Defining Awesome — Make him run and shoot first!
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  • Make him run and shoot first!

    Written by . Posted at 3:25 pm on February 22nd, 2009

    When starting to create a game my whole philosophy is to get a gostek running and shooting as fast as possible. I’ve worked this way from day 1 which was more than 15 years ago. This is the single most important principle to get things going and to see where you are at. It’s almost a speed contest for me, I want to finally have a dude walking around and not have to think about all the things I will have to do.

    What people do wrong:

    – start a web page before having a gostek running
    – announce the game before having a gostek running
    – making the game menus before having a gostek running
    – making a complete engine before having a gostek running
    – optimizing code before having a gostek running
    – endlessly changing game and code design before having a gostek running
    – talking about your game before having a gostek running
    – having a gostek shoot before he runs
    – making an icon for the game before having a gostek running

    I ran out of ideas, but I think you get my point.

    Oh… what’s a ‘gostek’? Its slang for ‘dude’ in polish.

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    13 comments.

    1. Nice idea.

      I will try to apply it NOW. Because I was supposed to have something done this weak but I decided to revise programming concepts instead… That’s my kind of procrastination. I convince myself that reading stuff I’ve already read 10 times should make me a better coder but in fact I’m lying to myself. I do this only to escape the real work.


    2. So is your gostek already shooting michal?


    3. Bamboo Samurai

      I have a question, whats your estimated time of finish for the new game>


    4. More like what Michal does wrong lol.


    5. oh so thats what gostek means.
      Hang on… you said that you’d have a gostek running and shooting by the end of this month, and yet you have just about everything described above? 😛


    6. – making a complete engine before having a gostek running

      BS.

      That makes sense only if you’re already using libraries like box2d. Without it you’d refactor the hitscan mechanic about a bazilloion times before finally having a fast (usually – working) version compatible with your physics.

      Take a look at all the big development houses. Game design, engine design, engine code, game assets, refactor engine, finish game assets.

      You can’t possibly create a COMPLETE engine first, compile the code without ever touching it again and start creating the game – but the more engine coding you have to do while putting in the logic and assets – the less decent design work was actually done on the project.

      So yeah, I’m a BDUF developer. AGILE is for nerds. Bite me.


    7. HMmm, I tend to make a toy game as fast as possible, but making websites… I don’t know, I’m not that serious about it while my game isn’t done yet.

      I do make the obvious mistake of having an incomplete website waiting to be filled with game content, trailers and such. Guess that’ll never change though as it actually does motivate to some extent.


    8. Slang for dude?

      I think dude is slang already. 😛


    9. This has nothing to do with games, but I think it’s pretty interesting: http://www.biotele.com/qualia.htm


    10. -making a blog entry about gosteks before having a gostek running.
      just kidding, keep up the good work^^


    11. forgot name, well whatever…


    12. niko šveikovsky

      make sure link-dead will still have a gostek folder.

      if it doesn’t i’ll be upset.


    13. как говориться, Без пользы жить – безвременная смерть.


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