Strive yourself further

Have you ever started a project that your determined to finish but your never happy with the way you do things? I'm that kind of person that knows they could possibly finish one said project if I stop tweaking everything to my liking. As script writer I tend to program my own work mostly and sometimes it's not the best or I know there is better ways of doing it. So I stay up for nights sometimes trying to re-write it different ways that would work better then others. Now in short term I call this "Tweaking" It has a major advantage, Scripts are better looking in-game, and you learn to do something way different that's more better then your last, thus you run into the major disadvantage. Given the current state of "Tweaking". I now continue to go back over and over and over again until I'm 100% satisfied with the way I done things. Or if I actually like the way it looks. "So you double check your work and make minor or major adjustments, whats so bad about that?" What's bad is that it can become a nasty natural habit that forces you inside a cycle of endless "Tweaking" and no further progress on your game. This would apply mostly to a visual script or if your replicating components of a game. A good example is the "What are you working on?" thread. If you check the last 10-20 pages, I've posted the same thing 3 times on 3 separate occasions but the cache is that each time the script & the way it looks has gotten much, much better. Which leaves me with the rest of the game. Have I made any progress past 10 maps? Nope. All because I go back and "Tweak" everything. Scripts, Database, and even make a new blank project because the other one just got to messy to want to work with it anymore. So the next question is "Have you ever released a game?" Nope. I've been using RM sense 2011 and not once released anything. All because I "Tweak" everything over and over. It's not fun. Now this could sound like a big excuse which now that I think about it, it kind of is. It's me making excuses to fix something or "Tweak" something that never needs fixing or editing to begin with. Do you have a bad habit like that?  or Do you have any Solutions that you would recommend to avoid the "Tweaking Cycle". Feel free to post your creative responses in the comment section below. One last thing. Be sure to thank Venka for this Topic, She totally made me do it because she says I always go back and change everything over and over. Which is true. I would love to get out of this loop, trust me. It's all good though. xD Shes a good friend of mine. So I hope she doesn't mind me blaming her for the topic haha. ;)

Yes. I think you should save a separate version of your game for right now, so you can rollback to it if you don't like it, and then just forget about tweaking altogether. Try to make length to your game as quickly as possible. Of course worry about quality, but as you go. "Tweaking" is not allowed. Merely try to get gameplay time out of it.


And then finish your game.


Who knows? It might work. And plus, it's better to finish a bad game than never finish a good one. Trust me, I know this from experience. The one game I did finish (not on this site) was pretty average, but I still regard it as greater than my unfinished promising (I hope) game. So finish the thing! (lol)


Edit: Oh, but in general, I have this problem too sometimes. But I've learned to get over it and soon my game will be finished! Yay to lowering standards! Well, not lowering standards, but just refraining from "tweaking" as you say. Sometimes I find tweaking makes it worse lol. sometimes. But more often than not the time is not worth it, at least while you are developing the game.

Oh, I have this problem too. I've been using RM since 2010 (I think) and I'm still working on my first game. I've gone back to tweak and redo it every once in a while. At the moment my game is in version 3.1 .

It's hard to stop tweaking, but the GMD has helped me with progressing my game so much, instead of just tweaking what I have. Also, just setting no tweaking rules to yourself as Cashmere mentions helps too. I'm not tweaking anything unless I got feedback from others telling me to do so at the moment.

I follow on a bit from CashmereCat.  Create the game with what you have done so far.  Just do it.  No tweaking allowed.  Then go back and tweak to your heart's content.  It will be more productive because you will have a far clearer idea of what's needed for the actual game that you have ended up making.  Games/stories/characters evolve in the creation process so there will be differences from what you had originally thought.  There won't be time spent creating some wonderful little addition to a script that is never actually needed, because you never incorporated that aspect.  If that seems too extreme, then amend it to "I will do no tweaking until I have done another 20 maps"

Don't invent a new tool if the nail can be hit with the hammer you've got.

This issue is really apparent if you're into visual design or music production, and it can be a real issue for the consistency of your game.

If you're still in early/mid development of your skills, each design or track you make will most likely be an improvement in terms of overall quality. If you don't go back and tweak earlier works, then things may very well end up clashing a lot due to those differences in quality.

So, you(in this case, I) end up going back to tweak stuff over and over again, at the expense of actual progress.

That's why, with my later projects, I've simply started to impose limitations on myself, to create structure and consistency in the stuff I make.

It doesn't matter if I know know some fancy new way of making the sound of my strings richer and more alive than previously, I'll just keep on doing what I do atm for the sake of the overall presentation, and save the good stuff for the final cut, or for another project all together.

I think the best approach is just to try to make a reasonable skeleton of the game, with all of the expected maps.  The maps would be pretty bare bones, maybe just the essential NPCs, and for dungeons, a rough outline of the map structure.  

When I tried tweaking as I go, I quickly got stuck in the mire.  There are always a million things you can tweak in any map.   So I've decided to follow other people's advice and just postpone tweaking until the end.

This way you can see what the plot needs, and once you get to the game's end, then you can go back and tweak everything.  That's when the non-essential NPCs come in who tell the bulk of the story, the map tweaks to make the dungeons look nicer.  That's when we go adding lots of more Items, Weapons and Armor.  And when we tweak dungeon themes/background music/etc.  And then comes the many, many hours of playtesting and game balancing....