Any advice for sticking to learning Lua long enough to be able to apply it to stuff you actually want to do?

[Restless Dipstick]

Spoiler: The very long story.

So, going against my better judgement, I recently started the process of respriting Drago the Cat to essentially restart this project. However, knowing myself, what tends to happen is that I'll get several of the sprites made, finally have to learn Lua so I can code his abilities, slowly start to find it harder and harder to keep trying to stick with it, resulting in it being hard for me to keep following along, and then projects fall into limbo while I feel terrible for repeating the process once again. It's a cycle I thought I'd be able to break by just deciding to never make any character for this game. However, just seeing everything being made, as well as being unable to keep myself from wondering about how much I could do if I came back to the idea, I find myself beginning to repeat the process once again.

I think part of why I can't stop myself from feeling the need to try again is because I kinda have been able to learn something like this before. See, I have about 5 years of experience in making characters on M.U.G.E.N., and it's strange to me how I was able to stick with something like that long enough to have excelled at it, but I can't seem to do the same for Lua.

My best guess as to why this is when I think back to when I was first starting M.U.G.E.N. is that the tutorial series I learned from was instantly applicable to what it was I wanted to do. Each thing I learned directly corresponded to me visually being able to see that I'm slowly getting to where I wanted to be. I haven't gotten that experience with trying to learn Lua, as doing things like getting that "Hello World," to be printed with some small command, or reading walls and walls and walls and walls of text explaining all these things I gotta keep track of that I know I'll have to reread over and over to not forget doesn't give me that same motivational push to keep going like my first few weeks and months of M.U.G.E.N. did all those years ago. So, now that I've been able to identify just why it is I can't seem to keep myself to stick with learning Lua, I'd like to know what some of you guys have done to keep yourselves engaged in learning Lua to a point to where you all can do things like make abilities for your characters, or make entire scripted enemies, bosses, gamemodes, and so on.

Long story short, I've realized my main issue when it comes to learning Lua is becoming unmotivated when it feels like all this stuff I'm learning isn't applicable to the things I wanna do with it, and thus, I fall off from learning it, resulting in the projects I wanna make just falling into limbo. So, what things have you guys done to keep the learning process interesting and fun enough to where you don't fall off, and eventually get to the point where you can do things like make abilities for your characters, or make other scripted stuff like enemies or bosses?

 

[BuggieTheBug]

Long story short, I've realized my main issue when it comes to learning Lua is becoming unmotivated when it feels like all this stuff I'm learning isn't applicable to the things I wanna do with it, and thus, I fall off from learning it, resulting in the projects I wanna make just fall into limbo. So, what things have you guys done to keep the learning process interesting and fun enough to where you don't fall off, and eventually get to the point where you can do things like make abilities for your characters, or make other scripted stuff like enemies or bosses?

Huh... Well i still learn it because i wanna make cool stuff for it... so i can then use my Lua knowledge to make characters and small projects

 

[amperbee]

Learning a new scripting language from scratch is tough.
Even more so when you have no prior programming knowledge and you're dead set on making a particular thing, restricting your flexibility.
I would recommend figuring out how to change your goal to something simpler, say, just "make some mods". You don't have to start by making what you actually want to do, as having a lack of skills in an area may make that particular task feel like a massive chore (for example, SO MANY people jump straight to "make a character" and have done almost no investigation about how hard a fully sprited/scripted character can be! Some even get disheartened after encountering roadblock after roadblock).

Start slow and small, play around with the scripting language, see what does each thing do, and start working from there into more complex snippets. No rush. You might even learn something new you can introduce to your idea.
You've got the entire wiki at your disposal, as well as (non-SRB2) Lua tutorials of varying length and difficulty.
Some are short and straightforward, others are long and detailed so you don't miss anything important.
There is no need to memorize every single thing you've got! If you are learning, you will find yourself opening a massive amount of tabs and coming back to them sooner or later to reread what does a thing do or how does it look like. Or maybe not! Those pages are going nowhere.
If you have a question, some members in the community can help you. You can reach out to the scripting channel in the SRB2 Discord server, or ask around in the modding forum on this message board.

Don't compare yourself with others. It's, apparently, natural for some to want to compare what they barely know with the work of someone with years of experience with the language. Not everybody is born ready to make groundbreaking mods. Work at your own pace!
Focus on your own stuff and what can you do to improve it. Experiment!


As an alternative, learn the language from its roots: SRB2's Lua changes a bit in that some features are added, changed or removed.
Such as the concept of hooks being introduced, fractional numbers being forbidden, some things being optional, and so and so.
Maybe vanilla Lua would help a bit in comprehension?


I would give some pointers about how to get motivated, however I learned Lua in a different way than several newcomers.
besides, i kind of lack motivation anyways, i sometimes do it out of spite lmao
To keep it short, it basically boils down to young me learning a different language for the sake of "I want to make games", then once I got the hang of it, branching out to SRB2's Lua once I learned it exists, and figured that both languages had a lot of similarities, easing my introduction to Lua.
It... took some years since it was the first things about programming I lodged into my head. It will take time.


Hope it helps.
Advice is not my thing , but I feel that some of the things I've done to learn might help.

 

[Restless Dipstick]

Wish I saw this sooner. This honestly put lots of stuff into perspective, 'n does give me a bit more motivation to give it another go with this stuff in mind.