Feb 18 2008
Roots
Filed under Game development by Jussi Lepistö
Morning.
First order of the day is a little rant and laying out of plans. As I said in an earlier post about my history as a game developer and yesterday’s post, I haven’t really done any game development for a long while. I think my problem is perfectionism.
“Back in the day” I used to just smash code together in an ugly mess that would make feel sick now, but I actually got things done! Since I started paying attention to elegant code, code reuse and all the other “proper” stuff, I haven’t really finished anything. I think it’s time to get back to the roots. Today, I’m going to recreate the game I first released, Arty (which I talked about in my the memoirs post) and this time, I’m not going to give any thought at all to code reuse. I’m going to start on a clean slate and use no code from my other projects.
I’m going to update my progress in this post during the day. Also, as always, you’re welcome on the #python3d IRC channel on the Freenode network. First, I need some coffee and read the Pyglet documentation a bit. Then I’ll start creating some procedural 2D terrain. I’ll keep you updated.
I’ve found that the secret to finishing games tends to be moderation. The art of not overplanning/designing your game, but at the same time not jumping in blind and underplanning. Overplanning bloats your initial framework to the point that you don’t know how to work on it, while underplanning will eventually result in your game code collapsing on itself.
On my project, I’ve been taking the route of carefully designing parts of the game/engine that I know are pinnacle to keeping the rest of the game supported solidly, but I tend to go lax on the areas that aren’t quite as important. This way, I don’t need to plan out every line of code I write, but at the same time I’m not digging myself deathtraps for the future by writing careless code, either.
I think once you find a nice balance of the two, you’ll really be sailing forward with gamedev progress.