How long is an Unreal programming session for you?

Due to work, and family commitments, I sometimes only have 45mins or less to sit down and code Unreal in the evenings. I find it hard to get any work done in that time, primarily because i am still learning, and once I have finished context switching from father/husband to programmer and found out what I need to learn, it’s time for bed. (I.e. I sometimes don’t get to actually learn anything. My YouTube “Watch later” channel is currently about 50 vids long).

I’m staring at a level that is basically unchanged in over a week, and when I look at how little I’ve produced in that time, I wonder how I will ever get enough done to justify the time spent to myself (and my wife :slight_smile: ).

How long do you guys spend each day? And what are your biggest hurdles?

P.S. I’ve got a LAN party next month, so I’ll be spending a full four days devving with Unreal, so hopefully I will something to show after that. :slight_smile:

In the engine -> around 3-6 hours :slight_smile:
Programming (blueprints and C++) -> 3 hours

When it’s sunny outside I dont want to spend so many hours in front of the PC -> so instead of programming I will shoot some textures :stuck_out_tongue:

I am doing 2 to 3 hours a night (except Thursdays) during the week after work. On a Saturday and Sunday I am doing 6 to 10 hours a day.

Some nights will be a little less … but it all averages out eventually. I normally stop when I have completed a task or a few tasks … I very seldom try to leave tasks outstanding over a day or two … unless I need to sleep on it. 8-}

Trying to create a quality game is so complex and time consuming that in my opinion anything less than 8 hours a day will not get you anywhere far. Hell ,you would probably forget what you were doing by night time next day!

I disagree … if your planning is place, you have a clear goal and you have mapped out those goals … it is definitely doable. My PC Screen has a running list of Sticky Notes (the virtual kind) of critical tasks that I need to sort out. I have Trello where I keep the plan going and allocate myself tasks and indicate the completion of those tasks. Finally I have a notebook of things I need to think of or add … this is normally transcribed to Trello and is filled in when I am away from my PC.

I think if you plan your work and then work your plan … you can get it done … it will probably take a little longer but the quality won’t suffer.

Thats why i said ‘in my opinion’ :slight_smile: Realistically speaking though if you are a one man show or a very small team and you do not have the time to work on your game 24/7 then as the development cycle takes longer and longer then the chances of nothing changing in your life are becoming smaller and smaller. If the game you want to make takes 3 years instead of one , who can guarantee that the op for example wont have a second child leaving him with even less time on his hands?

2 kids = no real time for programming
i grab a few minutes here and there when i can and manage an hour or 2 before bed most nights. oh for 8 hours a day, i wish.

is right, its all about the planning
i keep a txt file on my desktop containing a general plan as well as very specific tasks to complete as they come up, would be lost and end up fiddling around with nonsense without that. well mostly, some nonsense is good for you and your game.

edit:
although working with ue4 it goes something more like,
code a little, wait ages for the editor to open, mess for 10 minutes, crash. wait ages for it to open, project corrupt.
start again from scratch.

Any kind of session, be it modeling, programming, general editor work, is 8 - 12 hours here, sprinkled with many short breaks to walk the dog, have dinner, or do a bit of workout (I would otherwise have died years ago from total cardiovascular collapse or something). Can’t do *anything *unless there’s at least 3-4 hours available without distractions (one of my many, many personality flaws).

I am seriously not experiencing that … I am using a source built version of 4.7.6 and I haven’t had a crash for weeks or slow editor responses. Weird. 8-{

Same here. That’s my biggest obstacle. I need to get other stuff out of the way first, and then get going.

And the second child has already happened. :slight_smile:

Zoombapup recently went public with his Trello board for Unreal Engine AI, and I follow the Marketplace and Unreal Engine boards there, too. Having worked with it in the past for work, I think that is what I’ll have to do, if just to concentrate my mind on jobs that have been broken down into smaller tasks that I can approach with a bit more drive. Trello, here I come! downloads app onto phone

I get 2-3 hrs to code on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Weekends I can sometimes get 3hrs in.

All my projects will take me ~6 years at that rate hahaha, but I aim for short term features/goals, build it up.
I don’t have dreams of grandeur, but I try to keep at it, focusing on a new challenge (networking, large maps etc) and start there (and usually finish, never polish and move to the next mini project :stuck_out_tongue: )

I spend 3-4 hours a night on UE4 during Mon - Thurs, Friday I get drunk, Saturday I sleep and Sunday my entire day is dedicated to UE4 :slight_smile:

lol, that made my day for some reason

anyways, I have a Ton of free time since its summer, so 12-14 hours (with breaks in between)
but during a school week, I get about 3-5 hours (with breaks in between) and then the whole weekend is devoted to programming.

In work ? Depends if we are talking about straight coding, or coding + planning. Just coding I would say is about 4-5h, but it really depends, what is there to do.
In home for my personal projects, 1/2h at most. But I must try to make get more time to work on my personal projects.

Yeah, the biggest block of time I get, at the moment, is my commute of 75 mins each way. I have a design document that I keep with me, and I write down ideas. That bit is doing very well.

Actual programming, though? Not at the moment. :frowning:

I feel like I am pretty much in the same boat here. I conceptualize needing a minimal time buffer in order to get anything done, because I am mostly thinking about the research I will have to do in order to implement whatever mechanic or feature I am trying to get done in the game. However, recently I have realized that after about 2 months of working about 60-80 hours a week with the engine that I have become mostly self sufficient in not needing to look up guidance for how to get something done; I mostly just plan it out on paper first and then get to making it. It feels totally awesome that I rarely have to look stuff up now, compared to how it used to be when I first started using UE4.