Nothing to write about

The title says it all. I really haven't much to write about, but since it's been three months since I last blogged I figured I'd try to come up with some stuff.

My game (TBHTWTEM) recently passed 300 plays on YoYo Games. I'm not too sure but I think it might be my most played game since I started using Game Maker, but it's definitely my most played game since under the alias of RC/RedChu.

What does this mean for you? Absolutely nothing. I'm not particularly proud of TBHTWTEM anymore. I rushed it when I could've taken my time to make it better, and I messed up with the control layout (which is an easy fix but I no longer support the game). Despite it having over 300 plays, the highscore board has 283 entries at this moment in time, plus it's hosted on a couple of different sites so however many people played it from those... I'm assuming not everyone submitted a score for whatever the reason they may have chose not to do so.

You may or may not be wondering if I'm working on any other games. Whether you are wondering or not doesn't matter because I'm going to give you the answer anyway.

After TBHTWTEM, I started work on another project (as you may have read in a previous blog entry of mine). That project basically collapsed and I've lost all interest in it. Since then I've started work on various other projects, none of which got past the planning stage, or if they did they didn't get very far at all. I still have a number of ideas I'd like to make into games, but I lack the motivation to do so. I try to find spriters who will sprite for my ideas but when I do, they're always too busy to do anything (why they agree to sprite if they're that busy is beyond me).

Don't get me wrong, I understand if someone is too busy with their lives to sprite for someone they don't actually know on the internet only to get nothing in return, but it'd be nice if you let them know that you are instead of agreeing to do so, you know? The same goes for everything else though, not just spriters. Teams usually will get little to nothing done on a project due to the lack of time/motivation with team members. You could be waiting for days or weeks for a team member to do what they're supposed to do in the project (if you're sending the source back and forth with each other, it can get frustrating when they don't send it back to you so you can work off what they've done (if anything)).

This is why I want to make games by myself, but this is why I don't make games. I see so many games that are released that are big hits and usually have beautiful graphics, something which I cannot achieve. It takes away any motivation I had.

I always wonder how something so simple could be received so well, and then I want to do the same thing but can't. It's frustrating that I have ideas that I will never see the light of day, or if I do I execute them poorly, lose motivation and stop work on another project. If I actually set my mind to it and not worry about the reception of the game and the competition of other games, I might actually finish something that I think is enjoyable. If I didn't worry about what some people will think about the game and make it how I want it to be, I would most definitely finish games.

Writing this is actually motivating me to make a game how I want it to be, and how I think it should. I'm sure that motivation will fade in a couple of minutes though (I think it already is).

Ah, well. I strayed from the point. I'm currently wanting to work on a couple of projects but am worrying too much about how they will be received among the community.

Then there's my super secret website that I need to finish. I haven't touched it for a few weeks (again, another motivational problem). I also don't particularly care for designing layouts for a website, and I do it without using photoshop or something to whip one out before making it happen, so it takes longer to make everything visually appealing to me. Coding the website isn't hard at all and it's my favorite part.

However, one thing that's taking so long is because I want to redesign the website again, but I know if I do that it will never get finished. Which it's really never going to get finished if I don't work on it, which is what I'm doing (or not doing, I guess. I don't know).

I guess this is the end of the blog now since I don't feel like writing about anything else. I'd say I'll try to update this more often but I know I probably won't.