nesdev.org

I though some of you would find this page interesting. That's for those of us who have problems finishing our projects.

Very motivational.

From the article:

Dave Perry wrote:Nothing in your game should move to a "beat."

Guess who could never get the hang of Dance Dance Revolution.

Ben Sawyer wrote:Very few programmers are able to create a big hit on their first or second attempt. It takes time to build the skills required. So start simple (at the bottom)

Think about that the next time you criticize someone's single-screen puzzle game. Programming isn't the only such skill.

Gary Kitchen wrote:the great part about a home computer is you can do whatever you want and you aren't going to blow anything up.

I imagine he said this before the age of drive-by downloads of malware.

Dave Perry wrote:Don't ever take control away from the joypad/keyboard unless you really want to piss off the player.

So Mr. Perry didn't like Rez either. In that game, shots are delayed until the next sixteenth note. Or maybe I can give the benefit of the doubt and assume he was just skipping the exception that proves the rule.

Howard Scott Warshaw wrote:When you get to games like Pac-Man or Mortal Kombat where there's a documentable sequence that you can execute to succeed, to me that's totally antithetical to what a game should be.

Yet The Tetris Company still tries to sell games using the bag randomizer, despite that colour_thief and I have proven it broken. Guess why I used LRU instead of bag in LJ65.

Scott Adams wrote:Ideas are cheap. A dime a dozen, as they say.

Until you get sued.

Dean William R. Inge wrote:What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.

And someone recognizes this.

Lack of creativity or the idea well dried up.
Got all excited at the beginning, but lost interest.

For me it's theese two at a VERY HIGH extent.
I wasn't motivated to read the article until now because I was finishing a huge romhacking project, but now I get a lot of free time so I'll read that and go back to nesdev.

The problem I usually get is that I see the whole "checklist" of things I need to develop at once, and I don't write it down.

As such, I end up with "Well, I want to add this, but to add this, I'll need to put this in, which will require me to put this in... oh, that'll break that."

Basically, I have very disorganized thoughts, and it comes off as the project being really huge and unruly. At that point, it just feels like I have so much to implement that I lose interest.

It's getting slightly better now, because with every project I start (and don't finish), I get a little bit more code to recycle, and all of that stuff put together will eventually create some rock-solid system code.

But until then, I'll just start and abandon projects.

OK a few trought...

While tight with concentration on what is being written, the writer has a thought, an insight, a partially articulate concept. The natural response is to think, "I can't stop what I am writing. I'll remember the idea," and continue writing. The writer is wrong. He will not remember it. The thought, the insight, the concept will disappear. It may return, but you will not need it then, or recall when it might have been appropriate.

While it's true you can't remember everything, I'll generally see what happens naturally. This happens to game design, music composition or wathever : If you can't remember it, the idea wasn't that good. The day you have VERY good idea, you remember them. That way - by not writing it down or write it down only very roughly - you will naturally forget a bad idea or remember a good idea. While it's true you shouldn't be afraid of applying an idea you'd have fear is bad, you also shouldn't be afraid to throw away ideas that you didn't like.

Another rule of thumb is that if you are absolutely looking for an idea, but throw away the first one because you think it's not good enough and are looking for something else instead, all the other ideas you'll get will be worse than the first (that is - if you actually remember the first). So you'd save time by implementing the first idea you remember and not asking any more questions.

Other points I've figured in the development of my main NES project :
- For some reason at first you think the game has to be programmed in the same order that people will play it : i.e. Title Screen, Stage 1, etc...
There is technically absolutely no reason to do it that way.
- The most important thing is to have a cool Stage 1, with cool graphics and cool music. That's what everyone that will try your game will see, so give your best here. Only avid players will see the later stages.
- Music and graphics don't make a good game. However, they are still very important to games in my eyes. You'll forgive a game that has mediocre gameplay if it has a very good soundtrack and is very good or cool looking. Even a basically good game can be annoying if there is bad music, or graphic issues.

Something that was interesting in this articles is that basically, you should make game for others. I admit for the major part I wanted to make game to have fun and to express myself. I did not think much about the people that are going to play it. The problem is that for my first game, no miracle but nobody any played any of your games, so no fanbase or wathever. I hope that after completing a first game you cna have people that count on you which is a big motivation, and even people that join you which could be a big time saver.

Bregalad wrote:While it's true you can't remember everything, I'll generally see what happens naturally. This happens to game design, music composition or wathever : If you can't remember it, the idea wasn't that good. The day you have VERY good idea, you remember them. That way - by not writing it down or write it down only very roughly - you will naturally forget a bad idea or remember a good idea.

Within the realm of music, having an idea for an overall song is hard to forget if it's a good idea. "I should write a song about xxxxx idea and it will be in X key, etc" is not too hard to remember, as well as the general feel of the song. However, specific melody lines are tough to remember, even if they're amazing. It's similar to lines of programming.. if you think to yourself, while doing something else, that "oh, I could insert these instructions and my code would be more efficient," if you don't write it down, you might forget it if you're actively doing something else. I have this issue while driving to school-- if my phone is dead and I can't record things, I'll probably forget the melody line I thought up after awhile, probably due to the monotony of driving 9 hours straight

While it's true you shouldn't be afraid of applying an idea you'd have fear is bad, you also shouldn't be afraid to throw away ideas that you didn't like.

My philosophy with music is to keep everything. You never know if some melody or some idea for a song will work in another context, or if you figure out a way to make it work, or if parts of it were really good and you can extract them.

RushJet1 wrote:if my phone is dead and I can't record things, I'll probably forget the melody line I thought up after awhile, probably due to the monotony of driving 9 hours straight

Then learn cipher notation so that you can jot down melodies on ordinary ruled paper.

Bregalad wrote: - For some reason at first you think the game has to be programmed in the same order that people will play it : i.e. Title Screen, Stage 1, etc...
There is technically absolutely no reason to do it that way.
- The most important thing is to have a cool Stage 1, with cool graphics and cool music. That's what everyone that will try your game will see, so give your best here. Only avid players will see the later stages.

This is similar to something the guy who designed marble madness said. I can't remember it exactly, but it was something like, you should make a level first, and the first level you make needs to be fun, or there is no point in continuing. The first level you make doesn't have to be the first level in the game, but it has to be fun.

Although, that should probably be extended to the whole game. Gameplay trumps all, in my opinion. That's not an excuse for crappy graphics and music, though, but you do what you can.

When you get to games like Pac-Man or Mortal Kombat where there's a documentable sequence that you can execute to succeed, to me that's totally antithetical to what a game should be.

Pac-Man is the very essence of good design, the pattern being accidental.

Within the realm of music, having an idea for an overall song is hard to forget if it's a good idea. "I should write a song about xxxxx idea and it will be in X key, etc" is not too hard to remember, as well as the general feel of the song.

To be honnest when I compose I usually "copy" that from an existing song and I decide "I'll make a song similar to this one". Then I try to come up with something else of course but re-using elements of the existing song. Often it ends up quite different from the original so someone who don't know would have no idea which song was your "inspiration". Not that I'm NEVER able to make a song all of my own, but I'm just not that skilled.

Rush Jet you are probably a more experienced composer than I so things are different.

However, specific melody lines are tough to remember, even if they're amazing. It's similar to lines of programming.. if you think to yourself, while doing something else, that "oh, I could insert these instructions and my code would be more efficient," if you don't write it down, you might forget it if you're actively doing something else. I have this issue while driving to school-- if my phone is dead and I can't record things, I'll probably forget the melody line I thought up after awhile, probably due to the monotony of driving 9 hours straight

Well it's hard to say, but usually I'll try anything on a piano until I can find something that is good enough to be remembered, and then I write it down in MIDI on my computer (and arrange it, add rythm / additional voices, effects, etc...) and eventually convert it to .db (if using my engine) or MML (if I use MCK).

The bad stuff is that I feel like my songs are too monotonous, I hardly ever use sharps or flats, and I always use 4/4 beat. I'll try to compose at least a walz-beat type song for my game tough, becuse I really like walz-type songs.

I have this issue while driving to school-- if my phone is dead and I can't record things, I'll probably forget the melody line I thought up after awhile, probably due to the monotony of driving 9 hours straight

Isn't there a law saying you should take a break every 2 hours when driving ? And if you really drive 9 hours to go to scool and 9 hours to go back to home, that's 6 hours left for sleeping and scool added which don't sounds a lot to me.

The first level you make doesn't have to be the first level in the game, but it has to be fun.

What I was saying is that the first level you make don't have to be the first level in the game, but the first level in the game has to be the best of the game. Since you're usually more inspired when starting a project, it's probably a good idea to start with level 1 (and make it the amazing one), but for the other levels it really don't matter the order.

Personally I'm having big trouble designing bosses since 3 years (started my project 5 years ago) so basically I do a boss-less game - and maybe it'll stay like that forever who knowns ? I only have a very basic idea about who are the bosses, but coding them is just something that make me more or less pause the project.

tepples wrote:

RushJet1 wrote:if my phone is dead and I can't record things, I'll probably forget the melody line I thought up after awhile, probably due to the monotony of driving 9 hours straight

Then learn cipher notation so that you can jot down melodies on ordinary ruled paper.

while driving

otherwise i'd just write the mml in a notebook or something

RushJet1 wrote:while driving

That's what buses, passenger trains, and pulling over at a rest area are for. But you're right that MML is a suitable cipher notation.

Bregalad wrote:

I have this issue while driving to school-- if my phone is dead and I can't record things, I'll probably forget the melody line I thought up after awhile, probably due to the monotony of driving 9 hours straight

Isn't there a law saying you should take a break every 2 hours when driving ? And if you really drive 9 hours to go to scool and 9 hours to go back to home, that's 6 hours left for sleeping and scool added which don't sounds a lot to me.

I don't make this drive daily hahaha! I go to college in Indiana but live in Georgia so I make the trip every couple months. Driving for 9 hours straight is easy but can be boring... and technically it's not "straight" because of getting gas and food and stuff