done in regards to game development.

In the future, I plan to schedule my days ahead of time. Maybe even have a morning routine to get me ready for the day.

Conclusion:

Believe it or not, there's days that I feel like I'm not cut out to be in the game development field. At least- not as an indie developer. And I'm still trying to decipher my true thoughts about that.

But what I do know is that right now, in my life, I am a self-proclaimed indie game developer. And I do want to create a fun and unique dungeon crawler. 

And that's exactly what I'm going to do, no matter how rough the road is.

Extra Note:

This post came out much much later than I originally planned, and a big reason for that is because I started getting into Virtual Reality with the Oculus Quest, and even started making a small VR project using Oneiro's assets. Maybe it'll become like a small spin off of Oneiro, but for VR.

Thanks for your time. 

-Ryan, ZSG