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How to write a 48-hour game in just 2 years (2013)

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Re: How to write a 48-hour game in just 2 years (2013)

#21

Post by kiba »

mcculley wrote: post #18
veddox wrote: post #2

Thank you for sharing this! > Don't build an engine instead of a game Only too true... That's a trap I always fall into. I guess programmers are so hard-wired to abstracting problems they that need solving they end up doing a lot of abstracting and very little solving. (Compulsory xkcd: https://www.xkcd.com/974/ )

It's an easy trap to fall into. Refactoring something that works into a more elegant abstraction is intellectually satisfying work. One need not worry about ill-defined external requirements and is limited only by one's own creativity and capability. Adding value beneficial and perceptible to a user often requires frustrating interaction with people or organizations who don't even know what they want, much less how t…

Then those programmers will realize that they hadn't built a game.

Re: How to write a 48-hour game in just 2 years (2013)

#22

Post by joeyspacerocks »

Hi - author of the post here. Just a quick note - don't believe a word of this. I wrote it in 2013 and am now 3 years into the dev of the next game.

It's lies, all lies :) actually it's probably solid advice - the hard bit turns out to be following it.

The missing piece of advice turned out to be - "stay disciplined" ...

Re: How to write a 48-hour game in just 2 years (2013)

#23

Post by chipsy »

I've written many 48 hour games. I've also written games that drag on for months or longer without apparent progress.

The difference literally comes down to whether you are doing easy things or not. Having an engine or framework does help make a variety of things easy, but it does nothing for the one or two features that aren't. Eventually you hit a wall where it takes forever, and that's your next month. You get over the wall and then a flood of other new features come in almost instantly. Also in the same ballpark are features that you have coded before and are familiar with, vs. ones you aren't. You can get a lot done "from scratch" by spamming preexisting knowledge at the problem, but it still takes time and it isn't exactly easy either.

Last of all, at first clone-and-modify is enough to feel interesting. So you go very quickly, because you care little about the result. But after a few dozen times doing that, you're done, and you want to expand the parts you care about. That creates more barriers to get over, more months where progress is slow because your ambition is big enough to no longer follow the easy path. More months where problems are on the content development side, not the runtime. That part is always difficult. Scope is deceptive.

Re: How to write a 48-hour game in just 2 years (2013)

#24

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

veddox wrote: post #2

Thank you for sharing this! > Don't build an engine instead of a game Only too true... That's a trap I always fall into. I guess programmers are so hard-wired to abstracting problems they that need solving they end up doing a lot of abstracting and very little solving. (Compulsory xkcd: https://www.xkcd.com/974/ )

Every time, I look around at the existing game engines and decide they're too much hassle to use or don't work quite like I'd like.

So I decide to write my own.

…and then the game never gets written.

Re: How to write a 48-hour game in just 2 years (2013)

#25

Post by groovy2shoes »

Tempest1981 wrote: post #14
Someone wrote: post #4

"48 hours later my iPhone was displaying a black screen with a white triangle on it. Clearly my limits were being tested." That reminds me of http://rampantgames.com/blog/?p=7745 : "In the main engineering room, there was a whoop and cry of success. Our company financial controller and acting HR lady, Jen, came in to see what incredible things the engineers and artists had come up with. Everyone was staring at a tele…

Or for hardware projects, getting an LED to blink can result in great joy...

When writing compilers/interpreters, even good ol' "hello world" does it for me at some point(s...) in the development cycle :)

Re: How to write a 48-hour game in just 2 years (2013)

#26

Post by krapp »

Namrog84 wrote: post #3

I recently released my first real attempt at a small game beyond the asteroids clone scopd. And what I feel like I could do in 2 weeks. Took a full about a year. Several month breaks and many things just being tremendously more time consuming than projected. Fully appreciate and understand this. Part time game making is difficult especially for new game devs.

It took me about a year to teach myself how to clone Space Invaders.

Of course, on the way, I taught myself how to deal with spritesheets in SDL, move semantics in SDL objects, built a rudimentary entity-component framework, and basically had to learn how to do everything that SDL doesn't do for you.

I'm still working on my January Game a Month project, and a lot of that time has been eaten up just getting the camera to work the way I want it to. I've deleted more code than I've written, and the end result is still not a game, but the learning experience alone is worth it. Some things that seem as if they should be simple (like efficiently dealing with text) turn out to be more complicated than expected, at least for me.

Re: How to write a 48-hour game in just 2 years (2013)

#28

Post by mapmap »

joeyspacerocks wrote: post #22

Hi - author of the post here. Just a quick note - don't believe a word of this. I wrote it in 2013 and am now 3 years into the dev of the next game. It's lies, all lies :) actually it's probably solid advice - the hard bit turns out to be following it. The missing piece of advice turned out to be - "stay disciplined" ...

Thank you for this. Could you go into more detail on your time slicing strategy? I'd love to learn how to effectively do knowledge work in short chunks with frequent interruptions.

Re: How to write a 48-hour game in just 2 years (2013)

#30

Post by lomnakkus »

ewjordan wrote: post #7
veddox wrote: post #2

Thank you for sharing this! > Don't build an engine instead of a game Only too true... That's a trap I always fall into. I guess programmers are so hard-wired to abstracting problems they that need solving they end up doing a lot of abstracting and very little solving. (Compulsory xkcd: https://www.xkcd.com/974/ )

This is one of the reasons Unity has become so popular in the industry - from a project management point of view, it makes sure that programmers don't start yak-shaving and building tech that's already been built a thousand times by other people. It certainly has its warts, esp when going into full production, but at least in early development it's really good at making sure you're only building what's unique to your…

> This is one of the reasons Unity has become so popular in the industry...

Yet someone had to decide to write Unity. Obviously, writing a framework/engine that gets this kind of popularity is in the "unicorn" range, so it's probably not something you should bet on. Still... it could be your engine! :)

/tongue in cheek

EDIT: Just to contribute a little bit of actual content: I find the "7DRL" episodes of Roguelike Radio to be very informative as to what you need to focus on when trying to ship a game. Obviously, it's focused on turn-based games, but I think most of the experience applies to basically any software project.

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