Hobbyist coder's manifesto
Apr. 14th, 2011 10:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rbandrewsThis is a rant, but it's directed more at my subconscious than anything. I came to a decision the other day while talking to Vond: I'm bad at finishing things I code for fun, like I've probably finished 5% of the projects I start. And I'm through beating myself up over that. A large contributor to my burning out periodically is that I invest a lot in writing code emotionally, and so I'll be afraid to start stuff knowing that I'm not going to finish it, then hate myself for not writing anything, and burnout.
So here's my new thing: I'm writing games for me, not for anyone else. If I stop after I write the fun part, that's okay. If I stop because I found something else to work on, that's okay. If I stop because I'm convinced the idea is stupid, that's okay. Although that's less okay; I'm also going to try to quit making myself hate my game ideas.
It's my hobby. It's like gardening, I'm doing it because I like planting things, not because I want to make the best garden in the neighborhood. If I suck at it and all my plants die, that doesn't mean it was any less fun to plant them.
So I'm probably not going to finish the thing I am writing now, which is no surprise, but I'm also not really going to plan to: from now on I'm going to write about neat tricks and fun things to do, rather than about anything I plan to actually have finished ever. So, thank you Vond, for leading me to that revelation. I think coding as a hobby is about to get a lot more fun for me.
The particular project I'm tinkering with right now is called (very provisionally) Ballmaze. The idea comes from my realization that iPhones suck for falling-block puzzles because a touchscreen is really not a d-pad; it's annoying to control something as it falls (a la Tetris) but easy and comfortable to just tap on where you want it to fall (a la DropZap). So I got to thinking, what kind of puzzles can I make where you drop something into a system and see what effects it has?
My plan is this: you have a board with the usual widgets; keys, doors, switches, reflectors, whatever. There are holes in the top where you can drop in balls, and chutes at the bottom where fall out gems. The goal is to drop balls in so that all the gems are pushed out. Maybe you have to drop a ball in one place to flip a switch to activate something that lets you get another ball to push a gem into a chute, whatever. I'm going to try to add a new board widget every five levels or so, so that eventually the game just gets insane.
So here's my new thing: I'm writing games for me, not for anyone else. If I stop after I write the fun part, that's okay. If I stop because I found something else to work on, that's okay. If I stop because I'm convinced the idea is stupid, that's okay. Although that's less okay; I'm also going to try to quit making myself hate my game ideas.
It's my hobby. It's like gardening, I'm doing it because I like planting things, not because I want to make the best garden in the neighborhood. If I suck at it and all my plants die, that doesn't mean it was any less fun to plant them.
So I'm probably not going to finish the thing I am writing now, which is no surprise, but I'm also not really going to plan to: from now on I'm going to write about neat tricks and fun things to do, rather than about anything I plan to actually have finished ever. So, thank you Vond, for leading me to that revelation. I think coding as a hobby is about to get a lot more fun for me.
The particular project I'm tinkering with right now is called (very provisionally) Ballmaze. The idea comes from my realization that iPhones suck for falling-block puzzles because a touchscreen is really not a d-pad; it's annoying to control something as it falls (a la Tetris) but easy and comfortable to just tap on where you want it to fall (a la DropZap). So I got to thinking, what kind of puzzles can I make where you drop something into a system and see what effects it has?
My plan is this: you have a board with the usual widgets; keys, doors, switches, reflectors, whatever. There are holes in the top where you can drop in balls, and chutes at the bottom where fall out gems. The goal is to drop balls in so that all the gems are pushed out. Maybe you have to drop a ball in one place to flip a switch to activate something that lets you get another ball to push a gem into a chute, whatever. I'm going to try to add a new board widget every five levels or so, so that eventually the game just gets insane.
