I'm Depressed:(

For many years I've had a dream of creating the Ultimate Multiplayer First Person Shooter Ca$h Tournament that utilized my GunVertor Weapon concept. This dream has led me to many Game Creation Systems, Engines, and Programming Languages.

Today I realized, all the money and time spent seeking out this dream and I have yet to see it become reality. I'm no closer today, then I was 10 years ago. Is it all for not? Will I ever see my dream come true?

Sometimes I feel like throwing in the towel and settling for the truth: I'm no developer of games, merely a dreamer of games...

sigh

Embrace being jaded. Become one with your inner cynic.

Then get your butt in gear and work on it, just DO IT! Don't make excuses, don't leap into yet another project, work on it properly.

>>This dream has led me to many Game Creation Systems, Engines, and Programming Languages.


Sounds to me like you've been over complicating the game making process Frank.

Blitz is a Game Creation System, 3D Engine and a Programming Language.

Frank, it gets tough for anyone doing game development who really wants to achieve something. The reality of it is that the only ones who make it are the ones that don't give up. It's not guaranteed that you'll make it if you don't give up ... but IT IS GUARANTEED THAT YOU WON'T MAKE IT IF YOU DO GIVE UP!

If I were you I'd probably shrink my aspirations down until I nailed some simpler ones and grew my team a little.

I've had this debate with Antony around here before. His idea is why make something unless it's better than everything else out there ... that attitude is a quick way to make nothing. Completing each little step and actually releasing something that you can stand behind for a while and feel a sense of closure about is important. It's also important to go from conception to completion on something ... however small it is.

The way it's working for me:

Make free tiny but complete games ...
Make free larger but still small complete games ...

Gain publisher and artist ...

Make marketable small complete games ...

Improve marketable small complete games ...

Gain more people that want to work with me in numerous ways ...

Set sights on larger marketable games ...

It's just this cycle ... as I learn I knock out a project that represents another step in my career. The way many people work is as they learn they set their sites higher and higher without anything to show for all they've learned ... no complete projects along the way.

Basically, get back to work and just make something ... then you'll be a developer of games and not just a dreamer of games. You've had a lot of cool ideas and enthusiasm ... don't lose it now! Just make sure you create something useable. Maybe you should focus on the Ca$h Tournament again ... but make a simple FPS game for it and slowly build the game up more and more.

Well said Jeremy!

Don't quit FT! As Jeremy said, simplify and move on!

Not to add fuel to your anxiety but you are a notorious for feature creep :-(

Keep your eyes on the prize bro!

I've watched your attempts to make games through the time I've been here and I think I understand where you're hitting the hurdle: You aim too high and too complicated. it sounds simple but get something going that is hardcoded first.

I know it might go against your coding ethics or style to simply hard code something instead of attempting to make it as moddable as possible. It takes waaaaay too much time to make something that can be modded. You have to strike a fine balance between hardcoded (easy) and easily modifiable.

Try writing a small game with this in mind. Set small goals and fulfill them one by one. Go as far as to write them down on paper and try and fulfil them in series.

If you don't take anything else from this, take this: make it easier for yourself, man. Once you've got a game you like you can modify it to suit your needs. Just don't waste too much time trying to make it the most pluggable, addon-able, moddable piece of code you can possibly get. There's a lot to be said for hard-coding. If only in small measures.

Frank.


You've spent so long creating subsystems to your game, amazing ones at that, You have tallent.

Instead of creating several thousand cool projects, each with their own special function,


built your one, true, final game.

You have your script engine.

You have the majority of your FPS engine.

Dont overdo the GUI, which i see youre working on, because its a lot of work.

if the tools you use to create the levels/games are just a bit slow, that elongates production time, but not as much as trying to rewrite those tools to be faster, in most circumstances.

Go now, and build your kick-ass game, using the tools you have already built.

Also, dont rely on the community to do it for you. Keep working on it regardless, until it is done.

Don't give up Frank -
have a break from 'the big one' and write something dinky that you can complete in a couple of weeks - guaranteed to cheer you up. My tips for your main project (from a guy who has yet to complete a game :) )...

1. Don't worry about optimisation - I get too bothered about it and it can stop you from making rapid progress
2. Go with some simple scratch gfx to start - concentrate on playability.
3. Don't get so hung up on engines - get a game going and worry about super AI after.
4. Hang in there kid - you're one of the good ones!

Yeah, eveyone is on the right track. I started a big project when I first got Blitz. It's really cool but 6 months later I said sod this, I need to make some mini things first that demonstrate complete projects then use the knowledge and codebase to make slightly better ones and so on. Maybe I can return to the big project later, maybe not!

Cheer up "Frankie".

To be frank, no pun intended, you attempt your product to be all things to everyone. You get distracted on unnecessary subsystems. There is NO reason for you to use a script at all. You have to make decisions what your game entities will be, program them, and leave it at that. There are things your engine won't do, because it wasn't designed to, and that's fine. The problem, if I may be so bold, is you attempt to make creation systems, when you should be making decisions. Instead of making a "customizable gun system" just pay someone to make some freakin' guns for you, and it's done. Before you can make an editable game engine, you need to make a non-editable game engine.

My route is a little different. I have a successful product, my map editor, which I use to finance my next move. I wrote the editor because no good alternative existed, and I am really jealous of people like you who can reap the benefits of that, without being bogged down in editor code. Use my program or any other editor, create a bunch of entities, and you have a game engine.

If that design method is "too simple" for you, then you are just creating problems for yourself. Instead of putting effort into making your code excessively complex, focus on your game design and getting your media made.

It can be scary to finalize something in your engine, and say "that's how it's going to be", because you are worried it will be criticized for not having all the features. Just do it, and make the game you want, instead of trying to make an engine that has potential to be anything you want.

Take it easy, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar - ehm... Actually I am surprised, I thought Frank is an artifical intelligence entity with no emotions that wants to learn to understand mankind and their game-design behaviours. We learn something every day.

Rubber underpants and 10lb of live eels...this will not fail to cheer anyone up.

One man had his head already in the noose just as the paramedics burst in waving latex undies and a sloshing bucket of eels. 5 minutes later he married them both before being chased out of town under a hail of rocks and what have you....I know...I was...that man.

Remember to change eels regularly....Whoop! There she goes!

Halo's right. ( No, no, bear with me ;-) ) And his advice is, in this case, a lot more useful than a bunch of cliches like "seize the day", "get back up dust yourself up and start all over again" and all that junk I could offer. If you haven't yet learned that the reason you're no nearer is the convoluted design plan you get yourself tied up with before you start, then you won't do any better next time either. And if you know it, but you're not prepared to change it, the same applies.

There are only two ways, IMO, to get a game done. Either for money or for love. Both work, but in different ways. I see no evidence to suggest you're doing this for money, certainly you're not on the breadline for it, or you would have starved in ten years. So you're doing it for love, right? Nothing wrong with that, but you're not treating like something you love. Whenever you start on a game, you analyze it to death like you were a bank manager tearing a business plan to pieces. So you've immediately put yourself into the position of having to match your technical expectations. Where's your dream in all this? Leave the technical stuff to one side and write yourself a short, simple game design. Focus on the dream and not the technical stuff. Try winging it. Seriously, I've finished a lot of games and I never have a rigid game design. I have a lot of ideas, a few guidelines and the rest I make up as I go along. I'm sure many will tell you it's a bad practice, but you've tried the alternative and it didn't work. So give this a go. By having such a flexible design, you'll be able to overcome the obstacles you come across during the development ( regardless of whether your plan is rigid or flexible ) and be prepared to compromise or even just drop features. Maybe it won't come out as you dream it, ACCEPT THAT NOW! Getting one game finished will give you the confidence to get the second one finished. And the second one will be much better. Don't focus on the one perfect game. Focus on getting any one game done.

Finishing the first major game is like finishing your first major book. It seems a huge undertaking, but the second one never does. The first book I wrote, I struggled to get to 55,000 words and felt like it would never end. The second, I was up to 95,000 words before I knew what hit me. And the same applies to developing games. Once you've done it once, you set yourself free.

Hi Frank

Get Laid

Yes but please not another community project !! ;)

Some very good advice already given there. I'm sure a man of your undoubted talent and enthusiasm will one day produce a game to be proud of !

Halo is right, even though he turned his post into a shameless commercial. Whenever you go to make something moddable and pluggable - ask yourself if anyone is actually going to mod it or plug into it. Realistically. If they aren't, hard code it and move on.

I used to fall into that trap years ago but have since learned to recognized it and am able to avoid it now. It really helps when it comes to getting code out the door.

Don't turn into Antony. ;)

Frank, I sent you an email. Give me a reply when you get a chance.

i know just how you feel Frank... i've been toiling on this sub sim for over the past 2 years myself...

you're not alone... i know a few guys here who are putting a lot into something that they hope will do well...

hang in there man... these lil bouts of depression will pass...

--Mike

It's time someone took the contrary view here

Yes Frank, just give up. You're never going to finish your project. All those hours you've sunk into it could have been spent hiking - up in the fresh mountain air, with a buxom swedish girl for your guide and your trusty sherpa carrying the luggage behind. But instead you've spent all that time bathed in the sickly glow of a computer monitor, eating bad food, worrying about 'types', 'function calls' and becoming irradiated as well.

So I'll say it again Frank, just give up. It's pointless and you're never going to finish.

(now get mad at this post and finish a project)

That's right! Instead go out and spend $1,000 on a new piece of technology (say a VR headset) in hopes it might be cool :-) But remember that 1,000 is nothing when it comes to the shear dissapointment that VR seems to produce every time it rears it ugly little head.

If I had an extra 1,000 to blow somewhere, I know a few places that it could be used ;-)

If you're really depressed, the last thing you need is jolly successful types telling you how good and full of promise life is...what you really need is to see somebody worse off than yourself - that's sure to put the wind back in your sails!

Any volunteers?

(Nice try MadJack)

DH

Are you impugning my courage in taking technology to the bleeding bleeding edge?!!

Remember, I get to see my B3d efforts in 3d, you don't. Ha ha. ;-)

Not really, just razzing you a bit cause you spent so much on doing so ;-) What you do is your business although I wouldn't spend that much just to have my hands on it first (as in before the price drops because there is no demand for it).



LOL, yeah well I still get to see my efforts in 3d. They just cost 10 times less and have higher resolution ;-P

Although I applaud you for getting the VR device. What say we play some CS:Source? I am a huge sniper fan in Source, and since I will merely appear to be a pixel in your display then it might be a fun game (for me) ;-)

Just pulling on your rip cord a bit here Madjack (please don't take offense ;-P).

No offence taken - and I suspect you're right about the pixel in the distance thing.

I appreciate everyones input. The Blitz Community is one of a very few reasons I keep on going.

You see what a bit of General Topic Therapy can do?