Elysian Shadows

Recently I thought it would be a good idea to invest some of my spare time in writing all the retro games, starting at pong, then tetris, then space invaders, pacman, plaformer, sidescroller plane game. But I am finding that the time I invest is exponential to the complexity of the game (2^x). By the time I get to the platformer I will have to write my own tile engine and map editor. Is anyone encountering this barrier? How long have you been working on your projects. This time I am committed to writing through all these games, so I just grind through parts till I get it done. I don't spend more than 2 hours a week.

It's not really a barrier, that's just how software development goes. Learn to write things modularly.

For example, if I said fuck 2D RPGs, I'm writing a platformer, the entire ES engine and level editor would still be perfectly suited to the task.

As for your time complexity of implementation growing exponentially as the task grows linearly, that's kind of just the nature of software development. If it were easy, everybody would be writing games.

dejai wrote:I don't spend more than 2 hours a week.

That's only 104 hours a year. At that rate you'll be lucky to get to the side scroller in 2-3 years (based on zero programming experience).

dandymcgee wrote:

dejai wrote:I don't spend more than 2 hours a week.

That's only 104 hours a year. At that rate you'll be lucky to get to the side scroller in 2-3 years (based on zero programming experience).

Wow, I missed this line.

Seriously, I spend 2 hours a day sometimes. When I'm really in the zone, I spend an entire day working on things. 2 hours a week (if you're an inexperienced programmer) will get you nowhere.

Yeah I find the whole time constraints to be one of my biggest problems. I just get so busy with chores, homework, and other stuff, that I find myself having maybe 20 - 30 minutes for myself... And usually that takes away motivation, for me at least. I like to have at least an hour of free time if I'm considering working on a project.

I am in my final year of highschool doing some very demanding subjects, Maths Advanced, Maths Extension 1, Maths Extension 2 (Highest level of maths available), Physics, Chemistry, Advanced English and Economics, so I get very little time to myself. Also I can program fluently in C and quite well in C++, I by no means would call myself experienced but I do have a fair understanding of the task I am trying to accomplish. I would obviously dedicate more time if I had it, but I do not and there is little I can do about that. 2 years sounds about right, but after that I will be at Uni (hopefully) and I will probably topple my time spent in the last two years in the first month. I had two hours to myself the other day and I got half of tetris done, will little prior experience to SDL and I wrote pong in 1 hour with no SDL experience. I am familiar with sourcing documentation and learning what I need to get a library to do what I want, so really now it's just a matter of sticking to it.

Not to go into one of those long winded rants, but I'm going to go into one of those long winded rants ;]

Listen, if it's not possible to find more than two hours in the week to do something that you want to make a living doing (especially now since you're at the cusp of adulthood), then you need to start thinking about doing something else. I realize that what you've got on your plate now may SEEM like a lot of work, and it is; I can promise you that what you have to do now is small potatoes to what you'll be faced with taking on a full time college course load and even smaller beans compared to what you'll be faced with in the professional environment. What passed for "busy" then, is what the normal day-to-day will be in college. In an additional 5 years, what was busy then should be a light day for you. Thats sort of the point of college...conditioning. So my advice is to take the time you have now...suck it up...and get used to it. If it means staying up until the wee hours of the morning and going in on 5 hours and catching a nap between passing periods, then thats what it is. Far be it for anyone to criticize someone who's driven.

Your only other alternative is to find ways to work smarter instead of harder. Shift your time around a little bit, see what you can come up with. Get creative with your time. The more you can figure these things out now while you're still in high school the better position you'll find yourself in while you're in college. It will also pay off when you get a job professionally when your superiors see that you're more productive than your counterparts.

I'm currently taking 15 hours in college. I work full time, and I plug in around 30-40 hrs per week on my primary project among a few other pet projects. Game programming *IS HARD!!*...there's tons of competition and its full of people high on jolt and monster energy drinks who are willing to go to stay up...or whatever they have to do. People who will do WHATEVER it takes to get done what must be done. You know C, you know C++...that is super duper, however this isn't anywhere close to impressive to anyone who you should be trying to impress. C++ is a highly documented language and there's bajillions of kids your age who also know C++. Productivity is impressive which is the very area you lack.

Hopefully this does not lure you away from the field, but my advice comes from experience. I can tell you that this is an extremely hard working industry and there isn't much room for excuses or being unproductive or excuses, and excuses ;] I'm sure you're very talented, most of the people who frequent these forums are talented. Your time must come from somewhere. You either do it or you don't ....that's the bottom line. College will teach you next to nothing about writing games but it will make you a more well rounded programmer. The fact still remains that if you want to make games..........you need to write games.........


...Get Crackin :]

dejai wrote: I don't spend more than 2 hours a week.

Not enough time. If you plan on being done all of those projects in the next year you should have at least 1-2 hours a day to work on them. For example I'm working on a decently sized project right now. Even though I'm putting in 6-8 hours a day it's still going to take me about a month+ to get it complete. But I guess it also heavily relies on the type of game your making, the complexity, how much content you want, and all the other small little details.

If you really can't spare more then 30 mins a day to put into your project's you might want to stick with the less complex ones or you'll never get anything done.

Just my 2 cents.

Maybe my goals are too modest (slowly writing code for some popular retro games in SDL, OpenGL in C and C++). We shall just see how it goes. Also the games I am working on "right now" are not that complex.

Wow, 2 hours a week is almost no time at all. i spend about 20-40 hours a week either studying computer books or doing some form of programming. Give or take a few hours because of school and work.