Restarting your work...

So,

I just realized that, the last time I reset my computer to factory defaults, I forgot to include one of my main projects.. Or at least, forgot to include the most recent version... Now, the project in question had around 95 custom scripts and its most recent backup version was around 76 scripts...

Now I am thinking, I could just re-write most of the scripts (including the 76+ I have) to make them 'better' in some way...


This got me thinking, what would you guys do?

The situation : About 6 months of work has been lost. You have all work prior to that remaining and can most likely gain small pieces back from searching messages etc...

Do  you..
A - Restart from scratch and ensure each piece of work is at its full potential.
B - Continue with what you have, slowly finding faults and fixing them and making various improvements.
C - Something Else (please specify)

C - Cry in a corner.

Then B.

If I hadn't thrown myself off Waterloo Bridge, I'd probably go for B.

Restarting from scratch. Because I always find my system could have better structure.

I'm already restarted a project three times. And it get better and better

I will evaluate what I found first. Like playtesting it and found what still missing by recall my memory while playtesting. Then re-thinking about added them back or just leave that for better idea. Okay, I will choose option B.

*Hope this can help

These made me laugh quite a bit :)

Seems I am taking it better than you guys would :D

I noticed it when I loaded what I thought was the most recent copy.. and was like ' :o' for a few minutes, then was thinking ' BD Can start from scratch now' lol

This is my thinking.  I have already done the hardest part - figuring out what to do! And obviously, I learned alot while doing it, which means the next time round would be a lot quicker. Last time this happened, I restarted and ended up with a full script engine... ($D13x)

I done that, had a good look around to see what was missing...

The missing items included a custom ABS (action battle system) along with a good few addons for it and some other statistic-y scripts :p

I would give up, but if the idea and plot remained in my head, I'd restart. That's what I did when I deleted In the End by accident. Except, now that I have the full version of Ace, I can improve on the idea.

@Diretooth - well, my project is not really a 'game' as such, its more a collection of scripts that I have written in order to make my game :p
Only once the scripts are functioning the way I want will I actually make them into the game I have been planning for years :p

Well, you may lost your works. But in my case, I've decided.

Say that I've worked in project a year ago. I abandoned it because I found another interesting thing. Then I looked back at my old project and started to thought. Why I did these, why I did those. Hence the project restarted lol.

   I'd probably go with Solo's C at first, then resort to my C of getting completely distracted by other responsibilities and just let the project die for a while. Then look back fondly at it and resolve to go with B for no other reason than the knowledge of past experience that tells me if I restart on something every time I have a setback that tells me I should restart I'll never accomplish anything... though that situation could be completely different than yours, but it's what I'd have to do to have any hope of producing anything end game.

A -- Start from scratch. You can make it bigger and better! You can do it man! I believe in you!

I would say restart from scratch.   You now know what worked well and what didn't in your design, so you can re-do everything, and it'll be a much better design.

The same applies for your scripts.

I've heard it's a maxim in development.  The best way to design something well is to do it once, then throw that design away and do it again, using the lessons you learned from the first time to make the right design.

Yea, thats pretty much my thinking.

I have learned a butt load while writing the scripts, so restarting them would only enhance them even further...

Alternatively, I could just take what I have and slowly rewrite each of those to maximize and optimize. Obviously some portions of code wont need to be changed due to revious updates increasing the efficiency - which would cut out some more of the rewriting time :)

Heya Dekita, too bad you lost ~06 months of work. I am one of those persons that dont like to redo something that was already made, but sometimes its necessary.

I really think that it depends of your goal (your MMORPG) and secondly of your patience. If it was me, i would prefer option "B", but only if those missing scripts attend your goal. So why not recover the essential ones (for you) and maybe start from scratch the most important one (aka the Battle System). This is an opportunity to make it better or even different.

All in all, my answer is partial B then A. :o

In regards to making songs, I'd always restart from scratch no matter how far the back up has gone through the process whenever my project crashes. Its terribly impractical but it ensures a high quality end result. Thankfully, though, I seldom make songs that span for three weeks and eat up alot of processor power and memory.

Experiences like that had also made me "compose" ahead of time, rendering premade loops so that I'd just smack all the samples if I wanted an original song out of the blue.

There's ALWAYS the temptation to start projects over from scratch, even when you HAVEN'T lost a good portion of them. No matter how long you've been doing it, you're always learning new things and coming up with better ways to do things. So if you were really hoping to start over, you've just given yourself a pretty good excuse. But I can guarantee half way through you'll be tempted to start over AGAIN because you've learned even MORE and have come up with BETTER ways to improve it further :)


It depends on what's important to you. If you want to get the game done and released, use what you can and find what you can and fill in the missing bits. If it's the process and experience of making a game that you find really enjoyable, and you don't mind pushing the release date out even further (assuming you even had one in the first place), then it's worth considering starting over.


I've got a dozen backups of my game at different stages of development, and I hope I NEVER have to resort to using any of them!

Sage advice, Shaz. I'll keep that in mind myself!