So Play We All Week 7: Content Generation

[Harkins]

Here's the Week 7 poll of So Play We All, where three browser games are developed in public and BBGZ votes on who made the best progress. This week we spent 4 hours on Content Generation:

The contenders:
Fantasy Adventure: no update by deadline? [Edit: yeah, missed deadline, unfortunately]
Oaqn: One Step Forward
Allabrilyn: Between Forms and Pages

Last week's poll, tie between Oaqn and Fantasy Adventure. Want more info? Here's the site for the contest with rules and links to every update: SoPlayWeAll.com

[Chris]

"after so many weeks of being seriously far behind, I'll finally be making the progress towards being able to render a complete HTML page" - sigh, JGadrow seem to have serious problems. When you see him tell him that he simply can't make a game within such time constrains without heavy cheating and skipping corners. You have to do dirty tricks, you have to write ugly code, you can't invest in a proper code "because later I will save my time" when you have no time to invest in the first place... He seem to be trying to do it the same way he write business software in his job, but in his job he has full 8 hours 5 times a week plus there are other coders.

[Harkins]

While I don't take it to the extreme that you do, I've told him I think he's over-engineering his current project for the sake of potential future projects. I've told him repeatedly. His call, in the end.

[codestryke]

Eventually, with time, we all learn that PBBG's are NOT about code or databases. When you look back at a game that as been running over a year the amount of coding time is small compared to all the other day to day operations you have to do.

The other kicker, the one that was hardest for me, is the code could be perfect (in your head) the database tightly designed everything perfect and people just don't come, they don't play, they just don't get it. Or the timing is just not right, that's life.

[Harkins]

Eventually, with time, we all learn that PBBG's are NOT about code or databases. When you look back at a game that as been running over a year the amount of coding time is small compared to all the other day to day operations you have to do.

I've already learned this - I have the exact, explicit amount of time I've spent coding... and that's made it really clear that coding is not at all the biggest part of the work that will make Oaqn successful.