Halo's right. ( No, no, bear with me ;-) ) And his advice is, in this case, a lot more useful than a bunch of cliches like "seize the day", "get back up dust yourself up and start all over again" and all that junk I could offer. If you haven't yet learned that the reason you're no nearer is the convoluted design plan you get yourself tied up with before you start, then you won't do any better next time either. And if you know it, but you're not prepared to change it, the same applies.
There are only two ways, IMO, to get a game done. Either for money or for love. Both work, but in different ways. I see no evidence to suggest you're doing this for money, certainly you're not on the breadline for it, or you would have starved in ten years. So you're doing it for love, right? Nothing wrong with that, but you're not treating like something you love. Whenever you start on a game, you analyze it to death like you were a bank manager tearing a business plan to pieces. So you've immediately put yourself into the position of having to match your technical expectations. Where's your dream in all this? Leave the technical stuff to one side and write yourself a short, simple game design. Focus on the dream and not the technical stuff. Try winging it. Seriously, I've finished a lot of games and I never have a rigid game design. I have a lot of ideas, a few guidelines and the rest I make up as I go along. I'm sure many will tell you it's a bad practice, but you've tried the alternative and it didn't work. So give this a go. By having such a flexible design, you'll be able to overcome the obstacles you come across during the development ( regardless of whether your plan is rigid or flexible ) and be prepared to compromise or even just drop features. Maybe it won't come out as you dream it, ACCEPT THAT NOW! Getting one game finished will give you the confidence to get the second one finished. And the second one will be much better. Don't focus on the one perfect game. Focus on getting any one game done.
Finishing the first major game is like finishing your first major book. It seems a huge undertaking, but the second one never does. The first book I wrote, I struggled to get to 55,000 words and felt like it would never end. The second, I was up to 95,000 words before I knew what hit me. And the same applies to developing games. Once you've done it once, you set yourself free.
There are only two ways, IMO, to get a game done. Either for money or for love. Both work, but in different ways. I see no evidence to suggest you're doing this for money, certainly you're not on the breadline for it, or you would have starved in ten years. So you're doing it for love, right? Nothing wrong with that, but you're not treating like something you love. Whenever you start on a game, you analyze it to death like you were a bank manager tearing a business plan to pieces. So you've immediately put yourself into the position of having to match your technical expectations. Where's your dream in all this? Leave the technical stuff to one side and write yourself a short, simple game design. Focus on the dream and not the technical stuff. Try winging it. Seriously, I've finished a lot of games and I never have a rigid game design. I have a lot of ideas, a few guidelines and the rest I make up as I go along. I'm sure many will tell you it's a bad practice, but you've tried the alternative and it didn't work. So give this a go. By having such a flexible design, you'll be able to overcome the obstacles you come across during the development ( regardless of whether your plan is rigid or flexible ) and be prepared to compromise or even just drop features. Maybe it won't come out as you dream it, ACCEPT THAT NOW! Getting one game finished will give you the confidence to get the second one finished. And the second one will be much better. Don't focus on the one perfect game. Focus on getting any one game done.
Finishing the first major game is like finishing your first major book. It seems a huge undertaking, but the second one never does. The first book I wrote, I struggled to get to 55,000 words and felt like it would never end. The second, I was up to 95,000 words before I knew what hit me. And the same applies to developing games. Once you've done it once, you set yourself free.