How do you do it?

gummbum on 2011/03/09 03:06

Do you clear your mind and wait for the hat to drop? Or do you sketch a handful of concepts and make the closest one fit the theme? Or something completely different?

Gumm

(log in to comment)

Comments

richard on 2011/03/09 04:17:

Wondering what "it" might be :-)

Cosmologicon on 2011/03/09 05:03:

The 5 theme candidates are announced a week before the competition. I use that week to brainstorm an idea for each of 5 potential themes. Ideally, when the theme is announced, I'm ready to start working on whatever idea I've chosen for that theme. Realistically, I usually need a few more hours of brainstorming at that point. It depends on whether the theme I wanted wins.

Coming up with a game idea which you then try to fit with the theme is, in my opinion, a terrible way to do it. I'm always most pleased when the core game mechanic is clearly inspired by the theme.

shundread on 2011/03/09 08:28:

1) I vote for what I consider to be the strangest theme idea, because those are my favourites
2) I post some idea suggestions in a futile attempt to placate moods when people start complaining about how the themes are bad.
3) Wait for the voting results to come in, start brainstorming, in order not to get disappointed for the loss of what I judged to be a great idea when my favourite theme comes second or third.

ilseppia on 2011/03/09 10:02:

My approach in my last (and my first) pyweek was pretty similar to the one described two post above, waiting for the 5 theme candidates. Then in that week I invested my travel time to work in brainstorming a game for each of them. At the end of the week I had three game ideas on the paper, that had been a good starting point.
I'm still getting the metro to get to the work so I'll probabily do the same in this competition :-)

gummbum on 2011/03/09 15:18:

Thanks, folks. That helps a lot!

I am especially pleased richard took the bait. Lol. :)

Does anybuddy like to plan ahead by picking concepts they'd like to continue in the pyggy competition?

Gumm

Cosmologicon on 2011/03/09 16:20:

Well, aside from the fact that nobody seems to participate in Pyggy (the last 3 competitions had a total of 4 entries), I think it's a bad idea to choose something that will require more work after Pyweek to really finish. Unless you've got Pokemon in your team name, smaller scope is almost always better.

Actually I can think of a few past entries where the entrant aimed too low, but there are way, way more entries where they aimed too high. I would err on the side of less ambition. Especially if it's your first time, you won't have a good sense of how long things take. I would try for a game you think you can finish in 3 days. If you actually do wind up finishing it in 3 days, you can use the rest of the time to add content.

richard on 2011/03/10 01:22:

Unless you've got Pokemon in your team name, smaller scope is almost always better.

Actually, I think they might also have Pokemon slaves working on their team too. Would explain a lot :-)

Chard on 2011/03/10 14:00:

Pokémon are terrible programmers, they just keep typing their name over and over. :-)

Cosmologicon on 2011/03/10 15:40:

Yes but they're so expressive with it. I bet you could teach them to write in a customized version of Ook.

adrwen on 2011/03/10 23:21:

I don't need pokemon, subways or themes. I get divine inspiration... from EMACS.

gummbum on 2011/03/11 02:14:

EMACS, the little teddybear guys from Endor?

Gumm

adrwen on 2011/03/11 16:59:

No, you must mean the Ewoks, I meant the text editor/lisp interpreter/email client/snake game/religion.

gummbum on 2011/03/12 05:01:

$ ewoks .plan
-ksh: ewoks: command not found

Rats. Foiled again.

Does anybuddy still try to write games so they run on 2 GHz single-core systems?

Gumm

Cosmologicon on 2011/03/12 07:14:

Yes my Pyweek 9 and Pyweek 11 games were written on an Eee PC netbook, which is 1.6GHz single-core. It runs a good number of Pyweek games (as long as the window isn't too big).

richard on 2011/03/12 22:50:

Heh, I did the bulk of the coding for the Team XKCD PyWeek 7 entry on an EeePC 701 :-)

valhalla on 2011/03/15 09:05:

I plan to write something that is able to run on a 600 MhZ arm handheld with 256MB RAM. I may even use it for some of the coding, instead of my EeePC netbook (i.e. my main computer).

Usually speed isn't an issue, but I agree on the window size pains.

hidas on 2011/03/15 12:02:

I'm going to write my game on my 2.2 GHz laptop, but I'll probably test it on my mom's ancient computer that she's had for around 6 years. Or I could go get my grandma's computer...