When is enough... enough?

[n0rtygames]

Hey all,

Something I've always wondered about other peoples perspectives on... popped up a lot in my head today after another watch of Indie Game: The Movie (bit pretentious, but a rather good watch). We've probably all been there - you've spent weeks, months, in some cases years on your project and then one day - you're browsing the forum, or just reading a games site and you see another game.

You immediately do what anyone doing anything artistic does and go "Wow, that looks better than my game!". I used to find this was the case with pretty much anything I did. If it was artwork, I'd find an appreciation in someone elses smooth lineart and think that I just HAD to do better. If it was music, I'd hear the timing errors and the flaws in my own tracks, but everyone elses would sound new and refreshing.

With games, it might be a bullet pattern that I didn't think of - or a different HUD layout... in fact any number of things! I guess it has something to do with familiarity with your own work.

It can be quite a vicious cycle. There might be times you see someone elses work, find it better - then you push yourself to do better (always admirable) - then something else comes along and it's the same feeling of having to progress yourself all over again. Then there's the ones that always seem to ooze awesome no matter what - such as Rozyrg's titles.

So, I've kinda reached the point now where I've had to stop myself fiddling and just release my current project. What was the important breaking point for the rest of you guys where you just went "Right.. enough!" and decided that's what sequels or other titles are for?

Answers on the back of a dodgy £50 note please.....

Cheers!
Steve

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Have you ever played Mushihimesama Futari 1.0/1.01? Futari wouldn't be considered as good a game as it is if those were the only versions. 1.5 and Black Label were huge, huge improvements.

Chronoblast is going to have some sucky elements; accept it and just remember to make a note to add it into a revision change or the next game, etc. You can't catch every bad game element; I imagine a lot of shmup revisions and tweaks come after the game's been played by people for a while and have gotten a chance to get a feel for the game.

As long as the game's playable and doesn't immediately scream KUSOGE at you, it'll already be better than 90% of the indie XBL games released.

[mice]

My thoughts:
At this stage of your game I think you should listen to the feedback you get from others instead of criticising it yourself.
Some of the feedback won't be in line with your original design/thoughts and can be dismissed but other comments are important and might need some work.
When the relevant feedback(ers) gets silent, you're done.

...such as Rozyrg's titles.

People like him should be inspiring but in his case he's soo much better at everything, You just want to lie down and die.

[n0rtygames]

Chronoblast is going to have some sucky elements

Nonsense! It'll be the best thing ever and anyone who says it even remotely sucks is clearly lying.

But seriously, yeah - I'm well aware of this and to be honest so long as it doesn't *completely* suck - I'm entirely happy. I was just kinda curious to hear from others when they'd hit the same sort of wall with their projects and pushed through it.

To be honest, most of the feedback I've had thus far has been pretty positive - just a couple of borderline peer review issues that need sorting and a little tweaking of various collision zones

People like him should be inspiring but in his case he's soo much better at everything, You just want to lie down and die.

*slow agreeing nod*

[BPzeBanshee]

Now you know more or less how I've been feeling about GMOSSE for the last 11 months and 7 days. Oh hey it's ready for release....but there's just that one bit of tinkering that needs work, and then it turns to a long-winded string of events and breakages.

Hopefully it should be out before next year though!

[Ebbo]

I feel you bro.

Our game has been in development for about 4-5 years now. Since it always has been "just" a hobby for us, it doesn't really matter when the game is finished as long as it's something I can proudly stand behind... Or atleast that's what I want to believe. Sometimes the glacial pace of our project is rather disheartening especially when you see other people *coughrozyrgcough* doing amazing things in the same time frame.

School projects are already keeping me busy. Now we're talking about moving together with my girlfriend and we're eventually going to have a family of our own... Things are going to change. Currently I feel that if we don't finish this project in 1-2 more years it will never be done. We've gone through this subject many times with my friend, yet ultimately we're still determined to finish things properly. But we've also decided to cut lots of stuff we had originally planned just to make things manageable. There is only so much one can do. As BareknuckleRoo said, that is something you'll just have to learn to accept.

Anyway I'm glad you made this thread so I had an excuse to vent some of my frustration in a form of incoherent rambling

[n0rtygames]

lol, perhaps we should ask a mod to kindly rename this thread "Rozyrg - Who he is and why he's better than everyone else"

Definately have to agree with you on feature cuts. I had all sorts of scoring mechanics and in fact, I was receiving a lot of praise from people for the fact that I was clearly putting an emphasis on scoring and decision making within the game. Unfortunately I've had to condense the game down and remove some of these features just because it needs to get released. A lot of attention has been drawn to it (It's Sined's fault!) to the point where people are going "Is it done yet?"

For me it's a little more intense (psychotically so) than a hobby I guess. I don't expect a shooter to sell particularly well and being a self deprecating English person means that I automatically humble myself and will openly admit that there are probably better shooters out there that people can spend their 80 MSP on! But, it needs to be done so I can get my head back in to my larger projects and get those rolling to fund my incredibly nerdy habits. Plus I'm masochistically looking forward to seeing someone with enough spare time 1CC it and tell me it was far too easy

Consider getting someone fresh on your team who's impartial and have them give you a butt kicking in a google document or something. Set deadlines - but try not to kill yourself with them!

[neorichieb1971]

More than likely the dev himself will be the only one comparing. i've been here for years and I've never seen one devs work being compared to anothers.

Best idea is stay blind until your game is finished. At least then your game is your game and not influenced/contaminated by other peoples work.

[n0rtygames]

Best idea is stay blind until your game is finished. At least then your game is your game and not influenced/contaminated by other peoples work.

Isn't that a really hard thing to do though? Games will always be influenced by titles that came before them and other titles in development.

"Oooh that's a good idea... that mechanic looks fun!" etc etc.

[neorichieb1971]

If your copy catting I suppose you would find it hard. If you invent something you have no material to copy from.

[nasty_wolverine]

Worst is when people claiming to help you, procrastinate... or just be passive aggressive.

Last year December I finally sat down and started writing a basic shmup engine. Just showed friends a little demo of what was done by Feb (player ship vs a static boring enemy in a scrolling bg), one programmer and an artist said they want in too. The programmer guy said he would do content manager and sound, but hasnt coded a single line of code yet, worse he didnt even try compiling!!! The artist needs alot of references to do a single sprite and has produced none so far... So basically i spent all the time i got on weekends or nights after holding down a job and a gf(takes up more time then some one would think)...

I set original deadlines at demo around last july and shipit on december... now i am thinking it will only be demo ready by july next year..

So moral of the story... if you have procrastinating helpers.. get rid of them quick and find people who actually help... if you cant, dont wait and just do it on your own... and set your self reasonable deadlines...

[Kaiser]

Worst is when people claiming to help you, procrastinate... or just be passive aggressive.

Last year December I finally sat down and started writing a basic shmup engine. Just showed friends a little demo of what was done by Feb (player ship vs a static boring enemy in a scrolling bg), one programmer and an artist said they want in too. The programmer guy said he would do content manager and sound, but hasnt coded a single line of code yet, worse he didnt even try compiling!!! The artist needs alot of references to do a single sprite and has produced none so far... So basically i spent all the time i got on weekends or nights after holding down a job and a gf(takes up more time then some one would think)...

I set original deadlines at demo around last july and shipit on december... now i am thinking it will only be demo ready by july next year..

So moral of the story... if you have procrastinating helpers.. get rid of them quick and find people who actually help... if you cant, dont wait and just do it on your own... and set your self reasonable deadlines...

I went through this before but with a doom mod. So basically the mod was intended to become a complete game at one point, I worked with an artist/musician. He completed the soundtrack, some of enemy graphics and the entire weapon set but after that, he bailed out, leaving me on thin ice.

The worst part is that he was constantly convincing me to stop the mod because there is no chance I will finish it, but you know what, i'm about to wrap it up, at least the basics in December. So yeah basically I filled the graphics/content void all by myself, although because it was a mod, I could resort to other people's gfx. So the point is, no matter how you have to do it, just do it by yourself.

Note: The mod was in dev since mid-2009, drama ensued in mid-2011/early 2012.

At this point that's when I started to learn pixel-art and modelling, to ensure that such idiocy with graphics won't happen again.

[ninn]

Just a quick reply, cant read the other answers:

One of the first good tips I got on digital editing (was similar to your question: "help me, I never ever finish my photoshop files") was the following:
If you finish (sign) the work, it is done - do not touch it again. It is finished

It is just like a oil-painting. You can fiddle with it as long as you wish, but as soon as you sign it, it is finished - you must not edit it again. [although it would be so easy to rework it just a little bit ]

Sign your code / music /pattern / sprites [in your head] and then save some time.