Why Game Developers Should Finish What They Start

Michael writes "Too often, hobbyists and open source programmers take on game projects that they can't hope to finish. Freshmeat is rife with games from developers who have bitten off more than they can chew. So I drafted an article which takes a look at the major roadblocks to successfully completing open source and hobbyist game projects."

Comments

I find myself in this situation a lot

[gildesh]

There are times when I'm working on my personal project (a game, not surprisingly) that I just stop after getting one feature debugged, and I end up doing anything but work on it for weeks on end.

The way that I get myself back on track is by concentrating only on the code that must get done and then I worry about making it more robust later on. I sometimes find myself worrying about the content. This is A Bad Thing(tm) to do while programming a game engine. It's a lot better just to focus on the code and the functionality first.

Obviously, there are times when I physically am unable to program for various reasons (real life and all that). But, no one said that being an open source game developer was easy.

I'd love to post my game URL here, but I'd rather not have my ISP think there's a DDoS attacking me. It's called Ether though, it's a web-based MMORPG. (there's a very uninformative page for it on SF.net [projectname: ethermmorpg])

I know this all to well....

[shotgunefx]

From 92 to 96 I was working on and off on a 3D driving game. At the time, I was driving a truck and the frustration with the barrage of idiots I constantly had to avoid got me thinking, "Wouldn't it be great if I could just run them off the f*cking road" or worse... (yeah, real healthy, I know)

So my idea was to make this driving game where you had to race across country, but that was just the plot for plot sake. (It was about as much plot as Doom had in the readme.txt)

The race didn't matter. It was just an excuse for the different locales. The actual purpose of the game was to race, rob, carjack and maim everybody and anybody you felt like with your vehicles. I thought most drivers could identify with this on some level and the idea at the time was "out there" and sure to make some controversy.

I was working around anywhere between 1000 ~ 2000 hours a year on this. (Depends which years) Every time it got close, a new game would come out and raise the bar. Like an idiot, I'd start all over because I wanted it to be as good as anything out there. Well, seeing the target for this 3D game was originally a 386DX, later 486DX DOS/32, mostly everything had to be done in assembler. (Actually, in hindsight, I probably could have gotten away with a little less optimization) it took forever for it to go anywhere. Just when I'd get the renderer in order and start adding the other elements of the game, a new game would drop and it didn't look so slick anymore.

Anyway, I took a break for almost a year. I decided to finally just finish it and get it done. Thought it would be easier in some ways now that base targets were lot more powerful. Well shortly into it, as I'm coding, I see on the television a story about Carmegeddon and GTA.

F*CK! I gave up right there, my thunder sapped. The first GTA was alright, but what I was envisioning was a lot closer to what the GTA series has become. It's weird looking back at notebooks with drawings of golf carts and cars dodging planes on the runway. (Though some of it would be dated, like the LA segment during the riots)

I've had a PS2 now for over a year and outside of trying a rental or two, there is only one game I own and play. Vice City. Though it's missing a few elements, (Where's the steam roller?), it's pretty much, for me, the ideal game. (Might change my mind after I play Doom3 though)

I try and take it with a grain of salt when I see how fantastic it panned out for them. Though it's hard not to think, if I hard only gotten that second 90% done, if I had just got it out and didn't keep revisioning it.

Oh well :(