Why do we do it?

So why do I spend so much time tinkering with games like this?

All together, I must have spent countless hours tinkering with various incarnations of EV. And it's not just EV. I end up doing this with any game that will allow me to do it. Does anyone rember Robot Odyssey? Well someone made a java clone, and added a few features. I spent gobs of time designing circutry and chips to do all kinds of stuff - that no one will ever use. I designed chips for making the robots play sports, operate via remote control, and turning the game into a turing machine. I got as far as planning ways for the robots to exchange bits geneticaly before I moved on to something else. Rediculous. Why would I spend so much time on a 20 year old game?

I build and build, and no one will evey likely see it.
I sit here maping out plans and notes. Designes and papers strewn about at a furious pace. Megs of lonely data. Strange, you'd think I was getting paid for it they way I throw myself into the work.

Well, you know what? It's fun for me.

I can only liken it to playing with blocks when you were young.
Or legos. You build all kinds of stuff, and they whole point was in the construction, it wasn't about what the finished product could do. You just ended up dissassembling it to make something else.

Now who knows if I'll ever finish this plug... I've got a lot of graphics to make. I'm good at that, but graphics are very time consuming. I was very proficient with Infinit-D back in the day, but I haven't touched a 3-D modeler in years. I've just started teaching myself Maya.

So now I'm going to spend 2 weeks to become proficient with a software package to create stuff that few will ever see? How odd. I can't even really show or describe what I'm doing to friends, because most people just wouldn't comprehend what's involved.

Does this strike a chord with anyone?

Desprez, on Nov 20 2005, 10:42 AM, said:

Does this strike a chord with anyone?
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Sure does. I have to agree with everything you say here. The fun isn't in the playing the game, it's in the messing around with stuff and the satisfaction from creating something that works. Heck, I haven't even played all of Nova yet - never done the Rebel string, or the Bounty Hunter for that matter.

Everything that has been said here so far, applies for me too. Except the Robot Odyssey bit, the learning Maya bit and the not touching a 3D app for years bit. I went Infini-D to LightWave.

From what I've gathered in my modest excursions into the rest of the 'net, this isn't all that uncommon a phenomenon. Mod communities are probably chock full of people like this. Marathon was the same way and even more so for me, both in terms of "I'd rather mod than play" and the lack of completing anything.

It's the urge to create when you don't want to do something visually artistic nor learn programming. Maybe.

Yeh I'm always tinkering with things... Not quite to the extent you seem to, but it really is the building thats the fun for me. Its satisfying when I can muck around with something and get results that I have influeced and not just something done by someone else. Thats pretty much what I like about pulling things apart and then rebuilding them, or just adding little bits and pieces of my own to whats already there. So often have I sat in class and been off in the back corner making designs for something or another. Often enough someone comes up to ask what I'm doing but I can never really explain cause they just don't seem to understand that I just like to mess with things.

So boy does that strike a chord.

Oh and I generally only buy games with editors for just that reason.

This post has been edited by Pyranah : 19 November 2005 - 07:59 PM

I used to make these huge game campaigns for AD&D that I would never play. When I ran Robotech games I would create ships- deck by deck- in levels of detail totally useless in a RPG and then I never ended up playing them either. I've quite a few half-written novels around and so many short stories in multiple generas that I never finished that I can't remember all of them. In the garage I have part of a hand-made guitar and parts that I'll probably never do anything with- just like the car.
I ResEdited everything I could from the time that I had access to a Mac- starting with Baby Labrynth, being a very pathetic ICON based game from back in the day. Working on Nova stuff is the first thing that I think I'll finish, though, due to the more immediate level of gratification- I can do something and see immediate results. Thus is the power of technology- it amplifies and streamlines the creative process.

rmx256, on Nov 19 2005, 11:56 PM, said:

I used to make these huge game campaigns for AD&D that I would never play. When I ran Robotech games I would create ships- deck by deck- in levels of detail totally useless in a RPG and then I never ended up playing them either.
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Oh yes. I too made huge detailed campaigns for AD&D. I never got into Robotech, but deck by deck detail totaly sounds like something I would have done.
The very first software tool I wrote was a basic program for the Apple II to help me build Car Wars vehicles. Let's see that was in... grade school maybe? I don't think we ever really finished a single car wars game. We just spent hours and hours making the cars.

I had started detailing the history and factions of my campaign world. Why is is the way it is. I mapped out dozens of groups from large city governments, to small secret revolutionary factions, to trader groups. How they operate, where their support and supplies come from, which leaders have influence over others, philosophical goals, SOP, etc.

The idea was with all groups in place, the adventures would practicaly write themselves at that point.
Of course, it's mostly useless untill you get that critical mass of developed groups in place... not a small undertaking.

So this campaign world has evolved, and evolved, and been adapted to many other formats.
I haven't played D&D in years, but the world keeps moving to a new medium.
It's currently the setting for an epic fantasy stragety wargame.
Which has turned out quite well so far and it's almost complete (suprise!) I just have to make a few revisions... then a few more... meanwhile my kitchen table is covered with a huge detailed map and hundreds of different little military units.

Just how do you share that? How do you explain the design challenges you had to toil away at? And then the brilliant solutions you came up with?

You can't. It doesn't translate very well, does it.

Not unless the person listening is into the same stuff. It probably doesn't help that my other life revolves around the nightclub I work at. I have very few contacts that would car about that sort of stuff.
Well, I guess that's one of the things these forums are good for. To find others that can appreciate the labor of creating.

I like to do it because of the vision. Primaraly the graphics, the awesome space battles with wicked sick ships that I see in my head, and try to create them so that I won't lose their memory. Its like playing God in a sense, you see and know everything that goes on in your universe. You are free to expound here and there, and play with different scenarios. I just wish there was a insta imagiation brainwave -> model device.

A Chinese nobleman once went to an artist, and paid him to paint a picture of a chicken.

He came back the next day, but the artist said he was not ready.

The nobleman came back the next day, and the next, and the next, but each time the artist said he was not yet ready.

A year and a day from the beginning, the nobleman lost patience and demanded that the artist produce the picture of the chicken.

There and then, the artist took a brush and ink, and drew a perfect picture of a chicken in a single flowing stroke.

The nobleman was furious. "If it was so easy for you to paint a chicken, why did you keep me waiting for a year?" He asked.

The artist then took him into his house, and showed him, covering every surface of wall, three hundred and sixty five pictures of chickens.

His mastery to paint one perfect chicken grew from the year of work.

I like to think that the Mod-ing community is generating talent in thousands of people. Most of the creations on the way will never be seen, but one day these people will be producing the next generation of art, novels, films, even games.

Well put martin.

Personally I do it because I think it's a laugh.

--gav