Abandoned my game (The last zombie)

Ok guys so i have been creating my game for a few months and i hit a mental roadblock and decided to not only abandon my game but also delete all the content i had created .
Whilst this was a hard decision i think its for the best as my game was far too advanced for my skill level. And also the fact that i had relied on mixamo for my character asset was really getting me down and causing a lot of conflicts in the art style i wanted for the game … Also i had a lot of iterations of the same game just taking up hard drive space and making this decision meant i could free up a large amount of space on my hdd and also a lot of confusion and general untidiness … I have decided that a much more simple game with assets only made by me will give me a much clearer vision . And maybe after all this time i can finally start a game that i can finish .Even if said game is terrible …

Most of you wont know or care about my game but i made this post to get your feedback on my decision have you ever done something similar ? was it a stupid idea?
thanks guys

There’s sometimes when I have a project idea for a while and then I either stop the project or come up with a new idea and then realize the original idea was not going to work and wonder how I ever could have thought it would.

Sometimes you just know it’s not going to fly, so it’s a sensible choice - just wipe and start over. Happens to big budget projects too occasionally, so it’s nothing to feel particularly bad about. Trying to push on when just about everything is wrong is probably just a waste of time.

Yes there was certainly an element of this for me also .But more in terms of my ability rather than the idea itself .I also seem to have far too many ideas and always end up being too ambitious in my projects. Hopefully i can get past this habit .

Starting over with something simpler is orten a Good ideal. But I would havet saved one version of it. If you remove all unused assets and delete tempory files, project folders tend to ens up reasonably sized.

If you abandon a game, you will establish a terrible precedent, and you may find that you keep abandoning projects, never shipping anything.
My advice is to restore whatever you made from source control or backup, and then look at what you have, and figure out how to turn it into some other kind of game.
A simple target practice game? A tower defense? A match-three zombie puzzle? Whatever you can do to pivot your game into something you can actually finish and ship will help, because you need to ship each project you start in some way.
Sticking with it, and working at it until you ship something, is what will make you a game-shipping pro!

There may be a backup on an old hdd somewhere but since its not on my computer i feel like its gone . lol maybe i will revisit it in the future when i have a better skill set .but for now im feeling positive about the decision thanks guys

jwatte .You are spot on mate i have indeed done this many times in the past when i was working in gml … im really hoping i can get over the horrible habit …and in honesty i have never completed a game :frowning: i certainly will have a think about what i could turn my old game into .but for now im convinced that this is the best decision .thank you

Another approach is to just put it on the shelf for a little while… rather than delete it …

I have found when you return to it later sometimes you find yourself re-energized and motivated and sometimes you find yourself glad you shelved it…

Of course this can lead to a large graveyard of abandoned games :wink:

ussually for those abandon art, i will save it in the external harddisk, who knows one day later we will revisit it

Hi mr_starfire,

UnrealEngine is very powerful and massive. There is a lot to learn when developing solo. It takes guts to take on the challenge learning UE4 as its the latest in State-Of-The-Art Real-time Interactive Technology. Learning to use this Tech automatically increases your Game Developer Stock value.

With that said, I have to warn you about aspect of game dev nobody has mentioned… You will be stalked by the game you are supposed to develop. That’s right. You came here to develop the Last Zombie and it will stalk you forever, until you do. It will interfere with the development of other projects. This happen to me with this game concept.

It took several years for me accept ‘what I can do’. What you will discover is that the game you are supposed to develop will not look like other AAA titles you’ve played. Its not supposed too. It will look the way it is supposed to, with what you can do.

Take heed to my words my friend. This is not the last time you’ll see The Last Zombie.

@mr_starfire

You have done very well, if you cut with your girlfriend it is better to delete the number.
If there is something that I regret and I could change the past would be to do what you have done in some of my first games.

I’d also add that sometimes if possible, sometimes bringing in a fresh pair of eyes to look at the progress you’ve made up to this point could be helpful, rather than scrapping everything.

Better than murder her… just in case you bump into her in nightclub for a one night stand.

I have too many unfinished project due to my old team was quitter.

( that is why I start my own project instead of them… joining other Indie have 98% chance of quitting ( accord to me :stuck_out_tongue: ))

I called it “frozen project” until I found a right team to improve and finish it off. I don’t delete any of my own source but their work since we start… collectect a dust now. Heh

Read my last message… don’t know why it didn’t quote your… aiiii

It’s always better not to start with something too complicated (even if doing so will make you better quickly because you’ll have to learn complicated stuff right away and then making a simpler game will be WAYY easier). I think first person shooters are a good place to start, they are fun games and don’t require too much complex animation/advanced art to be good.

Lets bury this project properly in the UE4 PROJECT CEMETERY.

[SIZE=7]R.I.P The Last Zombie[/SIZE]

Knowing when to stop is a good thing. However, when you let go, you should look back in retrospect at what made your project impossible to complete. If you don’t learn from your past failures, you won’t be able to move forward. In this case, you felt that the project was too advanced. I’m assuming it was because there were too many features to implement. This is a common issue for developers starting their first few games: over-scoping.

Overscoping is nothing to be ashamed of, but you need to be able to detect it and avoid it. Here are two tips that I have for you. First, don’t be afraid to cut features/content. A lot of “cool” features never make it past the drawing board because they don’t add anything significant to the core experience. This leads into my second point: figure out the core experience of your game, and focus on building that. Once you have the core experience down, you can choose if that’s enough or if you want to add depth to the game.

Note that I said depth, not complexity, so when you add features, make sure that they truly bring the experience up to new levels. If the features don’t add to the experience, then all you’re doing is making the game unnecessarily complex, resulting in more work for the player (through learning rules/heuristics) and yourself (implementing the features). Here’s a Gamasutra article explaining complexity vs depth. It’s a pretty good read if you’re looking to improve as a designer.

I have host of things that I have deleted, I have gone through the whole range of projects, test levels test assets . so many thing so many half stated things, I once made a “playable” open level but it was so terrible I deleted it, I have also tried using assets from the market place and other places, but I always found it hard to mix a match assets together, when I did work it also look very bland and same same.

The question is if you need the projects to make money for your livelihood I would say your in a bit of trouble, if you do it as a side project then I would say it doesn’t matter, I the most imported thing is every time you abandon a project the next one is better,

one of my experiences is I came to the realization that making the next open world Fallout 4 game was imposable to do by my self with my lack of experience in everything. so I started again with a platform game, better to make and a grate way to teach myself game design , but I just didn’t have the passion for it, I just don’t like platform games, I don’t play them, there for the project suffered with lack of interest and the want to make it look and feel grate, so I guess what I am saying if you start to loses what you are passionate in doing and you lose sight of the things that you want to crate, you will end up cratering nothing anyway.

maybe try a different thing, try cratering a test level, grate concept art, high quality assists, show them off or crowd finding or hell even a studio, If the idea and concept is good people will buy into it and your game will be made to the quality that is in your head, this is my plan anyway, it will still take me a few years to do but if I get it right I might or might not pay off

I’d recommend against deleting projects, you can always store them hidden somewhere.

You never know when you’ll face a problem you already solved that you can look back upon.

Plus, when you take this seriously, you start building things in a manner that they’re modular and easy to adapt. For example I have a generic save framework that I now import to all my games I want to use a save system, rather than making it from scratch. Always be thinking about how you can save yourself time and work.

Plus, it’s very motivating to see how far you’ve come.