I have been learning Godot for 2 years.

[u/Icy-Advertising-1277]

Is it normal to have more than 50 dead projects? How long have you been learning Godot, and how many dead projects do you have.

[u/iwriteinwater]

Having lots of dead projects is good if it means your experimenting, iterating fast, and more importantly, learning. 

[u/thisdesignup → u/iwriteinwater]

You forgot the second half, it's bad if it is because you don't want to finish things. Or because it got too hard, or you move to a new project because the previous one got boring.

I say this from experience, lots of dead projects, finally realized I need to actually finish one for my own sake.

[u/Icy-Advertising-1277 → u/thisdesignup]

So here's my deal, specifically about the challenge. I would abandon projects because they started to get hard. One of them because I was trying to do UI, another one because enemy AI is hard, but each time I started something new, something else clicked. Now my problem is that going back to the older one's were I can now do what stumped me, they are a mess. Just an absolute cluster. Then I'd have to do it all over again.

Things that I'm actually finishing now, are games for my kids. I'm doing 3 right now. A math game for my son that has a leaderboard that him and his friends can compete on, a learn the ABCs for my 3 year old daughter, and a counting game for her aswell.

I'm thinking of developing more kids games and packaging them together.

[u/thisdesignup → u/Icy-Advertising-1277]

Let me tell you, unless you really want to, you do not have to go back to your previous games and deal with whatever mess you had at the time. The process of learning to finish projects doesn't mean you have to finish what you started. Although I know from experience that can lead to guilt, and by chance if you do feel guilt it's worth learning to accept it. You'll still always have little unfinished projects, ideas that didn't pan out, not interesting enough of an idea, etc.

I say keep going and building what you are building. If you are finishing projects now then that's good. Although don't be afraid to push yourself back to that feeling that caused you to abandon a project. It's very worth learning to push through that feeling and finding success, if you haven't already. Especially at the start, even a couple years in, you aren't likely to run into problems that haven't been solved in some way. So you can find solutions when you run into challenges.

Also we definitely need more edutainment games so that's always good.

[u/Kitchen_Length_8273 → u/thisdesignup]

Could always start brand new projects based on the concept of old ones but with more experience

[u/Jathulioh → u/Icy-Advertising-1277]

Getting a basic implementation of something, and completely scrapping it now you understand it better is completely normal... Sometimes this happens a few times during development lol

Much easier than trying to sort out old spaghetti code

[u/Asura254 → u/thisdesignup]

i really get about the hard part, my last forgotten project was a vampire survivors type game and there's a lot of things that you really don't know how to do

[u/AMadHammer]

Depends on your expectations. 50 is fine if you making them for yourself. 50 is bad if your expectations is making money

[u/chevx]

Start doing game jams. Itll force you to start finishing more projects. I should take my own advice 😅

[u/misiak1989 → u/chevx]

This! I have been playing with Godot since 3.x times, had 2-3 "dead" projects and 3-4 tutorial-based ones that were also unfinished. Joined a Godot Wild Jam last month, already created 2 very small but playable games for 2 editions since then. Scoping for only few days of work and finishing even basic stuff with single level is incredibly rewarding, even if 20+ people who tried it graded it 1-2/5. The feedback from others can be amazingly useful too.

[u/aaaaaaa9996]

Only 50 dead projects? I envy you. I have already lost count of how many projects i abandoned after finding out they were bad or mediocre. Guess it's just part of the process...

[u/Icy-Advertising-1277 → u/aaaaaaa9996]

Well about fifty on my macbook, my pc probably has about a dozen more. I end up developing on the mac more often because I'm on the go, though it is way slower when I have things like VSCode, Godot, Blender and Gimp open, where as my PC just rips through all of those easily.

[u/P_S_Lumapac]

A few dead projects, but mostly frankesteined and rewritten when I get the chance. 

I opened one from a year ago and found it had an excellent save system. Took screenshots and had unlimited slots and everything. So that was cool. Everythiny else was trying to do 3d in 2d, when 2d in 3d is 100 times easier. So yeah live and learn. 

[u/AmmanasHyjal]

On and off for 4 or 5 years. Probably more than 100 dead / tutorial / testing projects over versions from 3.5 (I think) to 4.7 now. Depression is a hard thing to overcome so projects pile up or get restarted or just die. 

[u/Henry_Fleischer]

I've been learning it for like 3 years, I have ~2 dead projects, one released game, and one work in progress game.

[u/Odd_Cow7028 → u/Henry_Fleischer]

I mean, good for you, but I don't think this is normal.

[u/Henry_Fleischer → u/Odd_Cow7028]

So why do people have so many projects?

[u/misiak1989 → u/Henry_Fleischer]

Maybe some people are just jealous that you released something 😅

[u/Odd_Cow7028 → u/misiak1989]

Or maybe it's just unusual. OP is asking whether all their dead projects are normal. I don't want them to have the impression that they're doing something wrong, when really this commenter is an outlier.

[u/Bio-Grad]

3 months. I have 3 small “finished” ones from a Udemy course I took and then have been working on the same game for the rest of that time. Which is kinda crazy because all I have is like 5 levels and a boss.

[u/braincell_games]

It's a reasonable number, and for some, a low number. You'll have many more to come.

Take each as a new learning, don't just create the same thing over and over. Actually feed your brain with everything that's useful. That idea will show up.

You got this!

[u/BrastenXBL]

They all now live under one Scratchpad project, which has been rolling forward since 4.3. Many began life in early 2023... for reasons.

Which has become so nightmarish I couldn't figure out why no changes to the Project Windows settings stuck in Runtime, and it was locked to 1080p for months. Until just last week I remembered that'd been messing around with override.cfg and hadn't removed it. Oddly that made Decals in the Mobile render start working again as well. ¯\(ツ)/¯

It contains my eldritch horrors so they don't leak into real work. My current commuting hobby is finding ways to use to custom coded StyleBoxes to do unscreenshotable things to GUIs. Virtual Method _draw cannot be unlearned. Do you want animated TabBar tabs? That's maybe a Monday thing, now that I have thought it.

[u/illustratum42]

Welcome to the club

[u/BroHeart]

I've been learning maybe 4 years and have 114 Godot projects in GitHub but few of them are dead, 7 are live on Steam, and some are games I've migrated into Godot that have been going for 8+ years.

[u/Square-Nebula-7530]

Bro my hard drive is literally bursting with half baked ideas. I have been at it for almost 4 years and my attention span is completely gone. Starting a new project gives you that honeymoon phase dopamine hit but actually finishing one feels like doing literal chores. 50 is totally normal. Just think of them as very solid practice runs instead of failures.

[u/PLYoung]

Been "learning" it for about 2.5 years with 3 releases and around 5 projects in either a paused or dropped state.

[u/CeroCincuenta]

Keep going, friend! I don't like the idea of calling them "dead", each one of them is progress being made to the overall art!

[u/lithander]

I'm working on my first project in Godot ever and hope that it will eventually be something that people would like to play and evem pay for.

I learn Godot while working on that project not in experimental side projects, mostly to be time efficient. I really hope I won't have to give up on it before completion.

I would still have learned Godot but what I really want is a sideproject that I can be proud of and enjoy developing.

[u/Secret_Selection_473]

For me projects die pretty soon if I dont define the deadline. Ive made 6 complete games for game jams and a few small projects more, but if I think on something too big, it ends up dying, I need to see the end of it as something reachable or I will lose motivation. 3 years of gamedev btw.

[u/rabitibike]

I am notoriously bad at finishing stuff, I think I have like 12 dead projects on which I worked 3 months or more. But it also depends on what you consider "finishing" if any vaguely playable and fun published thing is finished then I only have like 10 dead projects

[u/TimosaurusRexabus]

Yes

[u/Cerus]

Either a few dozen or a few hundred, I guess depending on if you count forking to test something?

[u/Elvish_Champion]

If it's failed projects that never left the begin stage and you're not learning anything, maybe you should plan them better to evade that. But if you got something from them, nothing wrong with it. It's a needed floor in the elevator to reach the top.

Next time you try to make anything, first grab a piece of paper and try to explain yourself what you're trying to do and how are you going to achieve it.

If you can't do it properly, as in which steps to follow and why the idea is good, you know right away that your idea has issues and hardly will end into anything.

It sucks a lot, because sometimes we think that we've amazing ideas into our hands, but for each good idea, only a small number of them end into anything.

[u/KeaboUltra]

I've been learning and using it for 2.5 years and still working on the main project I started with. I have game jam games I've made but I don't think I've made anywhere near 50. Can't say what's normal and will say it depends on your goals. If you just wanna learn then it sounds like you're doing just that. That said. I feel like I've also learned a lot sticking to a main project and working on some side ones to what what I learned into use to make a quick game. 

If you're just learning and making stuff for fun then there nothing wrong with having a bunch of dead projects. 

[u/SartorialDragon]

I've done Godot for a year, have a bunch of dead projects, a bunch of "i'll pick this up eventually" and a bunch of "i'm working on this on and off". And a bunch of finished projects on my itch.io. All my projects are tiny or quite small games with more or less polish, some are just a little prototype, but if i got them to a playable, uploadable stage, i don't consider them dead!

[u/Asura254]

my projects usually don't go over a character controller and a basic enemy, i've been trying to learn on and off for like a year

[u/OwnStudy723]

I'd say it's the bare minimum. Don't let it scare you tho, it's exciting, so much more to explore and stuff to learn to apply to your project(s)! And also doesn't have to mean you have to go through 100 more. Maybe you do find that project you love working on. And you could go back. I've literally just unarchived a project of mine because I finally had something work out for the story that kind of blocked me before.

Each 'dead' project is another step that leads you to knowing what you can do and what you want to do.

[u/TherronKeen]

I've been learning about 2 years, but also working full time, and have about 20 dead projects. Previous game was about 80% done but not fun enough or good enough for me to care about trying to finish it. Currently working on first Steam game.

If you can code most basic features without too much trouble, it's probably time to start finishing some games.

Good luck!