Do you see your project that you're working on as a "real-life" one?

Xrayez

The question may sound quite stupid, but I've been recently hit by the following phrase that someone told me in the past:

If you're working on a project, it does not necessarily mean that your project is a "real-life" one.

I don't quite understand this, or what other person wanted to imply by saying this. First, this sounds irrational. Second, this sounds somewhat disrespectful, because I know for certain that my project is quite real, it's not illusionary! Because mostly everything is "real-life", the difference I see is when someone simply disregards the reality of others (or simply unable to see another reality, or lives in an "another dimension", so to speak), then yeah, I could understand someone saying that a project is not "real-life"...

Even then, I think a lot of projects are "developed" inside our heads/hearts long before project's development starts to take place in the real world (which is, again, quite subjective to each person), at least that's how I usually go through the development process myself.

And then I've recalled Godot Improvement Proposals, and when you make a proposal, you have to fill out the first question:

Describe the project you are working on

I'm totally aware of the rationale that requires you to answer this question, but it makes me wonder what kind of project would be seen as "good enough" to be described as an answer to that question, and be considered as having "substantive" use-cases as described in the rules for making a proposal.

Does it have to be just a game project you're simply working on?
Maybe it's a game project which is already used in production and attracts N number of players?

Some people may say that "real-life" means a project which is not just a prototype, or your first game, and mostly boils down to how much effort you exert into developing your project. But in this case, I'd rather label such a project as a "serious" one, not a "real-life" project, this would be more appropriate in my opinion.

Some other people may say that "real-life" could be seen as an antonym for "synthetic" projects. But have you see any project which is developed in an "unnatural" way, especially in the game development field? Speaking of artificial intelligence... :)

Having said that, I got really curious what community thinks on this matter, perhaps you could also shed some light on this.

Megalomaniak

Yeah I don't know what that is supposed to mean. There are professional projects, hobby projects and even just learning projects(even there arguably you could further split it into 'academic' and 'non-academic'). They are all real tho.

fire7side

I just look at it as something to do anymore. You try to over glorify it, you are probably going to be disappointed. Maybe you are just experimenting with something, maybe you have some deep goal, it doesn't matter. The experiment turns out to be something cool and the deep goal is some unfinished project that's half forgotten on your hard drive.

cybereality

I haven't started working on my big project yet, but I do substantial development in my head. You'd be surprised how much pre-production you can do with an "imaginary" project. So far I've mostly just been testing individual features in Godot, so I do work on stuff, it just that I like to prepare 100% before embarking on a journey. Also, whoever said your project is not a "real life" project is full of it.

TwistedTwigleg

The whole “real project” thing kinda sounds like gate keeping. All projects are real projects in my book, no matter their size, development status, etc. :smile:

I would say at lot of my non “real” projects have been helpful for learning than more of the “serious” projects I have worked on. I think it’s because I can explore topics, ideas, and features I otherwise would have difficulty pursuing. Regardless of the reason, I think it’s important to not put too much weight on whether it’s “real” or not, as it all helps, even it’s not visible in the moment.

I can’t speak for the Godot team and why the proposals mention a project, but I think it was more just to get a broad idea on where the request is coming from. I know that there are several proposals that simply say “Godot” as the reason or just keep it vague (like “a game I’m working on”). I don’t think it’s intended to be a barrier. That said, I do not know the reason why it’s in the proposal issue template for sure and think it should probably be optional.

Calinou

I can’t speak for the Godot team and why the proposals mention a project, but I think it was more just to get a broad idea on where the request is coming from. I know that there are several proposals that simply say “Godot” as the reason or just keep it vague (like “a game I’m working on”). I don’t think it’s intended to be a barrier. That said, I do not know the reason why it’s in the proposal issue template for sure and think it should probably be optional.

There are several reasons for the user having to describe the project they're working on:

Understanding the proposal's context. Some proposals are hard to justify when you don't have the context around them. It can also be a way to avoid the XY problem.
It also provides (voluntary) statistical information on projects being worked on by Godot users making proposals, which is always nice to have.

That said, we don't require descriptions to be very specific, since some users would rather keep their project private for various reasons (NDAs or otherwise).

Mukti

"Real Life" project probably refers to projects having to do with modern Real Life, which are called simulations.

Example: Simulation of digestive track when eating solid vs liquid vs somewhere in-between Simulation of vehicle crash with different weights, at different speeds Simulation of society: Sims, Virtual Life Simulation of city construction: Simcity, Cities Skylines, TheoTown * Bridge constructor game

...anything that has to do with simulating some part of our modern Life.

Calinou

"Real Life" project probably refers to projects having to do with modern Real Life, which are called simulations.

The notion of "real life" project has nothing to do with realism.

bunnydefluff

To me personally, a real life project is when the user(s) starts up the program, he or she has the ability to use their input device(s) to make basic interaction with thing(s) that appeared on the screen. The key here will always be the input devices. If I do not care about what people can do to/with my game using input devices, I should not be messing around with any kind of game engine in the first place. I am easily satisfied like that. Maybe your real life project is Cyberpunk 2078 but I am not like that.