What games did you start and not finish?

I've finished a total of 1 game in my blitz lifespan. That was a cheezy 3d pong game. But I have a much larger collection of games not finished.

Here so far is my list games never finished

Proc Game 80% done
This was a tank/doom style game I started making for a procidural game programming competition and decided to make it into a full game. Yeah right!

Blitz Company 60% done
This was a turn based advance wars clone that took so freaking long to code that I just gave up. I realize now that I will never tackle a game that huge in scope. I spent a total of a year working on it.

Hover Car Game 10%
This was just a lame ass wipeout style game without the quality or the style.

AI Bot Bash 30%
I still may finish this game. It's a ai coding game with robots that fight. Can you say original...not!

GADS Graphic Adventure Developement Kit 60%
This was a Myst Exile Style game developement kit for Blitz 3d. It was intended to use a simple scripting language for defining how the game plays. It was a big turd!

I'm sure there's a few more in there I forgot. Anyway, tell me about your list. I'd like to hear your tales of misguided game developement.

just the sub thing... that's my only unsatisfied obsession...

--Mike

That's just made me think. We should have a best unfinished game contest!!

>Blitz Company 60% done
>This was a turn based advance wars clone that took so ?
>freaking long to code that I just gave up. I realize now
>that I will never tackle a game that huge in scope. I
>spent a total of a year working on it.

I've spent over 2 years on Naked War (same genre). And it's still not (quite) finished. It seems to be paying off though, we're getting a fantastic response those playing it.

I never got to finish the Blitz3D version of Sticky Balls, I eventually passed it on to another programmer so it did get finished although it was never releases.

I've probably got another dozen or so unfinished projects but they were only ever intended as experimental prototypes.

I have 2 games that I did not finish. But I'd say they were on delay rather than abandoned.

That's the spirit.

I spent around 1.5 years writing a WYSIWYG 2D and isometric point-and-click game development system using AMOS on Amiga. Had all the editing in place and a lot of the scripting language was complete.

Due to the obscene amount of code it was taking minutes to compile and the AMOS editor was really slow to respond to anything due to the large code size. AMOS had no GUI related commands so I was painstakingly creating fairly detailed 2D interfaces which was taking a lot of time, as well as becoming increasingly tedious as I added more and more features. It also became evident that AMOS and the Amiga wasn't quick enough to do what I really wanted, plus the Amiga was dying, Blitz Basic was released etc. I probably had another 8-12 months to go, but I decided to cut my losses. Basically, the computer and the language were the main limitations which killed the project though.

ive got about 12 projects started and not finished... I suck

OK, I'm entering Iron Fist which can be found near the bottom of this page:

http://www.greyaliengames.com/games.php

You can also see that Jewel of Orion isn't finished either.

I got DOS version of jewel or orion too that was never finished in C++ years ago. Also an unfinished platform game made in C++.

Going back further than that, there would be ooooh a ton of Blitz Basic 2 and Assembly games on the Amiga. Then before that Spec, BBC, C64 etc...

The only game that springs to mind was a Football Management game ( US Football ) which I only spent a couple of weeks on, before I decided to stop work on it. I stopped because I was having problems with IGlass and didn't fancy writing my own GUI. And with the release of EA's NFL HeadCoach ( which looks great ) I'm glad I did, as it would have made it much harder for me to get attention for mine, which would probably have been completed around now.

Only ever did 2 projects in Blitz to warrent a "demo" status, one being a (poor) clone of a 2d game I played long back and wanted to mimic, but fell short of my expectations.
(couldn't figure out how to have enemies respect eachs others position and not overlap for the life of me back then)

Another one was my take on a Space Invaders clone for one of BlitzCoder's competitions, I think mine won best-2d, so I guess it was decent, got the underlying game complete, but no menu system at all, was plain' ol' text.

But hey, least I did make a couple things playable, commercial or not, I'm a hobbyist, 'tis what I do.

Regarding incompleted stuff though, maybe a billion map-editors I never finished, as well as a couple 3d demos I produced when learning B3d.
(which were crap to say the least)

Although I must say I haven't touched Blitz3d in the longest (isn't even installed on this PC right now actually..), been waiting on the Max3d module here as I want to toy around with the hardware effects everyone else wants to, see what kinda neat effects can be created.

I may realease most of my projects source codes to the public so people can learn from them. I encourage anyone else who has anything worth while to do so.

Well, I've finished lots of little game but never a game that could be sold commercially or as shareware.

How about how many games have you finished?

I may have 2 unfinished games, but I've completed 7 games, 6 in Blitz. So my completion to failure ratio ain't too bad.

Well, let's see:

There was Blitz Chess (talking chess game), my talking Star Trek game, Pure Magic (a text adventure), Hobbit text adventure, LoTR text adventure, some FPS, several RPGs - oh, my football management game, oooh and Police at Large (a GTAIII type game) - I started more than one Elite-type game. Plus probably quite a few more.

Yeh, I'm totally bitchin' at not finishing stuff. In fact, I am too important to finish stuff. Why finish anything when you can just cast it away and start something new?

I might even just cast away my Blitz Oblivion game - just toss it away - format the hard-drive and toss it in the bin.

Only project that ive gone far into was a top-down, online shooter. It was pretty good, but it had way too many security problems and was a mess to work with, then I got BlitzMax and ditched it.

Nobody was interested. If I can't make money then its not worth my time.







Finished (and published) Games:

Hole in One
Double Top
Arcade Chess
Operation Overkill
Arcade Bowling
Maxx GP
Maxx Trucks
Maxx Powerboats RC
Tennis Ace
Par Fore

Current project is tippety-top secret. Learned through bitter experience to keep my mouth shut.

[edit] Oh, I started and ditched a new darts game too. Honest reason for that is I just couldn't be arsed.

So GfK you like making sports/sim games then...bets on for the next game be sporty.

I've done four golf games in the last ten years (two PC, two Amiga) - I absolutely despise golf and I always have. I love racing games but MaxxGP fell way short of my own expectations (silly timescales). Darts is fun - used to like 180 on Amstrad CPC464 etc. Everything I've done in the past, I've done because its been asked of me and proverbial carrots have been well and truly dangled (in the form of cash).You couldn't be further from the truth. I'm doing stuff that *I* want to do, now.

I thought that an emulator would be easy ..... after seven months in still tinkering with it, although I get great response from users so that alone was worth it.

I made a pacman clone but with extra 3d modes and scrolling background mode , took 3 months its finished all except for pac doesnt speed up during power up.... one day soon.

I made a space astroids type game in DOS.... still not finished, needs attack formations and bonus levels to add some interest, but DOS is so dead anyway is it worth it.

Know im starting on my mother project, lightning basic compiler, yes I promise I will finish it guys and girls.

have a look at my site to download any of the above mentioned

all of them...

I hate playing any sort of sports games (Except Virtua Tennis on the Dreamcast which is awesome), especially football ones. It must be torture having to code one.

This thread got me thinking. I've been a Blitzer for something like 16 years now... and it's only in the last few weeks I've even begun writing a game (a Turrican / Air Buster hybrid).

I wrote more games on my ZX-81 than I ever have in Blitz!

All my Blitz stuff has been applications. Mostly multimedia applications, but a few other utilities too (my AmigaDOS module hunter, which read an entire floppy into memory then let me look for samples and modules was a particular favorite - I was amazed I could do device access from within Blitz. My ciaTrackerLib is still a firm favorite, too). Even today, my biggest BlitzMax project is a (gasp) multimedia application (and I'm doing it at my paid job, too!).

I bought Blitz Plus recently just to write this game in, so I'm aiming not to let the project die. Right now, it's nothing more than a tile / map editor.

I've had plenty of game plans over the last 8 months fizzle, but that was a matter of scale and skill: writing a game is somewhat different to writing an application.

So, here's an adjunct question: how do you keep a game project alive, even when you're getting sick of it?

The closest i came to creating something half decent was my
freelancer/elite clone "Sol" - but sadly thats long dead now
too...should have picked something simpler..but it was
interesting to develop.. Ill probably have another shot at
this project when max3d shows up....should be easier to
manage with oopy features of bmax...

Plushy Pusher.
It's "on hold" due to lack of time and no help from a 3D coder. Will probably start anew when bmx3d comes out.

On a related note - I've become quite superstitious about worklogs - every game I've started a worklog for I've not finished while those I've restrained myself from writing a worklog I have finished.

> how do you keep a game project alive, even when
> you're getting sick of it?

Don't procrastinate using the Internet :)

I've been programming mostly for fun for ages, first learnt using basic on the spectrum and learning from the mistakes in the coding examples, I'd made little sprites and never bothered doing anything like a game back then because I got too annoyed by the way you had to code on it.

Later on the amiga I got amos and I did a few mini things like bits of platform adventures and swiv style shoot-em-up and a little attempt at a graphic adventure point and click thing, all of which never amounted to much, I gave a little help with a menu system for a freeware football management sim so that it could have a graphical office room instead of a menu list.

Then I got blitz on the amiga and played around with making shoot em up stuff, lots of starting, still no finishing.

currently I have a mac and blitzmax on which I've started:

a boardgame with sliding tiles, which is so far working ok, maybe I can actually finish a human only playable version although I'd like to do computer ai and network playability to it. I'm keeping my hopes up they'll be in it eventually.

a very bad reattempt at a graphic adventure game, of which I've given up impressively early, even by my standards.

my most successly and progressive attempt so far (well I've been working on it for the longest time without giving up, and I keep coming back to it) is a game engine and editor for a 2D freeroaming roleplaying action game, kinda zelda / secret of mana style. I've made a map editor which lets you place tiles on layers, set the players starting location, exits and entrances from and to maps, barriers and water or hazard tiles. The engine can load the maps and you can move the player around freely and through exits onto other maps.

I'm just not very good at finishing stuff, I'm probably the ultimate champion at starting and not finishing things.

I think I'm going to sit in a corner and cry now, before sitting up for hours in the middle of the night programming or dreaming of bits of code that I'll quickly wake up and note down.

attack of the zombie thread.

Anyway, just realised that I've finished MORE game sin Blitz than I've left unfinished! wow.

I'm not giving you guys my ideas!!! =]

Uhh, almost all of them. Basically all of them due to pressure that they weren't gonna be successful. However, right now, since I have Vista, I decided to concentrate more on business apps and/or boring software. I MAY crank out a game or two here and there, but I'm looking to doing more on the order of industrial/office based stuff. I'm considering on what direction I go with this.

I always finish what I start. Time scales might move about a bit, but I always finish.

Virtual Biddie
Virtual Evil
Raz's Arcade 2
Baseball Z

These were all in Click'n'Create and I intend to (one day) redo them in Blitz.

4 games, 4 games finished :°)

@ENAY
>what about "ESCAPE FROM REALITY" ? Will you finish it one day ?? or a demo ??

If you want more success, triple your failure rate - Thomas Wilson.

I'm 2 for 2 ATM. So I reckon I need at least 6 more failed projects until the next success. Of course if you count hobby projects, the number of unfinished projects is quite substantial.

Final Fantasy Adventure clone. I got it so you can kill monsters, then I realized I didn't want to remake this entire game.




A RPG where you are a zombie. I made it so you can walk around, fight simple battles, then I just stopped. Of course I made a huge world editor with real time zooming, multi layered tiles, sub-maps, flood-fills etc.




I has this crazy idea for a typing/spaceship game called charred universe. You control a letter of the aphabet and you shoot symbols at other ships. The controls are set up so your fingers have to be in typing position, and you get other letters by beating typing tests... each letter is a unique ship.




I also made my own languge that atomatically converts to blitz3d and compiles... It managed to convert object oriented code into blitz3d code. It was buggy though, I don't know why I was even making it... This was before blitzmax. I had wayyyyy too much free time. Code looked like this:

graphics 640,480,0,2

object alien
	number x,y
	image pic

number x
x=5
print x

image i
i'create(30,50)
setcolor 130,130,130
oval 0,25,30,25
setcolor 0,200,0
oval 5,0,20,25
i'grab 0,0
clearscreen

number l
alien a
cycle l,1,10
	a=alien'new
	a'x=l*20
	a'y=rand(400)
	a'pic=i


cycleeach a
	a'pic'draw a'x,a'y

waitkey
end

And I'm calling my other playable ones "done". Meaning they are actual games, and someone might maybe be able to figure out how to play them.

Nice feat!

Clear the cache in your browser to avoid dead threads ;-)

Heh....Space Harrier Reloaded....i swore to everyone i'd finish that game by the end of 2003!!!!!

That was one of the first Blitz games I saw and I went WOW.

Pictures speak a thousand words (and I've deleted a load of crap also).

What is morphlings?

And oh if presenting larger screenshots you also could have shown it all without hiding some games above the scrollbar. But maybe this is your pron games section... ;O)

Games not finished:
Hunted (still in development)
Elite Multiplayer (still in development)
Star Flight 2000 (due to programming language errors)
Fury Squadron (on hold)
Necrolan (Canned)
Pray (still in development)

Games finished:
Tile Cascade
Warzone (Space combat) (published)
Wizard warz

Of course there are gigabytes of prototypes and test samples but nothing concrete.

lost count :(

Haven't been all that big on making games in the past but am aiming more toward it now. I did write a fruitmachine in AMOS Basic which was more or less complete feature-wise, and later added sound effects, but saying it was complete basically is saying it didn't look very polished. I did release and sell 1 copy of an deluxe-paint-like paint program written in AMOS. Had a few nice tools but nowhere near as developed as Dpaint, and quite limited by AMOS.

I did start on a scorched tanks/earth type game in BlitzBasic on the Amiga, focussing on making the Mildred graphic library which I suppose you could say was released and to some degree complete, but its features were meant to be for use in making that game which never really happened. I only got as far as making a scrolling landscape.

I did make a `worm` game some time ago, it was pretty basic, but you got to gobble up the numbers on-screen. I also did a 2d tron game, very basic, but at least you could play and die, which is basically what happened quite easily.

Tried to start on a blobby-objects game but that proved difficult to visualize and needed a decent level editor which I am sort of working on now, so might revisit that in the near future.

Probably started and dropped several game engines.

I think that's about it. I have never completed anything in Blitz so far other than the graphics library, which was almost entirely assembly language.

LOL, I have a few finished games of course ... but probably about 15 started and never completed projects.

Absolutely. And awesome.

Well, after 53 version releases I suppose it grew into a pretty nice system, although I'd do a lot of things differently nowadays. Thankfully Blitz has moved on from having to do your own blitter routines. But that said I am working on software rendering routines for my current engine to allow things like backing stores, `offline rendering`, superbitmap generation and `paint program` stuff that you can't so easily so with the graphics card.

lol @ Indiepath's screenshots.

If you're not delivering to a contract, and it's not your primary source of income, what's the problem with having incomplete / binned projects? You can only learn from your experience and use that to move forwards. Many indie developers will probably die before they release a title, but if they had fun along the way, who cares?

The main thing about projects is after working on it for a while you find a better way of coding it so it gets 'rewritten' this is all part of the learning curve.

Cygnus and I did a cool fun racing game with great physics and AI. We didn't finish it because we felt the technology avaliable in B3D wasn't up to making it as good as we wanted.






http://www.kineticrealities.com/RacerM.zip

And there's the FMC vehicle combat game that we never really tried to finish but made quite a cool little demo with our early experiments with Ogre3D and blitzmax.





http://www.kineticrealities.com/FMP.zip

And a little Aerial Antics test done with SOW, which is a discontinued Ogre wrapper. It's quite fun, and if you try it you can press P for a new player to drop in the canyon.



http://www.kineticrealities.com/Jetpac.zip

Nice, and I agree there is progress and learning gained through the experimentation so it's not all a loss.

Every project will develop one throw away prototype - whether they intend to or not. - Fred Brooks.

*sheds a tear*

Good times coding those!

The racer is defo still a good play, go on, you know you want to!

http://www.fragland.net/screenshots.php?id=1625