The distance between just started and kinda okay is much, much smaller than the distance between kinda okay and completely polished.

One day you think "Oh hey, I'm going to build a game!". A week later you look at what you have compared with what you started with, not a big difference, lots of code written. "Oh dam..." *game gets dropped*

In my experience what would happen to me is I would come up with a great idea at random and start programming and then soon I find all the features I wanted become very time consuming and soon enough the idea doesn't seem worth it.

I have dozens and dozens of byond games that I have worked on that are abandoned on my desktop due to various reasons but overall its mostly, biting off more that I can chew and taking on too big of a project.

With my 2 games so far that I did finish I promised myself I would make them with as little effort as possible and keep them simple, that way they would actually get done.

I am sure many many byond developers do just the same and I am sure they have tons of half done or just started ideas that fall to the way side and are never completed.

TL;DR We don't have the resources to take on a big project and yet, try anyway and lose motivation.

PS I feel pixel art has alot to do with it as well because if the game is ugly a programmer doesn't get excited or fall in love with the idea and if the developer doesn't love it, who else will?

I think another thing that can happen is that DM is setup for rapid development, so its very easy to half-ass just about anything and then further down the line, you have a very large combination of half-assed things that amount to a low quality end product. Just because something works doesn't mean you should stop there.

What I tend to do is create something, and then try to stress it. For example, a mob... what if you need 100, 1000, 10000 ?? Can't possibly know how well it will do and REALLY how efficient it is until you've tried it out. Then, through thorough testing and playing about, you'll find tons of things you never thought of; sometimes negative bugs that need fixing, other times positive features you didn't think to include initially.

Ultimately, it lies in the motives of the programmer and his goals. Some people just want to get things on paper, while others want to create something solid like stone... but both situations require invested determination and motivation.

Finally, I think sharing too early or blogging too often causes the "we're almost done" or "we've already done it" syndrome. The longer you wait to show anything, the longer you wait to reveal details... the more apt you will be to work towards completing these things to a more polished point which is ultimately best for the developer AND the gamer. Gamers aren't often patient and won't want to stick around while your work of art crashes, loses saves, goes through changes, etc. So I'd say a big item on the list is stop releasing games early and stop doing open alphas.

Jean Sqribe wrote:

P.S: *Rips are setup for rapid re-deployment, making a game from scratch is actually quite a challenging task on byond

Actually, compared to C or Java, making a game from scratch is very rapid. Java is even considered more rapid than C because you have things like Graphics2D already written for you, where in C you need a library or something else to draw pixels to the screen.

Saying byond isn't a rapid game development environment is just totally outright wrong. All of the networking, graphics, hardware handling, and many other things are totally handled for you.

Pretty much read this thread and reverse the trends.

1. We need to organize our plan for a game better with exactly what we need done.

2. We need to be sure that the project isn't to large for us to handle, think about how much time each element will take and if that is reasonable within your current schedule.

3.DO NOT change ideas or deviate from the original development plan, after the game is done we can add those awesome ideas we came up with mid way through development but not until we have the finished project.

4.Don't talk about the game until its done and don't release half done or concept games.

5.If you need feedback ask some friends in town or your family to play first to avoid getting tons of feature requests and other things that slow development.

6.IMO I would finish a game first with placeholder graphics and then have a artist rework your graphics, this would save a lot of time and money wasted on games that don't get finished, how many artists have built great art for games that never got out to the public anyway? and how many programmers paid for art they never used?

7.if you have an idea write it down and wait a day or two then come back to it, if it still is really exciting and cool and your truly passionate about it, then by all means make the game! But if its only slightly interesting then don't put the time and effort into something you will lose interest in half way through.

Overall Good Luck and Stay Motivated!

Stop asking why, and just do something.

@EmpirezTeam

Sounds like an excellent potential quote lol :)

@Dark-DVF

Glad to be of service :)
Good Luck and I hope to see your FINISHED game very soon lol :)

The "ideas guy" is called the designer, and no, it's not "zero effort". If it takes zero effort no company in their right mind would be hiring people to do it.