My Failures Are Also Successes
Since I started this blog (and long before then), I’ve stumbled A LOT, there are many ideas I just threw out into the wind that never went anywhere, Ruby Tower Defense never got finished, and seems it will forever be classified as dead. Block Bounce had more than it’s fair share of issues, and “To The Exit… Again!” wasn’t perfect either. And there’s plenty more where all that came from.
When I was looking back, it was easy to see all the bad, and I’m willing to bet that you’ve been in that position before too, though your back story is probably better than mine 🙂 . But after a time of actually looking and thinking about my past projects, I was able to see success where I once saw failure, and I’m sure you can see it in your life too. Here are some examples from mine:
My game Block Bounce isn’t one of the worst games ever made (in my opinion anyway), but it will certainly never win any awards. The code is horrendous, the art could use some work, as could the sound and just about everything else. Yet I will testify that this is a success. It was the second game I ever made that reached completion. Making that game helped me get familiar with git, learn how to use Rubygame, it let me feel what it was like to develop a game out in the open (even if no one was watching 😛 ), taught me exactly what I did not want to do again in terms of code style, and gave me a limited idea of what I did want. All this makes it a success.
Ruby Tower Defense never even reached a playable state. It did let me experiment with Bazaar for version control, and helped me decide to stick with git. It’s biggest success was behind the scenes, the game engine. Ruby Tower Defense’s game engine was (and still is) absolutely fantastic. The engine has survived and thrived after the death of Ruby Tower Defense, getting enhanced and having some of its rough edges sanded off as time goes on. Publicly, an older version lives in To The Exit… Again!, and a newer version in ROG. Privately, it forms the basis of all my game-related experiments and prototypes. Because of the game engine, Ruby Tower Defense is one of the biggest successes of all.
It’s my challenge to you today to look back on all your past failures (and even some of your successes), and find all the victories that are hiding just beneath the surface. What you find may surprise you.
Ruby Game Dev 
Congratulations, at least you’ve tried to create your own game. I love games and i’m trying to create my own but with no success. I always have some ‘urgent’ thing to do (work, wife and so on :). First, i was thinking to use java with GTGE engine but now i’m really thinking in use Ruby.
Yeah, I know the feeling. Good luck with your game development endeavors! Oh, and a shameless plug for myself, I’m working on a video tutorials for making games with Ruby over here: http://manwithcode.com/making-games-with-ruby/, but the videos already out are kinda rough, and they only go up to getting a window on screen. I’ve got a text version over here: http://devel.manwithcode.com/making-games-with-ruby.html which is much, much more complete, covering graphics and sound and collision detection and all sorts of other fun stuff.
Great. I’ll read it. My first idea is to create a simple platform game using free sprites. Only to gain more game programming skills. In the future… maybe a rpg style game, why not? 😛
Sounds good! Have fun! 😀