Well, I am not even sure if this is the place to post this, but still here it goes.

Right now I am messing around with a simple game concept, a 2D platformer. But one of those never ending games, think Robot Unicorn. WIth a few twists on it (more on that later).

For the first time, I am trying the approach build the game not a engine, but I find myself troubled. When I writting code (that does what it is supposed to do), I always find myself trying to code the a generic approach so that I could use to other games, this mostly applys to refactoring the working code, separating class creating managers for everything.

Is this the way its supposed to be? What your experiences with this, do you find yourself always trying to make the "perfect" code, or do you hack and slash to just get something to work.

Any pointers on which kind of methodology I should ensure in my coding habits?

Just a little background, I have created games before, and a lot of decent engines for me and other folks, so I like to think of myself of decently knowledgeable on this subject (Just as a hobby of course, got much to learn). So I am not asking how to start, but more on how should I proceed to improve.

Wow !! That is a tough question I believe most of us ask ourselves everyday. I usually rely on 2 things.

1 - What I have done in the past that is reliable, I use to move forward and build on that. If I am working on a new game where I can utilize what I have done in the past and make some improvements on that, I do it.

2 - I tend to build on the game and let the game engine develop itself, unless I already have and established an good engine that could, with a little fixing here and there.

If all is working well, I make a backup copy and store it where anything I do what effect that code. Then I review over my new code to see if there is any streamlining that can be done, Make my modifications and then run that code over again to see if the changes were effective.

Yeah, but the godly advice we get when we ask "Where should I start with my Engine is" . Build Games not engines.

The problem is , I am building a game, but I always have a build a Engine mentality, and always try to write the most performance/slick/General code. So I am not sure where I going wrong, but I tend to take alot of time to develop a game infrastructure, or the engine part of it. Some times I take too long and get bored and stop. Most of the times I go back and see my code and think, I could do this better and then redesign most of the code. Then its Rinse and repeat!

For small project I usually don't use Version control. But I think that might be something considering. Create a main repository for my "engine code" and branchs for games, thats something that just came to my mind, maybe worth to try.

How thorough is your design? I would code generically enough so that it fits the scope of just this specify game itself. Once your game is complete, you can integrate parts you like into what you currently have in your engine. I wouldn't add any features to an engine until that code's been used effectively in a game first. This way, you're not adding any guesswork for constant end-all solutions.

This is a amazing sugestion, I think I am going to setup a environment like this for all my projects, I was looking at my design and I think my major problem is not having a strict feature set for the game, I put them on as I come along. This is wrong, completly wrong. and I think its holding me back.