Perfectionism - My Enemy

[The Final Rune]

Does this ever happen to you?

You're working on your game (or anything for that matter), and you finally get done with something and then completely scrap it because you know you can do better!

My constant desire to be better than my self and everyone else has cost me a lot of progress in my endevors. I've deleted entier towns, dungeons, and even my whole world map! I don't want to talk about the time I scrapped two months of work and deleted my entire game. That one still hurts.

Do any of you suffer from this?

[vespuleth]

yeah, but i promise, in the end, it proves to be a good quality. esspecially when every tells you how well thought out your game is (look at dw for example). it can also be a bad quality, however. it can keep you from getting things accomplished. back when vic and i were first working on the tbs, we spent 12 pages talking about how to set up the grid. because we were always perfecting what we had, rather then moving on.

one suggestion id make is to sit down, and write out exactly how you want everything to work, and then, program it in. that way, you will very seldom actually have an epiphany for improvement.

[Dungeon Warden]

You threw away two months work? I never throw anything away. I have a hard time throwing away the preset stuff, even though I know I could do better.

I always plan everything ahead. Nothing gets made until I know what I want, then I go crazy trying to get it to work. This is my downfall. I keep working on something until it works. I will scrap scripts that don't work and make new ones, but I never give up trying to make something perfect.

All I can say is, plan carefully. If you can scrap something, then you shouldn't have made it in the first place. Save yourself some time and plan out the perfect game and then work toward that goal. Don't create what you can do now and then scrap it when your skills get better. Do what you can't do and your skills will improve as you try to figure out how to do it.

Good luck with your game. Remember, nothing's perfect. The best you can do is the highest standard you can acheive. Do your best, no one can ask for more.

[The Final Rune]

Thanks DW, I'll try to do a little more planning and a litttle less deleting.

"DW", isn't that the name of some PBS cartoon character? Weird that I should remember that all of a sudden.

[WarDragon]

I did the same thing too may times but i just sat down and just created something until i got it right

[NASH7777]

Yeah I just recently redid all my enemies AI, as I found a way where they won't get stuck, can still attack, and chase the party!

[Doan the Nado]

Not a PBS character... DW was Darkwing Duck. That was a freaking awesome show, but I don't remember what channel it was on. It was in the same lineup with Talespin and a couple other classics. Back when America could make good cartoons for kids... oh the days!

[NASH7777]

I remember that show, great show!!!!



Little extreme, I think! ( and what about the women?)

[Deleted]

I think Disney.

Yeah, I do what Dungeon Warden said now and plan it all out, and organize everything in the database completely (which for scripts is much harder than anything else). Of course my earlier stuff isn't organized very well, but I've been slowly organizing it.

I do go back and edit what I've made a ton though, to try to make it better and such. The feeling of being completely done with buildings or indirect effects or object models does feel very good though. Yeah, I've been trying to finish all the graphical databases before making my towns and towns people and dungeons, which now I'm extremely glad I did, because I knew I'd be going back and deleting stuff, and my towns wouldn't look their best if I made them with only half the buildings at my dispoal and what not.

Oh yeah, with character, enemy, and object models I did go back and delete them a ton, and edit them a ton as I kept getting better at making them look good (learning better color combos and not making them as bright and cheesy and not as extremely pale etc.). What I would do for my generic people is make one custom, good-looking graphic, then make several variations of that by changing accessory color/hair color/shirt color/pants color/etc. After making more and more models I kept deleting older models that I'd realized I'd made too many and not all good variations of.

My tip to people is to every once in a while just go back through what you've made and so-to-say scourage around for memory, finding ways to lessen the memory used (like my building trick I posted) or finding little lines in scripts you now know aren't needed, or changing script branches to sorts and stuff like that, or deleting preset scripts that now you know you don't need.

[The Final Rune]

Ah memories. I loved Tailspin. Bears flying plains, how cool. I miss the smurfs, gummie bears, the original transformers, hell, even care bears! What's happened to my beloved old friend TV? Where did the post reality TV go? I hardly ever watch TV anymore.

[Draygone]

Gummi Bears, Duck Tales, Rescue Rangers, Tale Spin, Darkwing Duck, Goof Troop, Bonkers, and Quack Pack. All were part of the Disney Afternoon, which around here at least, aired on the channel that would eventually become The WB. Ugh, Kids' WB really sucks compared to Disney Afternoon. I'm glad we recently got digital cable with Toon Disney on it, though it sucks that a few weeks afterwards most of these shows were taken off the air. I guess I'll have to settle for those DVDs with every episode of Rescue Rangers on them. But I really wish I had gotten at least the multi-part episodes of Duck Tales down. (Gummi Bears, I could care less about, though when that was on air on Disney Afternoon I couldn't see it very often since I got home from school as the show was ending; I remember the theme song, though.)

And yes, DW is also character in some show on PBS. Arthur, I think. But every time I see DW, I'll think of Darkwing Duck. Unless we're talking about video games, in which case I'll think of Dragon Warrior.

Slayers' Reign. I've created, scratched, and recreated that game so many times. Yes, the whole game. Well, the first couple of hours of it, anyway. I've still got most of the plans in my head, though I'm afraid if I don't get them written down soon something bad'll happen like I'll get in a wreck and have memory loss. Anyway, I think the biggest reason why I kept scratching the game was because I wanted to try my hand at something else. There was one time I scratched it because it wasn't good enough, and that was because all it was was story, wandering, and battles, which doesn't really amount to much fun.

[NASH7777]

I suddenly have the urge to go out and buy a bunch of DVD box sets, My bro has all the transformers that are out so far. And I'm not sure if they've made some of the other titles yet...