Ok, here''s a sorta quick poll for everyone: what do you consider to be the hardest part about designing a game? I personally lack patience, I want it all done now, right now if not yesterday Half the time I''m drained from working on things, so I play with ideas in my head. They never really collude very well, so I end up bouncing ideas off other people in an attempt to get their thoughts, cause once I get that, I can make thoughts on their thoughts.. and start up my whole creative process But by myself I''m so disorganized it isn''t funny.. lol. So this is your chance to say what you most hate about yourself when it comes to game design, and maybe get some help/counciling on your problem (or be laughed at by the rest of us.. hehe ) J

The thing that gets me is what to include and what not to include in your game. When you first think of a game you start putting in a ton of features and then you wonder why no one else thought of it? As soon as you start coding, then designing, and drawing the graphics you start to figure out hmmm...maybe they thought of it, but damn it''s hard to implement!

I would also say lack of knowledge. You play a game see a cool feature and say I''d like to implement that (this is about the coding side, the side I try and do) but can''t freakin figure it out. Just makes you feel dumb, like why can someone else do it but not me, am I just stupid?



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00000010 - My 2 bits
"Smile life gets worse, and then you die!" - Optimist

Oh, it would have to be when you know in your heart an idea is good, but nobody else can understand until you literally draw it out in front of them. Dammit! That''s what the artist is for!

=)

This post was brought to you by the letter "Land", and the number "Fish!"

I often fool myself into believing I have a complete design in my head, when in reality all I have is a general idea and a lot of assumptions. It feels complete, but it's not. And therein lies the difficulty of designing a game. There's a lot of little details to be sketched out, and by specifying those details the idea matures into something more concrete. By adding, ammending and removing little details you contribute to the whole of the game. When designing a new game it's a good idea to work in a way that promotes this kind of flexibility.

For instance, I recently attempted to write a formal design document for the game I'm working on. It seemed to work at first, but I later noticed that "formal" does not go well with "initial design". So I bought a little sketchbook and am using this to jot down whatever little details I can think of. Once I'm done with this I plan to use it as a starting point for a formal design document.

Edited by - chronos on June 8, 2000 4:07:36 AM

My bad flaw is after I have a great idea for a game and I write it out and I start coding it. After about 1,000 lines of code and 500 compiles with my computer constantly crashing because I leave out one simple detail like forgetting to change an integer somewhere..I start dropping the whole project..and start up the next one.. and the cycle continues... I guess that''s why I redesigned my web site about 6 times with nothing really on it =)

I found out how to organize. Get a 50-75 page notebook and keep your ideas in it... whatever pops up.. just write it out and leave it. Post-It notes work great as cheap index tabs.

People''s feedback is great, but when I try to talk to my wife about my latest programming project.. she justs nods and has the I don''t know what you are talking about stare. (DOH!).. I guess that''s why I hang around game programming message boards.

Heh. You get it from your wife? I get it from every one around me; even the people are doing comp'' sci at uni...

One of the trickiest parts is to make the game fun but not to complex,(or simple), and understanding how people will react to details and story. Sometimes a very small, and easy to implement, detail makes the diffrerence to whether the game is playable or not.

Yeah I hate when I show my progress in game programming to my dad and he just says something like

'I guess that's kind of neat how that guy runs around like that. '

Meanwhile there's like thousands of lines of code and weeks of programming behind it.

Edited by - Nazrix on June 8, 2000 3:54:28 AM

1) Patience (i want it to be great NOW, NOW, NOW!)

2) dealing with the loads and loads of ideas that come up, what to include, what not to ...

Oh yeah... and the huge amount of time that goes into a project ...

Tell me about it Nazrix!

I showed my parents the game I have been making for months and I got the same thing. One day I am going to tell them that I am going to be doing this for a living, hah