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View Full Version : People can be such idiots...



Bonezmann
09-05-2008, 02:36 PM
So last night I was chatting to my cousin on Mxit, now this is one of those boerseuns(no offence to the rest as I'm one aswell) who -thinks- he is so smart when it comes to computers.

Following is a record of a discussion between me and him, for several reasons I'm not giving his correct name. I also translated this discussion from Afrikaans to English in order for everyone to understand.

Pete: Hi, how r u?

Me: I'm fine and u?

-skipping to the good stuff-

Pete: So what are you doing?

Me: I'm making a game?

Pete: Really? With what?

Me: Uhm... Gamemaker?

Pete: Oh, when you come home for a weekend you must bring it to me.

Me: Okay, I'll do it.

Pete: So what game you making?

Me: I'm playing around and getting a feel for it.

Pete: Oh, I can't wait for it I have big plans.

Now here comes the BEST part, at this point I'd like to remind you that he has absolutely NO experience in game making and even less in programming and/or making sprites(on the contrary he doesn't even know what sprites are)

Me: Oh really? What you wanna do?

Pete:I wanna fuse Need for Speed Uderground 2 and GTA: San Andreas

Me: LOL! Really? You're joking right?

Pete: No, why would I?

Me: It's not really that simple to make a game, it takes YEARS of experience to where you wanna be right now! :D

Pete: Just bring it, I'll show you.

Me: Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to discourage you, I'm just saying it's not that easy. Even making a platformer takes a while of practise, but I'll bring it to you anyways along with a few tutorials.

Now he gets cocky

Pete: I don't need any tutorials, I'll figure it out myself.

Me: Okay, good luck then.

-Discussion goes in a different direction-

I didn't start this thread to attack/degrade him or whatever, I just thought I'd post this here since I could't stand laughing while we dicussed this and thought it might be a good read.

If anyone finds this offensive or something, just tell me and I'll remove it :)

P.S: No he does not have internet... yet :)

DukeOFprunes
09-05-2008, 03:02 PM
What fun would game dev be without a few cloud castles? :)

As a kid I wanted to remake every Commodore 64 game. Looking back now I appreciate more than ever some of the horribly complicated things many of them did even without the benefit of the flexible game apps we have today.

I'd never really do it of course, but it did spark my interest. Your cuz will definitely have his hands full with a NFS & GTA crossover. If nothing easier, at least convince him to try something more original... I bet nearly everyone in the whole world want to fuse GTA with something ;)

Bonezmann
09-05-2008, 03:09 PM
That's not the problem, I'm worried about his reaction when he finds out he can't. Coz he's really serious about this. Don't get me wrong, if he magically pulls the ability out of his ass then I'll be his first "customer", but I'm just being realistic.

Gazza_N
09-05-2008, 03:22 PM
He's not an idiot, just a little ignorant. As Duke says, I think all of us started off with crazy ideas of recreating or expanding our favourite games. Fact is, if he's serious about game dev, he'll put in the time and effort to learn after he finds out what's involved.

Bonezmann
09-05-2008, 03:34 PM
I guess you're right. but I doubt he'll take the time and effort to learn since he always wants the easy way out or no way at all.

FuzzYspo0N
09-05-2008, 04:15 PM
lol even i was like OH YEA. but as time went on i realised ts more like WTF IS THE ERROR THERE IS NO ERROR THIS COMPILER IS BROKEN FFS. lol :)

I say dream big, work realistically.

dislekcia
09-05-2008, 04:24 PM
I guess you're right. but I doubt he'll take the time and effort to learn since he always wants the easy way out or no way at all.

The trick is not to let that get in the way... Sure, he might give up, but if he somehow blames you, or GM, or the weather, just remember that it's him giving up and has nothing to do with how hard you could have tried.

Everyone has big dreams when they care about games. We play with fantasies every day, after all. The trick is that the "magical easy way to do it" is literally just sheer hard work ;)

-D

Tigman_1
09-05-2008, 07:41 PM
One man's knowledge is anoter mans .... No Knowledge?
you know what im saying?
the poor oak is a bit knowledgeless, but its funny how he wants to fuse 2 games, that cracked me up :)

no_fear
09-05-2008, 08:26 PM
Hehe, I've always had that idea, but I've always known it would take YEARS to get the experience etc. to create something like that. But that is rather funny^^ hehe

SkinkLizzard
09-05-2008, 08:51 PM
He's not an idiot, just a little ignorant. As Duke says, I think all of us started off with crazy ideas of recreating or expanding our favourite games. Fact is, if he's serious about game dev, he'll put in the time and effort to learn after he finds out what's involved.

strangely the first set of games I had on a 486 were horribly inadequate and I've always wanted to just make a game take one of the worlds my mind conjures and make it live. recreating and expanding the games I enjoyed didn't occur to me, although rebuilding the game creator/engine thing called dcc world did :)
amazing what you can do in turbo pascal7 with 16 colours 640x480 res and hard work :)

agree with the rest of the thread mostly, be interesting to see his reaction to
gamemaker I see it going one of 2 ways, 1: down fallen and disheartened (what its called game maker but typing nfs*gta doesn't make my game !?)
2: he gets really keen to see what he can do given such an awesome tool :)
try push him in the direction of 2 :)
but yea funny, just as funny as the looks I get from friends when they see the doodles in my exam pad for one game design or other :)

Gazza_N
09-05-2008, 09:13 PM
but its funny how he wants to fuse 2 games, that cracked me up :)
Nothing wrong with that. A large portion of the games I make are attempts at fusing mechanics from different game genres together. It's an approach that's served me very well so far. ;)


but yea funny, just as funny as the looks I get from friends when they see the doodles in my exam pad for one game design or other
Ah yes... The Almighty Exam Pad of Game Design. I had one of thems in high school too, and the response I got was pretty much the same. :D Pity Game.Dev wasn't around back then.

dislekcia
10-05-2008, 09:03 PM
Ah yes... The Almighty Exam Pad of Game Design. I had one of thems in high school too, and the response I got was pretty much the same. :D Pity Game.Dev wasn't around back then.

I have two files full of those exam pads... ;)

-D

Aval4nche
11-05-2008, 10:24 AM
Ah yes... The Almighty Exam Pad of Game Design. I had one of thems in high school too, and the response I got was pretty much the same. :D Pity Game.Dev wasn't around back then.

I still get funny looks myself in class.

The thing that bothered me was that this guy didn't aspire to do it with hard work. He just thought he could do it in five minutes without even trying. If that was possible you would see a lot better things than just GTA and NFS spliced together.

Tr00jg
11-05-2008, 03:21 PM
Ah yes... The Almighty Exam Pad of Game Design. I had one of thems in high school too, and the response I got was pretty much the same. :D Pity Game.Dev wasn't around back then.

I have a whole book with ideas. It is really cool to page through it and seeing real neat ideas you forgot. :)

Gazza_N
11-05-2008, 05:01 PM
I have two files full of those exam pads...

I have a whole book with ideas.
I was never that organised. :p

Fact is that I had tons of notes and random scribblings lying around, but I chucked them all out because at the time I didn't think I'd ever be able to make them. Fortunately, I still remember most of the ideas that weren't Generic FPS 37b. ;)

Thaumaturge
11-05-2008, 10:35 PM
Heh, I historically keep most of my ideas in my head - which of course can lead to some leakage of ideas, but I suspect that the more valuable elements and ideas are retained.

I do, however, have a handful of rather old ideas on file - most aren't terribly wonderful, I don't think, but at least one has provided inspiration for an idea that I might make at some stage.

dislekcia
12-05-2008, 01:10 AM
Heh, I historically keep most of my ideas in my head - which of course can lead to some leakage of ideas, but I suspect that the more valuable elements and ideas are retained.

I could never do that... I've lost so many great (well, I assume they're great... They felt pretty good at the time) ideas by assuming I'll remember them later. Both Miktar and I tend to carry little notebooks around so that we can record the ideas that tend to hit throughout the day.

-D

Thaumaturge
12-05-2008, 01:38 AM
Admittedly, I have forgotten some good ideas, I imagine (I think that I should have said "most of the more valuable elements and ideas" above), but nevertheless, the ideas that I love the most seem to have stayed with me (and have even, in some cases, donated ideas to later concepts).

I do also occasionally write down (or type out) specific elements that I want to retain and am afraid to forget. In fact, I did so just shortly before beginning this post, as thoughts regarding a particular element of one idea that I'm keeping in my head - a hoped-for sequel to a rather large project that I hope to begin on soon - led to a potentially interesting dialogue fragment (well, I think that it's potentially interesting, at least :P).

The large project itself has a selection of scattered writings and sketches associated with it (I'd forgotten about those when I wrote the above post, I think - they live on my desk under a pile of more recent items, as well as in at least one file on my computer), but a lot of it lives in my head.

Finally, I think that I do have a tendency to leave behind ideas that don't take too deep a root and which I don't end up working on. For example, I came up with an idea for the GameDev.Net Four Elements contest before last; it was, I think, a slightly rushed concept (I think that I entered a little late), and I'm not terribly attached to it, so I've more or less left it behind. It's not impossible that it will one day be scavenged for parts, however. On the other hand, Thaumatomech still lives; it's an idea that I like well enough to want to keep and hopefully one day create, and I still have fairly clear visions of it.

[edit] My apologies if I, as I suspect, rambled a bit in the above post; I'm inclined to blame it on lack of sleep. ^^;

dislekcia
12-05-2008, 04:05 AM
For personal projects you pretty much tend to know what it is you want to do with a game, but I find all my notes and scribblings invaluable when I get a client that wants something now and I'm all out of inspiration. If I can't come up with a way to turn what they're trying to do into a fun game, I'll start paging through my files or messing with old prototypes and usually I'll end up building on an old throwaway concept that either didn't feel right at the time or simply didn't have a good enough context to work in.

That and most of my friends are all good designers in their own right. Bouncing ideas off Miktar, Aeq or GLDM is a great way to get a refined concept going.

-D

Bonezmann
12-05-2008, 09:02 AM
I have a few pages of designs myself, I once got halfway through a 9-page poster of a surfing Shark. Maybe I should finish it...

Karuji
12-05-2008, 08:46 PM
Hard work is a must, so is a notepad.
i find my little scratching invaluable now its just getting them to work properly. Ye i need to put in some more hard work into my games (bad practising guitar too much, and not making games and practising coding) *slaps self, and promises to work harder*

01DT!m3r
13-05-2008, 06:22 PM
I too carry around a flip file with tons of old notes and scribbled pictures from long LO classes mainly . But none the less handy both for looking back on and keeping myself busy during LO :)

Cloud_Ratha
13-05-2008, 06:47 PM
My artwork follows me around varsity all the time... probably because its in every margin and availiable space on every page... makes studying fun and troublesome :)

Thaumaturge
14-05-2008, 11:29 PM
For personal projects you pretty much tend to know what it is you want to do with a game, but I find all my notes and scribblings invaluable when I get a client that wants something now and I'm all out of inspiration. If I can't come up with a way to turn what they're trying to do into a fun game, I'll start paging through my files or messing with old prototypes and usually I'll end up building on an old throwaway concept that either didn't feel right at the time or simply didn't have a good enough context to work in.

True - I can see the wisdom in that...

If I may ask, how do you index your ideas? Do you keep them in random order (and if so, how do you find a particular idea?), or is there some way of finding an idea appropriate to a particular concept that you want to work on? Or do you perhaps simply flip through everything, or perhaps use "mental indexing", replying on memory to associate a current project with something written down previously?

I'm trying to work out how I might apply that in my own life, were I to do so, against the possibility of one day becoming a professional...

Cloud_Ratha
14-05-2008, 11:32 PM
Maybe just log them in by date...
or genre?

Thaumaturge
14-05-2008, 11:49 PM
Either might be useful, depending on what you're searching for, and what you have to work with.

But if you choose one of those, what do you do if you want to find an idea that concerns water, or a particular weapon type?

It begins to look as though a database might be called for (or at least multiple indices), but I doubt that either is worth the trouble. It's my suspicion that one's memory would provide decent matching in many cases...

Cloud_Ratha
15-05-2008, 12:01 AM
This whole subject reminds me of a delphi project i made back in school... kept a database of info, saved it, and you could leave keywords for search reasons.

Was pretty nifty, it was only used for text, but it should take approx 12.53s to make it into files of anykind!

I think that would probably be the best bet with your problem :D

I wonder if i still have it? making a new one wouldn be too hard?

dislekcia
15-05-2008, 12:44 AM
True - I can see the wisdom in that...

If I may ask, how do you index your ideas? Do you keep them in random order (and if so, how do you find a particular idea?), or is there some way of finding an idea appropriate to a particular concept that you want to work on? Or do you perhaps simply flip through everything, or perhaps use "mental indexing", replying on memory to associate a current project with something written down previously?

I'm trying to work out how I might apply that in my own life, were I to do so, against the possibility of one day becoming a professional...

The whole point is that I need to make creative links that I haven't made before. So having a random assembly of ideas to look through helps with that.

Also, I tend to scribble and draw when I'm writing out ideas, so I've got a handy way of identifying what each page contains when I'm flipping through them. Most of my ideas aren't even in text these days... I draw a whole bunch of stuff, put arrows everywhere and jot down some equations ;)

-D

Thaumaturge
15-05-2008, 01:28 AM
Heheh, fair enough. ^_^

Cloud_Ratha, you reminded me of a little dictionary-like program that I once made, which was intended to hold translations of words that I was planning on using for a world that I once (partially) created. The dictionary didn't get far (although I think that I could still recall a handful of terms), and neither did the story that I was writing in that setting (aside from one short story, at least), but I seem to recall that I enjoyed working on that world and story. ^_^

Both of you have reminded me of the notebooks that I do keep, although those store all sorts of things - notes on games that I've worked on, directions, shopping lists, story ideas, and a variety of other things, as well as game ideas.

Not to mention the pad that I tend to keep near my computer, although that's more a place in which to make notes, perform calculations, etc.

Perhaps I should sit down at some stage and copy potentially-useful game ideas and the like to some central storage... :/

Cloud_Ratha
15-05-2008, 01:53 AM
Since i started playing with game maker, and fiddling with spites i draw them everywhere... I mean everywhere in animation stages. I even drew azi (tentacal) rocking on a guitar as u flipped through the pages of my exam today. I should put them away somewhere... Or just scan them all to my pc?

Kensei
15-05-2008, 01:29 PM
That and most of my friends are all good designers in their own right. Bouncing ideas off Miktar, Aeq or GLDM is a great way to get a refined concept going.
-D

I completely agree - it is an awesome sight to see you four sitting in a corner spurning out game designs :D

In fact, it was during one of those conversations with yourself and Aeq, that I thought of the idea of NAG:The Arcade Game.

Unfortunately, my game ideas are mainly in my head. I used to write all my game design ideas on my 'special' Blizzard notepad (That I got in the Warcraft battlechest :D)
including my fabled (and now running joke in my family) Shopping Centre Game :D

Mashing two genres is what making some games awesome - I fell in love with Shogo:MAD for that very reason. Think about CliffyB and his awesome idea of a chainsaw machine gun :D
But it needs to be within reason.

Chippit
15-05-2008, 01:31 PM
Unfortunately, my game ideas are mainly in my head. I used to write all my game design ideas on my 'special' Blizzard notepad (That I got in the Warcraft battlechest :D)
including my fabled (and now running joke in my family) Shopping Centre Game :D
Heh, that reminds me. I still have the one I got with Starcraft all those years ago.

dislekcia
15-05-2008, 01:36 PM
Heh, that reminds me. I still have the one I got with Starcraft all those years ago.

I have so many copies of Starcraft that I've still got 2 or 3 of those notepads lying around ;)

-D

Chippit
15-05-2008, 01:37 PM
I have so many copies of Starcraft that I've still got 2 or 3 of those notepads lying around ;)

-D
hax

Kensei
15-05-2008, 02:14 PM
I have so many copies of Starcraft that I've still got 2 or 3 of those notepads lying around ;)

-D

Shaddup you Starcraft freak!

Any news on the job application btw?

dislekcia
15-05-2008, 02:44 PM
Shaddup you Starcraft freak!

Any news on the job application btw?

Kinda stalled, been busy with tons of meetings trying to get more work... Finished the cover letter tho, now I just need to streamline my resume and send it off.

-D

Bonezmann
15-05-2008, 02:49 PM
If you want you can lock the thread Dis. :) Don't wait for me :)