Still hardly any games, why entity systems suck, and why 4k is good

General Discussions
#41

Ah, I misunderstood, sorry.

Total agreement with you on both counts: for here, that’s the problem, and ship it, don’t talk about it is the essence of game making.

That’s because you’re a NIH zealot :P.

My re-write of Amstrad CPC 464 Roland On the Ropes used IIRC 5 discrete entities, and it saved time doing it that way even with so few (because I re-used one of the tiny ES’s on the wiki I linked above).

Anything larger than a 1985 Amstrad game (which was probably written in BASIC) and an ES should be making significant savings on development time.

If anyone reading this doesn’t find that happen … then you’ve missed the point, or you’re doing it wrong - or you just suck at Game Design and need to find yourself a game designer who cares.

#42

I agree, except that Java is definitely not the only issue. Programmers are the issue.

#43

The good thing about the limitation of 4k (or the classic JavaME Mobile-Phone games where I come from)
is that the canvas of creating content is smaller.

Too much freedom ends up in putting the stakes too high.

In Java4k, I normally make a graphical prototype of some sort. Doing so, the first results push my imagination,
(what would be fun to happen and to do in this gameword…)

And then (feeling that the limitations come closer) Im forced to put in
gamemechanics and creativity much earlier than in an unlimited scenario.

With no limits, the features start piling up. Like a boy writing his Santa-WishList. More and more, to the point where the project feels so huge that its
demoralizing, or simply too much work to carve everything into shape.

In a limited scenario its much easier to cut down on the feature list, and concentrate on polishing and refining the remaining parts.

#44

#45

Source?

#46

I drew it.

#47

That explains it.

Kev

#48

Riven, your amazing.

#49

Pretty damn true, actually. :cranky:

#50

It’s quite genius!

EDIT: Ahhh! The image is gone! :’(

#51

I am the first to admit I’m relatively clueless :slight_smile: But I think it puts me right in the middle of that graph.

Cas :slight_smile:

#52

Disturbingly true I suspect. It’s worrying just how much I can get done for a LD 48-hour competition when I’ve just got my “hack it now” hat on - sometimes more than I’ve got done during weekends for several months.

I wonder if that also explains the Ballmer Peak.

652×592 91.3 KB

#53

We should have online sessions where java game programmers can “learn” how to write bad code, and get their game running asap.

Who will volunteer?

#54

I think the idea in the back of your head should be that you will never publish this code, nobody but you will ever attempt to grasp it or even glance at it. Given that new found lack of imaginary prying eyes, you’ll find yourself grinning at code without feeling the urge to refactor it to oblivion behind one or two abstraction layers. This is where the Flash programmers reside and they are happy. It’s a good thing.

#55

I don’t think anything but bitter experience can teach that. If you like programming, it’s tough to really internalize that nobody cares about your code. I think we all like to take pride in our work - and this is good! - but the mental shift happens when you stop seeing it as “programming” and start looking at it as "making ".

#56

It was meant as a very deep sarcastic joke :slight_smile:

#57

Well yeah, I knew you weren’t suggesting that in earnest :wink:

#58

I’ve shipped one large success (FunnyCall), one small success (SingSong), one failure (Ioki), and one non-game failure (home automation scripting platform). Only SingSong was Java. At the same time I have three major projects that are remain unfinished. On the “bright” side, I have a dozen finished OSS projects, about five of which I would say are very useful. I’m doing this for fun, so I don’t mind branching off on some tangent or just stopping if a project becomes not fun to work on. However, recently I got the urge to go back and finish those projects, if only for a sense of closure. So much time went into them, it makes me kind of sad that they are just collecting dust. I’m scheduling my time better and I have a plan to get there. Stay tuned! :slight_smile:

#59

In all case , it’s depends what you want to to.

Personnaly building a game, an api or an app is in the first place a fun time.
Making crappy codes don’t give me any fun at all and as long as i do it just for fun (and not for money), i’m not really frustrate to have unfinished projects.

Trying building well-designed code, fully commented, etc… don’t mean necessary failures projects and happilly i finished some ones

By example 4K competition is a nice event that i follow and play/test contributions, but i will never be able participate to it.
I can’t resign to developp a game with all i hate (bad design, one big class, and so one) for be able to achieve 4K goal.

#60

For me, the 4k competition brings back the “bad old days” of writing C and assembly against the bare iron of DOS, and pulling out a lot of the tricks we did back then to fit in the memory constraints. Fortunately, a whole bunch of those tricks were well documented and are still available if you know where to search for it.