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the shame of giving up

M

McWolke

Guest
  • Because developers, particularly novices, do not start small and plan to do something beyond their abilities.
  • Because most developers give up when they can't make what they want to and merely spend time to fix what's broken.
  • Because of lack of artistic abilities.
  • Because after some time of development, developers start to compare their work with others'. This foolish comparison leads to demotivation as they feel that their game doesn't stand a chance against other games.
these are the ones for my first main project i kinda gave up.. but right now i am thinking about restarting it with all the new stuff i learned but this time making it way smaller :/
but this: "merely spend time to fix what's broken" does not fit for me, i spend too much time on fixing stuff, at least trying, so i gave up on fixing it and abandoned the project, because i just couldn't fix it..
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
Pffft, I was loving this topic until the moment you guys fell into a discussion about pets, gigabytes of data and FrostyCat's gender. ^^"
I'm very liberal with ignoring useless members, so I'm still enjoying this topic :p Somtimes less is more, and it certainly applies to the number of posts in a topic x3

By the way, keep in mind that giving up isn't necessarily the same thing as failing. Failing is when you cannot meet your goals/objectives. Giving up is when you cease to work on something. If you never had an objective to finish something, you won't fail if you give up on it.

One thing I seem to do with all my big projects is to have way more plans than I end up putting into the game... I often have to chop off 30% of the planned ideas because they are too hard to implement, or wouldn't actually add anything to the game. So in one way, I'd end up only releasing 70% complete games. But... I typically set my goals to release a game with half the ideas I have for them, so I exceed the goals by 40% if I get 70% content instead of 50%. Basically, if you just can't meet your expectations, you've set them too high. Realize that in time and adjust them accordingly and things will go better... or go equally well but feel better. What's the difference, after all?

(70/50=1.4, so 40% is the correct figure)
 

Genetix

Member
Don't feel to bad, pretty sure i've got over 200 projects that will never be finished - some of them I only sunk an hour into... others... well some of them probably have a hundred + hours of development time. On the bright side, that time isn't wasted, it helped me learn and become a better developer.
 
S

StuffandThings85

Guest
It's not necessarily a bad thing. Plenty of ideas sound good in your head, then when you actually do it, it may not have the effect you wanted. Just learn from whatever mistakes you make and build on that, that will lead to much more polished projects in the future.
 
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piksil_demon

Guest
Somtimes less is more, and it certainly applies to the number of posts in a topic x3
aint that the truth, i just thought this would be a quick "nah its cool dawg" then the post would die, but everyone seems to have thier own advice and ways of getting around it. seems this post wont die for at least a few more days. i feel kinda accomplished by that :p
 

pixeltroid

Member
I haven't given up per se but I have lost some amount of steam, because of missing a tight deadline I set for myself. That was quite demotivating, and continuing work on it started to feel like a chore.

But after taking a break for the last three days, I feel refreshed. I have concluded that I missed my deadline due to some troubleshooting that needed to be done, and now I think it was worth it because a delayed product that works is better than a buggy product created on time.
 
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Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
But after taking a break for the last three days, I feel refreshed. I have concluded that I missed my deadline due to some troubleshooting that needed to be done, and now I think it was worth it because a delayed product that works is better than a buggy product created on time.
The cost triangle is worth keeping in mind for things like this... basically, you need to decide whether you should prioritize time (as in getting things done quickly and on time as opposed to slowly and/or overtime), budget (equivalent to time if you don't have a money budget - your budget is about time in that case), or functionality (how advanced/proper things are; low focus on functionality means things get crude but get done quick). If you know what you want to focus on before you start, it's much easier to make decisions about whether to prioritize getting done on time or getting stuff done properly when you run into unexpected roadblocks.
 

pixeltroid

Member
- your budget is about time in that case), or functionality (how advanced/proper things are; low focus on functionality means things get crude but get done quick).
Yes, my budget is time! I have a fulltime job and I cannot allot more than a few hours a day on my project. But I cannot let it drag on and on either.

I did initially start off with the intention to make a very simple/crude but quick game, but I realized, that while it may be "good enough" for a gamemaker noob, it wont really be worth anyones time or even a second look.

In order to give it substance, I kept adding in more features that I hadn't planned on earlier. It cost me time, but I see it as an investment, because if I implement them NOW, I wont have to worry about them later.
 
A

Anamik

Guest
I think you should not abandon the project considering that you put your precious time and effort in building something which you had dreamed of. However, in order to give yourself some rest, you can obviously take a leave for some days or you can start from the beginning with the same idea but executing it in a different manner so that you never feel like abandoning your project. I had started working on 3 other projects but I have postponed two of them in order to focus on only one at the moment. So, it becomes easier to finish the projects one after another. That does not mean I have abandoned them. I will work on those unfinished projects after finishing the current one.
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
I did initially start off with the intention to make a very simple/crude but quick game, but I realized, that while it may be "good enough" for a gamemaker noob, it wont really be worth anyones time or even a second look.
It's worth keeping in mind that most people judge a game's quality by their graphics, so you can get away with sloppy gameplay if the game looks consistent. (Consistent is the key word here, not quality - Markiplier LP'd Try. Die. Repeat. recently, and the graphics break a bunch of style/quality rules in my book... but they're consistent and that's what matters).

Be aware of feature creep, too. I've had to abandon several big projects after deciding to add new huge features when they were almost finished, and eventually doing this repeatedly introduced either serious bugs in the engine or things being imbalanced to the point where early-game challenges became trivialized. It's easy to keep adding to a project you like, but at some point you need to put down the foot and claim it's actually finished. Never decide to do huge changes to an almost-finished project, it's almost always a bad idea even if the changes are cool.
 
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