This issue has been kind of pledging me for the whole year, and I kind of want to get it off of my chest.
I've been in a continual state of wishing that I would make a game on the NES, but I always set the goals and requirements so lofty that I don't even properly begin. It always ends up as just being another exercise in rewriting init and video update code. For example the project I started out with was "a simple space shooter because Action 52 had 'too many shooters'" and ended up becoming "A space shooter with meticulously designed scenarios like Ikaruga or Gradius V, with background animation so complex it would literally be a precomputed FMV". Given the complexity of what that idea became and the resources that it would take, it would have a release date of no sooner then 2020, and would require that I contract a pixel animator and chiptune musician.
I feel like quitting nesdev outright, but I do not have a potential audience anywhere else. Not where I live, not from the college I graduated from, and definitely not from any other independent game development community.
I know that really the core issue is that I'm not disciplined in getting computer things done and published. That much is clear from my portfolio of unfinished and unpublished things for the past 11 years. People in my life may praise me for being the "computer guy" but what's that worth when things I set out to do don't get done, and when I can't even get my own shit together why should I expect myself to work with anyone else. Because ultimately it's not about me or my grand ideas, it's about how I can help everyone I meet.
I don't know where I'm going with this, but maybe just me typing this block of text is how will begin to get out of this rut of doing nothing.
I've been in a continual state of wishing that I would make a game on the NES, but I always set the goals and requirements so lofty that I don't even properly begin. It always ends up as just being another exercise in rewriting init and video update code. For example the project I started out with was "a simple space shooter because Action 52 had 'too many shooters'" and ended up becoming "A space shooter with meticulously designed scenarios like Ikaruga or Gradius V, with background animation so complex it would literally be a precomputed FMV". Given the complexity of what that idea became and the resources that it would take, it would have a release date of no sooner then 2020, and would require that I contract a pixel animator and chiptune musician.
I feel like quitting nesdev outright, but I do not have a potential audience anywhere else. Not where I live, not from the college I graduated from, and definitely not from any other independent game development community.
I know that really the core issue is that I'm not disciplined in getting computer things done and published. That much is clear from my portfolio of unfinished and unpublished things for the past 11 years. People in my life may praise me for being the "computer guy" but what's that worth when things I set out to do don't get done, and when I can't even get my own shit together why should I expect myself to work with anyone else. Because ultimately it's not about me or my grand ideas, it's about how I can help everyone I meet.
I don't know where I'm going with this, but maybe just me typing this block of text is how will begin to get out of this rut of doing nothing.