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Not just fun and games...

Songbird

Entry posted by Songbird

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Some non-programmer people might think it's easy to make games. Or at the very least, if it isn't easy, it's a lot of fun. Make no mistake about it: developing games is work. A lot of work. If it wasn't, everybody would be doing it, eh? ;)

 

Sure, it starts out fun. You think of this really cool idea, you get motivated to stay up late for weeks on end and get a mini-game engine running just to show you can do it. You feel a real sense of accomplishment early on, because "that's my baby" and look what I've been able to do. Then, reality sets in. If you're going to make a finished product that other people will actually pay real dollars for, you need to -- hold your breath -- finish your game. Yep. You heard right. I know just mentioning a deadline or feature freeze makes developers toes curl backwards (have you ever seen that? It's not a pretty sight), but finishing what you started is what separates the geeks from the wannabes. Umm, wait, which one am I again?

 

While the core of your game is (hopefully!) a lot fun and can be a joy to improve, it's not much fun to put in silly things like title screens, options menus, audio f/x, music, and the like. But gamers everywhere will appreciate those little extra touches, because they demonstrate a passion for the game and a passion for the fans as well.

 

So where does that leave me? Well, I wish I could say I finish every project I start. Or even ones that other people started for me (hi, Ultravore, how ya doin'?). But I don't. And my free time is a lot less in 2006 than it was 8 years ago when I seriously started developing on the Lynx and Jaguar. Still, the games beckon me... so maybe some day. :D

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karri

But if it was only work nobody would care for doing it. There is also the fun part in discussing details with other developers and trying to do things that have never been done before. A good example is Lucien's maze engine and Exceeds Peugeot-demo. They are both "impossible" things to do an a Lynx. Still they work like a dream and these guys are some real guru's of the Lynx today.

 

I also have two more or less secret "dream"-projects that I work on. Something new that brings a smile to the Lynx community. After the Multicart is out I will continue on them.

 

--

Karri

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Songbird

Excellent point, Karri. It's definitely fun to work on games; I was only pointing out that on most game projects (for me, anyway) there comes a point that the fun diminishes and you need the discipline to stick with it or it will never get completed. And getting feedback from other developers and testers is always great!

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EricBall

For me I find there's high points and low points.

 

Chunks of code which seem to write themselves, mind-twisting problems which can either be a pain or pleasure to solve, glue logic (the stuff which gets from one chunk of code to the next) which is annoying because it's fiddly and it has to be done before you can actually see things in action, frustrating code rewrites, and the often tedious debugging sessions.

 

And it can be very, very time consuming. I have to almost schedule in time when I'm slogging through the low points, and schedule time for other stuff when I'm racing through the high points.

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