Set in Stone

Many years ago, when I didn't know better, I wrote some games, partly as a learning exercise, partly to put in my portfolio, partly for fun. They were a Tetris clone (Tetratim) and a breakout clone (Bounce). But it didn't matter that they were clones because the main reason I wrote them was they gave me the experience of taking a game all the way from start to finish.

Tetratim was the first complete game I ever wrote. It has a start screen, an in-game screen, a game-over screen, and a high score table. Apart from the high scores, all of the data was hard coded into the game-code. (I'll come back to this point in a minute).

Bounce took things a little bit further. It has several UI screens at the front, and included sound effects. The levels were designed in an editor that I wrote. I'd started learning to separate out my code and my data.

Even though I didn't stop programming after that, the game writing dried up. Not through lack of enthusiasm about the projects - I had plenty of exciting ideas that I wanted to implement. No, the reason the writing dried up was because I had become obsessed with ideals. I didn't want to hard-code data for another game. I didn't want to take short-cuts in my code. I wanted to do everything the Right Way.

So I spent lots and lots of time learning the correct way to do things, writing lots of little test programs, trying out new techniques and effects, and storing them all up for later. But for several years I didn't come up with anything that was as near finished as Tetratim or Bounce.

Fast-forward a few years to when I was preparing to enter the games-industry. Suddenly I had an urgent need to have demo material - something that showed that I actually did know how to program games! Urgency is an excellent motivator. Within the space of a few days I threw together a demo of a 3d car driving around on a surface.

A lot of the demo wasn't done the Right Way. The worst offence (in my eyes) was that once again, I'd hard-coded my data into my program. But it didn't matter. It was a neatly packaged, little demo. And that demo got me my job in the games industry.

At first I spent a lot of time programming in my spare time as well as at work, but I was still chasing the ideal. I wanted to do things the Right Way. Again a dearth of completed projects.

Which leads me to now. I have epiphanies from time to time. One of my most recent was "Nothing is set in stone."

It doesn't matter if it isn't written perfectly first time - get something written, and you can always change it later if it isn't correct. Make things modular, if at all possible, then if something is wrong you can "unplug" it and plug something else in in its place.

Ok, so don't dive in straight away - some planning is always good, but don't agonize over the fine details to the detriment of project. That's what I did in between my demo games and it meant I didn't get anything completed!