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Development Process & non-technical / A cautionary tale for aspiring roguelike programmers
« on: February 16, 2015, 11:39:11 PM »
Hi. Let me tell you my story.
Yesterday I decided to start coding a roguelike without knowing which direction I was going to go at all. I've never finished a game (except for a very crappy one for Ludum Dare) and laying in bed last night I resolved I would make the simplest roguelike I could, release whatever came out, and build upon it my wildest roguelike dev dreams, but only once that minimal game was published, and incrementally (minimal here means something like this tutorial checklist minus magic, datafiles, levels or NPCS; basically one level which you can win by clearing it out). My plan was to release early and often.
But of course I had to screw up. I became obsessed with making my game accessible and cross-platform, and so I started making it in Dart. Dart is a beautiful thing, but I had never done anything serious with it. I have spent more than 12 hours of almost straight coding in order to get the player to walk an empty square room. Most of that time has been spent fighting my incompetence.
Frustrated I started a C++ project an hour ago, downloaded libtcod and ported the whole thing in that time. It performs better, it looks better, and I feel much more confident in my ability to maintain the code.
The morale? Stick to what you know and love. Experimentation is good, but your priority right now is the product, don't let the process of making it consume all your energy.
Yesterday I decided to start coding a roguelike without knowing which direction I was going to go at all. I've never finished a game (except for a very crappy one for Ludum Dare) and laying in bed last night I resolved I would make the simplest roguelike I could, release whatever came out, and build upon it my wildest roguelike dev dreams, but only once that minimal game was published, and incrementally (minimal here means something like this tutorial checklist minus magic, datafiles, levels or NPCS; basically one level which you can win by clearing it out). My plan was to release early and often.
But of course I had to screw up. I became obsessed with making my game accessible and cross-platform, and so I started making it in Dart. Dart is a beautiful thing, but I had never done anything serious with it. I have spent more than 12 hours of almost straight coding in order to get the player to walk an empty square room. Most of that time has been spent fighting my incompetence.
Frustrated I started a C++ project an hour ago, downloaded libtcod and ported the whole thing in that time. It performs better, it looks better, and I feel much more confident in my ability to maintain the code.
The morale? Stick to what you know and love. Experimentation is good, but your priority right now is the product, don't let the process of making it consume all your energy.