[Indies} Getting started

Hello.

I'm currently in a position where I've written 13 games in Blitz, 12 of which I've made profit from. Not a vast amount of profit, but anyway...

Apart from the infamous "last mile", the first mile, for me, is equally difficult. I was looking at the source code today from Bizzy's Spelling Bee. It totals over 12,000 lines of code in almost 250k of source.

At the start of a project, looking up at something so huge... I can't help thinking "I can't do this any more!".

Bizzy will be appearing on a fair number of portals very soon... so maybe this'll give me the kick up the arse that I need. Until then, what do you do when you just can't be bothered with it any more?

Well the real question is, are you still enjoying it? It beats my dayjob... at least you are your own boss and don't have to go thye the career development BS I have to. On the other hand, there's a lot more pressure on you as I've got that guaranteed paycheck.

The trouble is, when you turn a hobby into a job, it starts feeling like work! Do you have a 'dream' game you want to develop someday?

My view of your situation is that you started out at square 1 and then went through a lot of work and now somehow it seems like you've ended up back where you started. That obviously makes it seem like there is `no hope` and that all your efforts are for nothing. Without taking inventory of all the things your grateful for about what you've achieved, and without seeing how you've grown and are progressing in the bigger picture, you would just end up feeling depressed about it all. Maybe if your efforts to make these games have left you having to start over each time, perhaps moving toward some kind of `engine` or some kind of `game creation` thing would suit you, where you can not only make progress in writing the game, but also then use everything you've developed towards the much quicker development of more titles in future.

Making fresh code from scratch for a very specific game and therefore hardcoding most of it can be efficient to execute but not efficient to develop.

Also, my question to you is, is there something that programming prevents you from achieving?

Yeah GfK you must have lots of reuseable code from the last project.

Anyway regarding the hobby thing, that's what I got Blitz for, to make games as a hobby BUT I quickly realised that to make a half decent game and not just a tiny little unfinished game demo I actually needed to work full-time on it and get someone else to do the graphics and sound. So I thought well if I'm gonna work full-time on a game it needs to make some money. Then I had to change my ideals from what I wanted to make to something that I would still enjoy making yet would sell and make some money. I may be in a minority here, but I actually enjoyed Bejewelled and Jewel Quest and that's why I made a match-3.

nyway making a finished game (as you know) is maybe 30% fun and 70% slog especially all the bug testing, making work on as many systems as possible, wrapping, marketing, sales crap etc. Dunno what I'm saying really. I think that making games is not a "dream" job, it's still a job and needs hard work and determination, but there are definitely good things like sitting in your garden when it's sunny :-)

So anyway what you gonna make next, that's the real question? Are you inspired or are you gonna bomb out?... I'm I correct that your latest game was "yours" and the others were contract jobs?

Yeah seeing your game on some portals will make you feel good and want to push on (if you're like me).

Making my first commericial game (I've also made 4 free games and a framework with 3 mini-games) was really exciting but it didn't do mega well and was a hard learning curve. The others were "easier" and the 4th, Holiday Bonus was a blast (artist was great to work with) but super intense due to the timescale I worked too. This latest one is pretty good fun but there's a lot to do still...I really think it takes quite a few games to get into your stride, at least you've got that experience.

Some of the other activities associated with development. Refactoring and generalization of code (to improve its readability and reuseability), Documentation, Design. That kinda stuff. After a week of doing that your sanity is going to be screaming for some "proper" programming work again.

I write a lot of apps for companies and sometimes I really can not be bothered when it comes to starting a fresh project. Sitting there with a blank form, planning how it'll look and how it's all going to work, etc.

Also I've lost count the number of times I've fired up Delphi just to think "ugh! I can't be bothered today" and closed it down again.

We all get stages where we're just not in the mood / right frame of mind to push on. Most of the time if I push on and make a real effort to start / continue I'll get back in the flow. The other times I just have to stop and do something else entirely. I've even given up programming at one stage for over 3 months because the bug for it just vanished.

I do find though that most of the time if I push on to the point where a project starts taking shape, then I'm ok with the rest.

If a project doesn't present a challenge then that can be a right bore from beginning to end. Personally for me I love it when I have to do something I've never done before and I'll happily get stuck in til I've found a solution.

Sounds like good old burnout. Often happens when you've exerted a huge amount of energy to finally get a project finished.

Personally, there's not much I can do about it when it happens to me. I just wait for inspiration to strike again.

As you know, big10p, my last project nigh on killed me. I slacked off a bit in the early days, but by the end I was doing 16 hour days regularly and back on sleeping tabs.

Its kinda nice to have it all done and be able to take a break for a while. :)

When I really couldn't work on it anymore, I just stopped working in it for a while. With Pogo Fred, I had 9 months to finish it and once or twice I decided to have a week off completely, as in I wouldn't even think about it (if possible).

As a uni project I spose I was lucky to always have the fear of failure pushing me forward because I'm pretty sure I'd still be "working" on it now had it been for fun alone. This was my first blitz game and I had absolutely no idea what to expect. I think it's around 20,000 lines of code and had you of told me that at the start, I'd think you are nuts ;)