It was 5 years ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday. I just learned how to code in Java, and I had a burning desire to create my first game.

The problem was I never programmed a video game before, and I had no idea where I should start or what I would even need.

This sounded scary in my head, given the fact that it took me some time to figure out how programming works. I was afraid that creating a game will be much harder.

But with memories of old arcade games that I played as a kid fresh on my mind and my motivation to start working on a new project, I decided to finally build my first video game.

The first steps to creating my game were scary since I have never done anything related to game development. And I didn’t know any of the required programming languages, and I had no artistic talent.

Additionally, I lived in a small two room apartment with 4 family members, so having a workspace was out of the question.

I always say: “If you find difficulties on your road to success, then you are on the right path, but if everything is going smoothly and you don’t have any challenges or issues, then you might have wandered off the road.”

Doing a little research, I found Unity and immediately fell in love with the engine. Plus, it was using C# language, which in my opinion, is 95% the same as Java. That was a plus for me since I already learned how to code in Java.

It didn’t take me long to come up with a game concept since I wanted to create a simple game.

The idea was having the game camera go down, and the character would move left and right to land on the safe ground avoiding obstacles and collecting coins and lives on his way.

I had the game idea, but I didn’t have the skills to create the game assets I need. I remembered my high school friend was very good at drawing things in photoshop and illustrator. So I got her to make the assets for me.

Finally, everything was ready. I can start creating my game.

Since the game was very simple and given the fact that all preparations went so smooth, I thought it would not be so difficult to create a simple game.

Boy, was I wrong.

I programmed the camera to move down. The character was moving left and right. The collectables and obstacles were showing, and I was so happy that my first attempt at a game was going so smoothly.

But after playing the game for a minute or two, it would start to lag, and not even my computer could get 60fps out of that simple game, not to mention an android phone for which I initially intended the game.

I started debugging the project with no luck. I had no idea what was causing the game to lag so much. And this problem became my pain for the next 7 days.

Yes, that’s right. The whole week I was trying to fix this one issue. It got me frustrated, I was mad, I wanted to break things