Development Cycle

Back in the time when I was young... I would start a game project, dive into it head first without thinking, planning or even designing. After a few weeks I would have gotten lots done, a game almost, but the code would look like most people's attic or basement do. This is about the time when the code would become cumbersome to maintain. It would also be around this time when I would be distracted by something shiny and rush off to start the next epic project. A quick glance at my old project folder shows I got over 70 of these unfinished projects. Each and every one of these project would reuse exactly 0 lines of code between them (with the exception of the odd copy/pasted/modified line).

Then I reached puberty... This was around the time I got my first job in the industry. I got to see how the real developers did it. It seemed my betters were building game projects in layers were the low level layers could be reused between game projects. Not being a complete idiot I quickly picked up this idea and started building my own framework of reusable code... (On the other hand scratch that... Since I hadn't figured this out after 70 or so unfinished hobby projects, perhaps I was a complete idiot). Anyways, the only thing that changed was that I was spending my hobby time writing game engines instead of game projects. Instead of 70 unfinished games I now soon have around 10 unfinished game engines.

When I grow old... I think I will complete the cycle and go back to just simply writing games from scratch. I think I will know enough to select projects of a manageable size. I think I will have no other ambition with the project other than to have fun making it... and I think I will never grow old.