Warscale 37-When a hobby becomes a burden? Never!
by Guimo · 04/13/2009 (8:54 pm) · 8 comments
Hi everybody!
There are times when you try to work on your project and think... what for... I will never finish it... its a loss of time... I should start this other project instead...
I feel that way right now... but I think moving to other project is a wrong move. Very wrong move.
Feeling this way is completely normal and I remember a professor at the university which told me that any project which takes more than 9 months to finish is prone to failure exactly for this reason. I think the problem is not the project but the fact that people start feeling tired of working on the same thing. On a postmortem with the Diablo 2 team they said that when the project was finished nobody wanted to hear about Diablo again. It was completely tiresome to work on the same thing for years and never getting it just the right way.
Of course we are talking about a big team with lots of funding and mad skillz. But for many independent developers thats not the case. You should learn how to hit and run to say so. Entering a large project for an indie equals death.
So, am I admiting defeat? Will I stop working on Warscale? OF COURSE NOT!!!
I feel tired but I think I feel no different right now to sometimes when I feel depressed and something I have learned in my time is that the best think to combat depression is doing something!
Of course when you are depressed you tend to see everything as enormous and hard to accomplish and it looks so large that even thinking about it makes you feel tired so you try to do something which pleases you like watching TV, playing games or, in my case, reading comics (Marvel Zombies is awesome... recommended). This in turn steals your time so the next time you try to do something you will see the mountain again and say... uuuuuuuuhhhhh too big... better if I play more games or read more comics (Marvel Civil Wars)... and more comics (World War Hulk) and so on (Maison Ikkokku, Batman Gotham Knight, etc etc).
So I remembered the trick not falling in this vicious circle is making a list of small things to accomplish and do them step by step. You will notice you slowly start getting out of that stagnation and producing something which makes you proud, produces more endorfins than any of those other things and you are slowly back on your feet.
Not that I'm totally back on my feet right now but the fact that you are reading this blog right now means its working.
The worst move would be changing the project as I may end with two half projects instead of a good one. That is a real loss of time.
What I was working on
Limiting my thought process
I got no comments on my last blog where I described my world. No offense really because it was a quick draft. I think its nice but needs more work of course. But the value of that draft is not trying to show my l33t writing sk1llz (whick I think are really poor) but just making a framework to focus my thoughts. Humang beings can be extremely creative and if left unchecked the mind may wander to strange and exotic places and bring new and strange ideas. The problem with that is that software development is a discrete science and doesnt play well with too many changes.
So that document became my framework and the basis for an 8 page technical rule booklet where I analyzed each step of Warscale and enhanced some rules, created others and discarded a lot more. This is useful because in may cases it simplifies some rules and in other cases the rules become stronger and have more sense. This streamlines the process which in turn makes everything more solid.
And of course... dont forget the KISS rule (keep it simple stupid).
I.E. Originally I was planning the game to allow players to use two weapons and add the damage. Like if you use two swords it should do double damage right? But then I started thinking on a sword and a shuriken... how do I add that? How do I allow the player to use one weapon or the other... more complex game menues? More complex rules? the answer is NOOOO!!!! First rule... KISS. The solution... dont allow people to use two weapons. Its not really a deal beaker as Warscale still has 2 handed weapons and the player can still use a shield or special amulet in the other hand.
I.E. I wanted to have a consistent magic system. Diablo has its Fire/Cold/Electricity/Poison or MTG has its 5 mana colors. I wanted something like that and also wanted to have magic resistance... and what happens if a fire elemental battles another fire elemental? Rules slowle started getting more and more complicated until I thought... KISS!!! I dropped everything and kept just a single magic resistance attribute which is useful for all and a rule which says that any damage against an opponent element doubles and agains the same element halves. Thats all... and works great.
I.E. I wanted to have weapon types... blunt... slash... pierce... also I wanted to support ethereal creatures which can only be damaged with magic items... and then came a skwleton wih 50% defense against slash/pierce but not to blunt... and a Wraith which is semi ethereal... and then a skeleton warrior which is 50% inmune to slash and 30% ethereal aaaaaaand KISS!!! Everything was dropped... weapons are just weapons they deal damage and the other creature receive damage and thats all. I kept etherealness though but as a simple rule... if a creature is 90% ethereal and you hit it with a normal weapon you ill deal 10% damage (the physical part). Also works great.
I.E. I wanted each creature to have its own mana pool so each one was able to do its own special actions. This became more and more complex to manage so on the end (after KISS!!!) I decided to just use the player mana pool. It really simplifies a lot of things.
I.E. In Warscale there is no concept of lands as in MTG but you still need to gain mana. So you can don some items which generate mana or summon some creatures which generate mana but I still wanted the terrain to be part of the game so I remembered a board game I created when I was like 16. On that game there were some points on the board that you had to take as an alternate way to win. So I decided to add one of those points to each side of the board and one in the center. If you capture the 5 points than you win (an alternative to killing your opponent). As a bonus, each point you control generates 1 point of mana each turn. I hope this will encourage a more aggressive game as the points become really valuable assets.
Anyway, the point here is that if you let your creativity run unchecked it may become against you.
Test Units
I started to create new weapons and noticed that I needed to test everything and right now the onl way to test was to run the servers, connect and fight which takes long time... and if you find the bug, run all again... bad approach.
So I decided to do it the right way and create a nice suite of testing functions. Those functions allow me to create simple battles, add players with their equipment, make them fight and test the results. Quick and simple. It took me a lot of time but I have killed a lot of bugs and memory leaks that makes every day spent completely worth it.
Of course there are things you just cant test like the user interface but there are other ways to test that.
Reducing the map size
This one is interesting. I wanted a large map to have enough game are for the battle so that units were able to run and fire arrows. So I was using a 23x23 grid. The only think I didnt like on that approach was that the unit looked so small that they lost their appeal. I was thinking on this until I found this game. Of course developed by Wizards of the Coast.
http://www.us.playstation.com/PS3/Games/THE_EYE_OF_JUDGMENT
The nice thing about EOJ is that the game works in a 3x3 table and it works great! So I did some tests using 11x11, 9x9 and 7x7 boards and here are my conclusions
Large grid (23x23)
The terrain gives a location. May be a beach, mountains, volcanoes, a forest. You get an environment.
Need a lot of camera movement to focus on the units.
Detail is low so the units require more texturing contrast.
Need to solve a problem highlighting large game areas.
Medium grid (11x11)
The combat takes place in a semi-abstract board. A small terrain may be simulated. May require a mesh to represent the terrain. High control of the terrain. No torque terrain system required (or it does?)
Units look large enough to be recognizable.
Solved problem highlighting extense game areas (no framerate drop).
Solved problem moving the camera as its no longer required.
Still allows for strategic combat.
Small grid (5x5 / 7x7)
The combat takes place in a abstract board. May as well be a chess board.
Very large units allows for very nice detail.
Solved problem highlighting extense game areas (framerate dropped considerably).
Solved problem moving the camera as its no longer required.
Abstract combat and abilities.
From the three I think I will keep the second option (11x11) as it is the one which I planned initially. it still allows for combat while allowing for nice terrain control. The large board was mostly a consequence of using Torque anyway and I dont want to be an EOJ clone anyway (Im already cloning too many things). I will probably need to simulate many things as meshes (i.e. rivers and ponds) but will be ok. So this is the approximate perspective I plan to keep.
Weapons... lots of them
Using the said rules, I have defined how the special abilities for the weapons are going to be created. I have defined a cost scale and set some magic tables. I have also removed some weapons from the list and replaced them for some new ones. I still have like 30 more weapons before starting with the armors.
The plan for next week
Yep... As I told you, if I dont set my goals for the week I just tend to think everything is enormous so I start reading comics. So I have decided to write again about the small tasks even if some of them are repetitive.
Fix the equipment editor
The player should be able to use a single weapon only.
Summon range
The avatar now has a property called summon range. This range is the limits the area where the player can summon a creature. Before this the game was auto picking the position but it feels something out of your control so I added this feature to the summoning process. Now I need to implement a way to allow the player to pick the summon location.
Nothing else. I dont want to overtax myself right now.
Luck with your projects!
Guimo
There are times when you try to work on your project and think... what for... I will never finish it... its a loss of time... I should start this other project instead...
I feel that way right now... but I think moving to other project is a wrong move. Very wrong move.
Feeling this way is completely normal and I remember a professor at the university which told me that any project which takes more than 9 months to finish is prone to failure exactly for this reason. I think the problem is not the project but the fact that people start feeling tired of working on the same thing. On a postmortem with the Diablo 2 team they said that when the project was finished nobody wanted to hear about Diablo again. It was completely tiresome to work on the same thing for years and never getting it just the right way.
Of course we are talking about a big team with lots of funding and mad skillz. But for many independent developers thats not the case. You should learn how to hit and run to say so. Entering a large project for an indie equals death.
So, am I admiting defeat? Will I stop working on Warscale? OF COURSE NOT!!!
I feel tired but I think I feel no different right now to sometimes when I feel depressed and something I have learned in my time is that the best think to combat depression is doing something!
Of course when you are depressed you tend to see everything as enormous and hard to accomplish and it looks so large that even thinking about it makes you feel tired so you try to do something which pleases you like watching TV, playing games or, in my case, reading comics (Marvel Zombies is awesome... recommended). This in turn steals your time so the next time you try to do something you will see the mountain again and say... uuuuuuuuhhhhh too big... better if I play more games or read more comics (Marvel Civil Wars)... and more comics (World War Hulk) and so on (Maison Ikkokku, Batman Gotham Knight, etc etc).
So I remembered the trick not falling in this vicious circle is making a list of small things to accomplish and do them step by step. You will notice you slowly start getting out of that stagnation and producing something which makes you proud, produces more endorfins than any of those other things and you are slowly back on your feet.
Not that I'm totally back on my feet right now but the fact that you are reading this blog right now means its working.
The worst move would be changing the project as I may end with two half projects instead of a good one. That is a real loss of time.
What I was working on
Limiting my thought process
I got no comments on my last blog where I described my world. No offense really because it was a quick draft. I think its nice but needs more work of course. But the value of that draft is not trying to show my l33t writing sk1llz (whick I think are really poor) but just making a framework to focus my thoughts. Humang beings can be extremely creative and if left unchecked the mind may wander to strange and exotic places and bring new and strange ideas. The problem with that is that software development is a discrete science and doesnt play well with too many changes.
So that document became my framework and the basis for an 8 page technical rule booklet where I analyzed each step of Warscale and enhanced some rules, created others and discarded a lot more. This is useful because in may cases it simplifies some rules and in other cases the rules become stronger and have more sense. This streamlines the process which in turn makes everything more solid.
And of course... dont forget the KISS rule (keep it simple stupid).
I.E. Originally I was planning the game to allow players to use two weapons and add the damage. Like if you use two swords it should do double damage right? But then I started thinking on a sword and a shuriken... how do I add that? How do I allow the player to use one weapon or the other... more complex game menues? More complex rules? the answer is NOOOO!!!! First rule... KISS. The solution... dont allow people to use two weapons. Its not really a deal beaker as Warscale still has 2 handed weapons and the player can still use a shield or special amulet in the other hand.
I.E. I wanted to have a consistent magic system. Diablo has its Fire/Cold/Electricity/Poison or MTG has its 5 mana colors. I wanted something like that and also wanted to have magic resistance... and what happens if a fire elemental battles another fire elemental? Rules slowle started getting more and more complicated until I thought... KISS!!! I dropped everything and kept just a single magic resistance attribute which is useful for all and a rule which says that any damage against an opponent element doubles and agains the same element halves. Thats all... and works great.
I.E. I wanted to have weapon types... blunt... slash... pierce... also I wanted to support ethereal creatures which can only be damaged with magic items... and then came a skwleton wih 50% defense against slash/pierce but not to blunt... and a Wraith which is semi ethereal... and then a skeleton warrior which is 50% inmune to slash and 30% ethereal aaaaaaand KISS!!! Everything was dropped... weapons are just weapons they deal damage and the other creature receive damage and thats all. I kept etherealness though but as a simple rule... if a creature is 90% ethereal and you hit it with a normal weapon you ill deal 10% damage (the physical part). Also works great.
I.E. I wanted each creature to have its own mana pool so each one was able to do its own special actions. This became more and more complex to manage so on the end (after KISS!!!) I decided to just use the player mana pool. It really simplifies a lot of things.
I.E. In Warscale there is no concept of lands as in MTG but you still need to gain mana. So you can don some items which generate mana or summon some creatures which generate mana but I still wanted the terrain to be part of the game so I remembered a board game I created when I was like 16. On that game there were some points on the board that you had to take as an alternate way to win. So I decided to add one of those points to each side of the board and one in the center. If you capture the 5 points than you win (an alternative to killing your opponent). As a bonus, each point you control generates 1 point of mana each turn. I hope this will encourage a more aggressive game as the points become really valuable assets.
Anyway, the point here is that if you let your creativity run unchecked it may become against you.
Test Units
I started to create new weapons and noticed that I needed to test everything and right now the onl way to test was to run the servers, connect and fight which takes long time... and if you find the bug, run all again... bad approach.
So I decided to do it the right way and create a nice suite of testing functions. Those functions allow me to create simple battles, add players with their equipment, make them fight and test the results. Quick and simple. It took me a lot of time but I have killed a lot of bugs and memory leaks that makes every day spent completely worth it.
Of course there are things you just cant test like the user interface but there are other ways to test that.
Reducing the map size
This one is interesting. I wanted a large map to have enough game are for the battle so that units were able to run and fire arrows. So I was using a 23x23 grid. The only think I didnt like on that approach was that the unit looked so small that they lost their appeal. I was thinking on this until I found this game. Of course developed by Wizards of the Coast.
http://www.us.playstation.com/PS3/Games/THE_EYE_OF_JUDGMENT
The nice thing about EOJ is that the game works in a 3x3 table and it works great! So I did some tests using 11x11, 9x9 and 7x7 boards and here are my conclusions
Large grid (23x23)
The terrain gives a location. May be a beach, mountains, volcanoes, a forest. You get an environment.
Need a lot of camera movement to focus on the units.
Detail is low so the units require more texturing contrast.
Need to solve a problem highlighting large game areas.
Medium grid (11x11)
The combat takes place in a semi-abstract board. A small terrain may be simulated. May require a mesh to represent the terrain. High control of the terrain. No torque terrain system required (or it does?)
Units look large enough to be recognizable.
Solved problem highlighting extense game areas (no framerate drop).
Solved problem moving the camera as its no longer required.
Still allows for strategic combat.
Small grid (5x5 / 7x7)
The combat takes place in a abstract board. May as well be a chess board.
Very large units allows for very nice detail.
Solved problem highlighting extense game areas (framerate dropped considerably).
Solved problem moving the camera as its no longer required.
Abstract combat and abilities.
From the three I think I will keep the second option (11x11) as it is the one which I planned initially. it still allows for combat while allowing for nice terrain control. The large board was mostly a consequence of using Torque anyway and I dont want to be an EOJ clone anyway (Im already cloning too many things). I will probably need to simulate many things as meshes (i.e. rivers and ponds) but will be ok. So this is the approximate perspective I plan to keep.
Weapons... lots of them
Using the said rules, I have defined how the special abilities for the weapons are going to be created. I have defined a cost scale and set some magic tables. I have also removed some weapons from the list and replaced them for some new ones. I still have like 30 more weapons before starting with the armors.
The plan for next week
Yep... As I told you, if I dont set my goals for the week I just tend to think everything is enormous so I start reading comics. So I have decided to write again about the small tasks even if some of them are repetitive.
Fix the equipment editor
The player should be able to use a single weapon only.
Summon range
The avatar now has a property called summon range. This range is the limits the area where the player can summon a creature. Before this the game was auto picking the position but it feels something out of your control so I added this feature to the summoning process. Now I need to implement a way to allow the player to pick the summon location.
Nothing else. I dont want to overtax myself right now.
Luck with your projects!
Guimo
#2
finish Warscale and i think everyone will be happy Guimo no matter how long it takes.
04/14/2009 (1:08 am)
well i get this more then just from game dev i get this just from playing games but i just find a new game to play after it get boring. taking a time out on game dev helps allot.finish Warscale and i think everyone will be happy Guimo no matter how long it takes.
#3
04/14/2009 (6:10 am)
I also get those burnouts and what Gareth said is so true, few days without dev and I'm burning to get back into it :) But like you said, the bigger tasks needs to be broken into smaller parts and I like to keep in mind what I am trying to accomplish to stay motivated. 
#4
That was kinda tough to read, I'd hate to see you drop Warscale. It's one dev I've followed from day one and am really looking forward to seeing it wrapped up at some point.
As I've said before, I'm happy to help out where I can, testing would be a great chance. Give me a copy and some IDKFA and I'll slay some bears. :)
Glad to hear you're getting back on your feet!
Patrick
04/14/2009 (6:57 am)
Hey Guimo! That was kinda tough to read, I'd hate to see you drop Warscale. It's one dev I've followed from day one and am really looking forward to seeing it wrapped up at some point.
As I've said before, I'm happy to help out where I can, testing would be a great chance. Give me a copy and some IDKFA and I'll slay some bears. :)
Glad to hear you're getting back on your feet!
Patrick
#5
Also describing a game world (beyond the physical characteristics of the environment or play), plot idea, background story, etc, never seems to come across as very interesting, or at least not as interesting as the designer's vision (which comes in exciting mental pictures) (personal opinion, your mileage may vary).
I reckon this is essentially down to games being something that are experienced rather than described. And it's the implementation of that vision which is the important bit. And for this reason/opinion I've always stayed clear of explaining exactly what I'm trying to develop myself.
04/14/2009 (8:20 am)
Oh the horrors of burnout! Hence why I once gave a blog the title "Dark Night of the Soul Hammy Melodrama". It seems that the Indy dev must be a tenacious beast to avoid falling by the wayside, a tenacity which probably requires to border on mock autism at times to get through the rough bits.Quote:I got no comments on my last blog where I described my worldWALL_OF_TEXT! This blog has better spacing, but a few extra pics seem to help break it all up more.
Also describing a game world (beyond the physical characteristics of the environment or play), plot idea, background story, etc, never seems to come across as very interesting, or at least not as interesting as the designer's vision (which comes in exciting mental pictures) (personal opinion, your mileage may vary).
I reckon this is essentially down to games being something that are experienced rather than described. And it's the implementation of that vision which is the important bit. And for this reason/opinion I've always stayed clear of explaining exactly what I'm trying to develop myself.
Quote:And of course... dont forget the KISS rule (keep it simple stupid)Second!
#6
Go on comarade, dont let yourself get too lazy ;)
P.S.: Bloody bastard, that was like a 10 pages blog! XD
04/14/2009 (8:39 am)
Ole, Ole-Ole-Ole, Guimo...! Guimo...!Go on comarade, dont let yourself get too lazy ;)
P.S.: Bloody bastard, that was like a 10 pages blog! XD
#7
The objective of this post was mostly to make me start again posting weekly as it forces me to do something to show. Also I wanted to comment on this burnout state which is fairly common for every indie.
I'm in no way stopping the development on Warscale but I would love to have an additional pair of hands to start a new project I have in mind and/or porting it to TGEA/T3D. I guess it will have to wait.
Luck to all!
04/14/2009 (9:03 pm)
Hey thanks for your comments!The objective of this post was mostly to make me start again posting weekly as it forces me to do something to show. Also I wanted to comment on this burnout state which is fairly common for every indie.
I'm in no way stopping the development on Warscale but I would love to have an additional pair of hands to start a new project I have in mind and/or porting it to TGEA/T3D. I guess it will have to wait.
Luck to all!
#8
Having great new ideas for games is probably one of the worst things to get while working on an existing project. I got so many cool ideas I want to work on and some of them where the cause of projects (and previous 'cool ideas') never getting done.
04/15/2009 (7:36 am)
Quote:I'm in no way stopping the development on Warscale but I would love to have an additional pair of hands to start a new project I have in mind and/or porting it to TGEA/T3D. I guess it will have to wait.
Having great new ideas for games is probably one of the worst things to get while working on an existing project. I got so many cool ideas I want to work on and some of them where the cause of projects (and previous 'cool ideas') never getting done.
Torque 3D Owner Gareth Fouche
At first it is bliss, you have all that free time, you play games, you gorge on all the things you sacrificed for the game dev. But I find that after the first week those things start to lose their luster. I start to feel the stirrings of the game dev urge again. Hold off for a few more days and the urge grows and I'm able to leap back into things again.
It doesn't have to be 2 weeks. I've had periods of a month before. But I find that simply giving yourself a good solid break will allow you to re-find the reasons you had before for doing it, that enthusiasm which you're missing. Most things in nature work in cycles, you need to give yourself some time to restore your energy.