General Discussion

No way, I just saw this morning that Harvard has a free online course in game development, and it's available now. You should take a look and see if it interests you :)! You can do it from home.

https://pll.harvard.edu/course/cs50s-introduction-game-development

By the way, I also suffer from depression and I know how hard it is. I hope in the dark times you can find some compassion for yourself. I know for me, making it through the day sometimes is an accomplishment in and of itself. Try to see if you can practice not calling yourself a loser even when you feel like it. You are not a loser, you may be struggling right now, but if you saw a friend going through what you're going through, would you call them a loser? Probably not. I try to replace those thoughts with "today, I'm not feeling like I'm where I want to be, but I'm doing the best I can, and that's enough."

Anyway, wishing you well and I hope you can find some peace.

Something like drawing or digital painting might appeal to you. Neither require a powerful computer (or even a computer at all if you use physical materials) and are inexpensive to get into.

Another thing I personally like doing is baking! Gives my mind something to do and I get tasty treats at the end that I can have myself or share.

If you want there is a community for autism!

https://lemmy.world/c/autism

I do cross stitch which is a low barrier to entry IMO

And there are a bunch of nerdy patterns on etsy

Oh god the driving thing was the Bane of my existence for YEARS. I basically made myself a desensitization program so I could learn to drive. Everyday I would sit behind the wheel with the car off until that wasn't scary. (Took about a week.)Then the next step would be turning the car on (another fews days.) Next was putting it in gear but not going anywhere. Then pulling forward and backwards etc... until I could go out on the roads and get my learners.

This whole process took over a month. If I freaked out I had to go back to the previous step. I based all this off of animal desensitization programs becuase I am Autistic AF. Sorry for the wall of text but I wanted to give you some advice and hope for the future!

You got dealt a bad hand. I can commiserate. One thing I've learned about that is to stop blaming myself for everything. It's not your fault that you struggle with your issues. Try to love yourself as much as possible. Negative thoughts lead to more negative thoughts and eventually to depression.

As for making a game, I think I have a good starting point for you. Take a look at Gameboy Studio. You can make playable games without knowing how to code.

https://www.gbstudio.dev/

Learn to do card tricks

I always suggest origami for these questions.

It's cheap, you only need paper.
It can be as simple or complex as you'd like it to be.
Plenty of free resources available online.
Doesn't need a lot of space, just a table.

I would try turning learning into a hobby. Think of all the subjects you want to know about, find people on YouTube who knows about them, and subscribe to them. If you want to know about game design, subscribe to game development and coding channels. There are passionate people covering every topic you can imagine trying to share their love for the subject, if you can find them. The more you learn, the easier it will be, and the more motivated you will be to try things.

Hey there, sorry to hear you're struggling.

I was kind of toying around with some of the same interests before I went back to school. Have you thought about web design/development?

It's easy to get started, and there is near limitless freedom in your ability to create things both from a visual, and front design perspective and a also ton of different programming languages for building apps. You can go full stack and do a bit of everything, or specialize in just about anything (seriously - design/ux, frontend development, backend development, devops, databases, digital maps, digital signage, salesforce, analytics, etc etc).

At the very least, it might act as a gateway to upping your programming skills. Once you get more experienced if you find game development is still something you want to pursue, there is no shortage of javascript-based game engines 🤓

I've been doing web development for the past 7 years and I'm still getting my mind blown and learning new things every day. I love it.

Whatever it is you choose to pursue, don't give up! Keep taking small steps, building small projects, and learning new things. It may not feel like you're getting everywhere but it's so satisfying once you start to feel the pieces come together.

You've got this.

Are you talking about indoors at home, or are you willing to go somewhere indoors? If so, you could pick up playing pool, darts, or bowling. They're all fun and you don't really have to be good at them to enjoy them.

Grab an Elegoo Arduino kit on Amazon and start there to get started on the coding journey! Follow Paul McWhorter's Arduino tutorials on YouTube. You can program the Arduino from knowing NOTHING about electronics and coding. He teaches you from square one as if you had zero knowledge. I'm on lesson 35 myself and it's addicting! Coding something yourself and watching it work is amazing! I've even used what he taught me to develop a temperature sensor for my house that helps alert me when the pipes underneath my house get too cold during the winter. It's going to help so much and be such a valuable machine.

Do you have a special interest?