Hi Michael, Lol! Right you are my good man. I'm guilty as charged.
As you accurately pointed out Mysteries of the Ancients has swallowed me up with work, seems like a never ending task, but I think the end product will be worth it because it is not likely to be a game someone can pick up and finish in 10 minutes. If I do my job right it should be something that people will keep on their hard drives for a good time to come, or at least I hope so. Still the problem with delving into a massive project like that is there are several much simpler games I could create that would take less time, less effort, and be reasonably fun to play. Jim Kitchen's games are of course the best example of that type of approach to game development. I play several of his games such as Hangman, Life, Spanker, etc when I am board and have say 15 minutes to kill and don't want to get involved in some epic game that takes hours to play. Since there is quite a bit of randomness involved in Jim's games they never get old, and are great for spending a few minutes with here and there. I've often thought I could create several simple games in Python for Windows, Mac, and Linux for less time than it takes me to create MOTA. They would be simple turn based games like Battleship or Life, but those games only take a couple of months to crank out compared to years. :D On 3/22/13, Michael Feir <[email protected]> wrote: > Well Tom, I would have to say that you're suffering the effects of > what you've engaged in yourself. We all still wait with eager > anticipation for the Mysteries of the Ancients sidescroller that you > began work on... errh... when was that now? Large-scale projects like > the ones a lot of us have taken on tend to do one of two things. They > either swallow our attention completely to the exclusion of all else > or they make other ideas and projects extremely tempting which pull us > away from them for periods of time. It's an infernal balancing act for > the creative mind. This tug of war is increased for you since the > projects you started aren't completely obligation free. You > effectively have placed an albatross of expectation around your neck > which must somehow be dealt with. > > The good side of that is that when you at last finish one of these > games, you get the monument effect provided the game is good and > replayable enough to be kept on people's hard drives. Shadowgate is an > example of a game that lacks this. Once I've completed it, I have > nothing substantive to gain by playing it again. On the other hand, > kerkercruip will always have a spot since so much changes from game to > game. Same with Nethack and Fallthru. Swamp has the draw both of > adventure and community participation. Jeremy is still adding features > to that work of art so there's still that "what will he do next" > factor too. Once abandonned, it shouldn't suffer as much as has > Castaways since players themselves provide so much of the game's draw. > --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
