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How I Built an RPG In A Week From Scratch With No Budget

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Re: How I Built an RPG In A Week From Scratch With No Budget

#21

Post by frisco »

briancooley wrote: post #20

I really liked the "Intermission" where he discussed features that he would cut to meet the deadline. I think that's a very important skill and one I would like to improve on for my personal projects.

I agree. Cuts like that are hard, but doing them honestly and really reevaluating what's necessary at least one per dev cycle is really critical. It reminded me of Spolsky talking about how one of the best things they did on Excel 5 was being forced to cut tons of features: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000245.html point 13

Re: How I Built an RPG In A Week From Scratch With No Budget

#22

Post by moder »

kenver wrote: post #17
11ren wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find 40 hours is much more productive if spread over several weeks. Maybe one's unconscious works on it the rest of the time.

That reminds me of a story I read about Michelangelo. He stared at the lump of marble that was to become David for a very long time before making the first cut, when asked what he was doing he said "I'm working"

I think the one I've heard goes, the artist is imagining the sculpture beneath that lump of marble, and they explain the actual creation of it as just removing everything else that's not the sculpture.

Re: How I Built an RPG In A Week From Scratch With No Budget

#23

Post by utnick »

yellowbkpk wrote: post #19
pg wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first and the third, which I would guess are identical. What we look for is an incurable tendency to build stuff. And if people have this quality, they'll presumably already have shown evidence of it by building stuff.

I feel like I have that incurable tendency to build stuff, but don't have time to use it. In fact, I'm extremely frustrated with my current job because I can't feed the need. How do others do it?

this article shows that you dont need a lot of time to build cool stuff

Re: How I Built an RPG In A Week From Scratch With No Budget

#24

Post by tlrobinson »

jws wrote: post #2

"Role Playing Game" or "Rocket Propelled Grenade"? Ah, Role Playing Game. I guess either would have been interesting.

As I'm not much of a gamer, at first I thought he built a rocket propelled grenade. I was surprised he hadn't been visited/silenced by the FBI, etc.

Re: How I Built an RPG In A Week From Scratch With No Budget

#26

Post by erik »

If anyone is interested in trying something like this themselves, I recommend checking out:

http://pyweek.org

http://ludumdare.com/

PyWeek is a week long game programming competition for Python developers, and Ludum Dare is all about 48 hour mostly from scratch video game development. Both are just for fun, but the competitive setup makes for good motivation to accomplish something in a short amount of time. It's lots of fun.

Re: How I Built an RPG In A Week From Scratch With No Budget

#27

Post by Tichy »

pg wrote: post #10

If anyone wants to know what we look for in YC applications, this is it.

This is really good to know - one tends to brush over the little accomplishments in life.

With regard to the 7 day RPG article, I want to add that participating in the 48h game programming competition was an extreme amount of fun. I thought that it didn't exist anymore, but just found that there was another one in December: http://www.ludumdare.com/

Re: How I Built an RPG In A Week From Scratch With No Budget

#28

Post by Tichy »

Rod wrote: post #3
jws wrote: post #2

"Role Playing Game" or "Rocket Propelled Grenade"? Ah, Role Playing Game. I guess either would have been interesting.

Building a Role Playing Game in a week is impressive. Taking an entire week to build one single Rocket Propelled Grenade would be interesting too, but much less impressive ;-)

I wouldn't even know where to start with the grenade, so actually the grenade would impress me more. The RPG would still be more worthwhile.

Re: How I Built an RPG In A Week From Scratch With No Budget

#29

Post by pg »

yellowbkpk wrote: post #19
pg wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first and the third, which I would guess are identical. What we look for is an incurable tendency to build stuff. And if people have this quality, they'll presumably already have shown evidence of it by building stuff.

I feel like I have that incurable tendency to build stuff, but don't have time to use it. In fact, I'm extremely frustrated with my current job because I can't feed the need. How do others do it?

Joshua Schachter might be a useful example. He built Delicious while working on Wall Street. One of his most useful tricks was to build something every day, however small. I suspect that keeps your brain working in much the same way that running every day keeps your metabolism high.

Re: How I Built an RPG In A Week From Scratch With No Budget

#30

Post by unalone »

Tichy wrote: post #27
pg wrote: post #10

If anyone wants to know what we look for in YC applications, this is it.

This is really good to know - one tends to brush over the little accomplishments in life. With regard to the 7 day RPG article, I want to add that participating in the 48h game programming competition was an extreme amount of fun. I thought that it didn't exist anymore, but just found that there was another one in December: http://www.ludumdare.com/

Game hackathons are great. My absolute favorite thing about game design is that it brings together such an incredible variety of people: graphics designers, composers, writers, programmers, interface builders. The best game designers are ones that have some understanding of every aspect of their game, even as they specialize. I'd imagine the same is invaluable to startups.
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