What is the #1 thing that annoys you about game development/3d art? Something that you want to learn perhaps, but find too difficult or complicated? Something that never works the way you want it to? Something that you think should be made way easier or faster? Please let me know. Thanks!
The swarms of adoring fans who swarm me whenever I try and write a line of code, preventing me from getting anything done.
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No responses after 1 hour…does that mean there is nothing y’all find frustrating? 
Edit: 1 response right as I posted this 
That it takes so long to get good at something that is so unappreciated by so many.
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Referencing variables from other objects. I understand the concept but after 12months I still can’t do it right first time. Given this is fairly fundamental I dread what comes next
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Just make everything static.
Tried that when I first started, boy did that cause issues as I tried doing levels & stuff 
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Personally, it’s bugs that make absolutely no sense and cannot be reproduced consistently.
Of course, last night I wasted many, many hours trying to solve a bug that seemed absolutely impossible to me. Turns out it was because I had something as static that shouldn’t have been.
Have to be careful with that ‘static’ word…
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You could always isolate your use of static to some singletons with a special naming convention. That way, you can group static stuff conceptually and trace where you’re using static with a simple Find in Files.
The parts where you seem to be going nowhere fast, although you know it’s the most important part so you just gotta keep on going.
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such as what parts?
A hack to get around an earlier hack? In my experience it’s less effort in the long run to do things properly to begin with.
Actually, that’s one of the frustrating bits: dealing with stuff that wasn’t done properly the first time. And another frustrating bit is knowing that something isn’t being done properly (there are valid reasons for this from time to time, such as time constraints), but that it’s best to carry on anyway and deal with it later.
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You can create a static collection of generic typed objects and implement a .Find method that takes a string and returns the object with a corresponding name. That’s a hack on a hack on a hack.
I started programming my game with very little coding knowledge. As I learned more, it started becoming very clear to me how wrongly I was doing… well, pretty much everything.
So, at some point I tore it all down and started over. But I still use ‘static’ quite a bit for classes that only have 1 instance in the scene and, in my opinion, lend themselves well to it because they more or less are classes with utility functions.
However, sometimes I manage to seriously misuse it such as in last night’s case. That was a class that had several instances.
So, I agree with angrypenguin when saying “dealing with stuff that wasn’t done properly the first time” is quite frustrating.
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Thinking about what HAS to be done. I am constantly planning stuff, sorting docs and ideas, writing down new ideas (so I don’t have to remember things).
When I am working on A, I am thinking how this could and should fit to B, C, and D …
And this… This describes my entire life. lol
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I wonder if it’s best to just stop using static in general.
Static is a big no no for most things. It’s a fairly small practical use case.
The worst for me, is a bug that I can’t reproduce under any circumstances, this is usually from a poor bug report. So in the end, bad bug reports.
Usual stuff, UV mapping / triggered animations, more meshes, UV mapping, code for animations, more UI actions for conversations, testing, performance etc. etc. tweaking rinse and repeat add salt / pepper until it’s cooked.
The “groundwork”, getting basic AI / level / health / UI / Char systems etc. is easy. It’s having the will to organically grow it into a game you can’t walk through in less than 10 minutes without it becoming boring.
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Yes, aside from some small use cases like the singleton pattern or where it makes sense, it’s not the lazy way to reference.
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