Divine Lunacy

Many of you probably remember back in August when I said I might try to code a mafia replica. I said might because at the time, I fully realized all the work involved in such a goal. Writing a game from scratch is quite a job. As Linus Torvalds would say:

Nobody should start to undertake a large project. You start with a small _trivial_ project, and you should never expect it to get large. If you do, you’ll just overdesign and generally think it is more important than it likely is at that stage. Or worse, you might be scared away by the sheer size of the work you envision. So start small, and think about the details. Don’t think about some big picture and fancy design. If it doesn’t solve some fairly immediate need, it’s almost certainly over-designed. And don’t expect people to jump in and help you. That’s not how these things work. You need to get something half-way _useful_ first, and then others will say " hey, that _almost_ works for me”, and they’ll get involved in the project.

My problem is that I did start large, and I did expect it to get large, and I did overdesign, and I did give up. I was also completely alone. It isn’t that the programming was particuarly challenging. In fact, it’s quite easy. The problem is the sheer volme of work that needs to be done to get a remotely playable game out of that code. I did get quite far on the core of the game, but i never got any game play features implememted.

Just as it seemed the whole online RPG thing was going down the hole, a new, and completely different opportunity arose. The admin of hitmen is fed up with the game, and lacks the time and paitence to continue to be the admin. He has recently decided that he is going to give the code away to a deserving individual. Joe applied for this position and has been notified that he is one of the top three choices. If we’re selected, our dream of hosting a game without programming it from scratch will come true. (and we’ll love it and cherish it forever.) Adiran, the admin, is planning on making his decision on Monday.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 4th, 2005 at 1100:18 and is filed under dev/tech, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.