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(+1)

16 JAN 2021:


No, Scrapship is not getting a TRON makeover . . . but it might be getting a makeover.

I'll explain:

The past week has been very busy with my regular job. There is still plenty of time in the day to work on Scrapship . . . except that now the game is getting to a point where even small percentages of progress are taking much longer to finish than I anticipated. 

It's not hard to see why: Scrapship is now over 5000 lines of code that could definitely be organized better. I now probably spend more time playtesting the game than actually fixing it or making significant changes. 

So I've been thinking to myself: What if I start "fresh"?

If you look at the two pictures above, that's basically what I did with my Tron tank I modeled in Blender. I made it the first time (top picture) -- it looked okay, but not great. But I learned from my mistakes that time to remake it as you see in the bottom picture. I think we can all agree that the bottom version is much more accurate.

"Starting fresh" on Scrapship does NOT mean starting back at 0. While the code would be re-written, it would be done in a much more logical way that would prevent a LOT of the issues I'm encountering now. Some code might even be transferable as-is. 

Graphics, music and audio would all be pretty much unaffected.

In particular, I would be able to solve the following problems:

Framerate / Game loop iterations -- I hadn't thought about it too much, but too much background-math and file-loading can really can bog things down.  Nobody likes to play a game that lags.

Aspect Ratio -- I have much to learn about this still, but it is important to make sure the game looks good at different screen sizes. 

Debugging -- This one is HUGE! I could have saved so much time if I had better built-in debugging tools.


The other side of the argument is that I could stick with what I have and "make it work", but that would be like trying to "fix" the top Tron tank model to look more like the bottom one.


I think the analogy makes sense. I'm not 100% decided yet, which is where you come in. What are your thoughts? What would you do in my situation? Have you ever started a project and realized over halfway through "You know, I could do this sooooo much better if I just started fresh?" 

Whatever I decide, be assured that Scrapship is not going to be abandoned!


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I have had to start an 18-month program from scratch because I made it so poorly that it was no longer functional.  It feels bad, but ultimately it was the right thing to do.

The new version of the game was only similar to the old one in spirit, but it actually got finished, and I guess that's the main thing at the end of the day.

I'd suggest you do try and start again, it's just a learning experience after all.  

it's hard to not get emotionally attached to your work, but if this is the correct move then you have to push past that feeling.

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That is one element that probably distinguishes accomplished game developers from unaccomplished ones: An accomplished game developer will make the hard decision to start from scratch but keep going to completion . . . but the lazy one will just throw in the towel and call it quits.

Like you say, finishing the game is the ultimate goal and it's awesome to hear that you were able to finish the game after a rebuild. (Which game was it, by the way?)

This could probably be a great Youtube topic for your channel! I'd like to hear the story behind your game restart.

As for me, I've already started rebuilding and have a much nicer game screen now that allows me to see debug information. As I suspected, there is a lot of code I can just copy-and-paste over, but at the same time I'm making sure the logic behind it all is a little more clear.

Thanks for your story and comments!

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The game ended up being Upload Soul.

https://thesneak.itch.io/upload-soul

I do touch on this story at the start of this video!