[gameprogrammer] Re: Current game projects...
- From: David Olofson <david@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: gameprogrammer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2005 20:50:30 +0100
On Tuesday 01 March 2005 20.21, Alan Wolfe wrote:
[...]
> I think I wish I had something complete enough to classify as a game
> instead of practice of techniques hehe
Speaking of which, why does this happen? Of course, you're not going
to get any games done before you've mastered your tools to some
extent - but then what? After learning all we need and then some, we
still have this growing heap of dead, half-finished projects...
Of course, some were just bad ideas, or the code/design was FUBAR or
something. One may just as well make a note about how not to do
things, and move on.
At least in my case, there's another reason: It's more fun to play
around and try new stuff than to focus on rolling out finished
products. Once you have a "finished" product, the hack value
diminishes (nothing interesting left to do, since it's supposed to be
*finished*), you'll have to maintain it (mostly boring work) - and
when you're there, you have to figure out something new to hack and
start over.
Not sure what to do about that... After all, the primary motivation
driving most spare time game developers is probably the hacking
itself and/or that feeling when you finally have little objects
moving around and doing (more or less) sensible stuff in some kind of
virtual world. Once you reach the level where you go "Yeah, it works!
I can do this." some of that motivation goes away. What remains to do
to get a real product is mostly design, tuning and debugging. More of
the same old stuff, basically.
I can tell you one thing from experience, though: Leaving an
unfinished project alone for too long certainly does not help it's
chances of ever being finished... It's like the code goes old and
grumpy and starts to resist hacking. :-D
//David Olofson - Programmer, Composer, Open Source Advocate
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