richarddlopatin
Member
- Oct 25, 2017
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Dude... I'm doing the exact same thing. I'm working on a project that I'll release only when actually ready. None of that pre-release, pre-alpha stuff. Of course that by making it this way I can also fall into that valley of eternal non-released projects but it's fine.You're right in a sense that writing takes a lot of time. But, generally, it only takes time when you're not inspired by the project you're working on or caving under pressure. To be honest, it isn't exactly that much of a complicated story he's writing even if we don't know where this is heading, it feels pretty straight forward.
I have a tendency to get obsessed with ideas and they're generally inspired by other work, be it movies, music or art. I would suggest that he watches something related to "spy dramas" (maybe Alias?) for inspiration, and focus entirely on writing and let someone else do the coding.
When I'm writing its because I have been inspired by something and that creativity flows naturally. In my experience, you have to write those ideas down immediately or risk forgetting them (a reason why I always have my phone ready to write something down).
This is the time you should be writing, sometimes regardless of the social situation you're in (at least write it down) - that is the hazard of this type of work. That is when creativity flows naturally, and when writing is fun. You have to hit that wave of creativity and it'll flow naturally.
Those ideas becomes rough drafts to start with but it helps when you're in that dry spot and have no inspiration or joy of working on a specific project. A draft is still a good start and rather than agonizing on one paragraph for weeks, you can spend that time rewriting and editing the ideas you've already written down. Trying to force that flow of creativity to come out for something you're not feeling the grove for is the main reason why some writers takes a disproportionate amount of time doing little work sometimes. Its not the writers fault per se. They're mostly just tunneled into that position by pressure from outside sources, be it family or monetary - the latter being the prime evil.
I've followed this game for a while now and I've always been impressed by the writing, especially the research/knowledge in the subject he puts in. I can see that he is someone who obsess over smaller but important details in expressing a scene. That is sometimes my biggest weakness in writing, because I have a hard time putting the scene inside my head on the canvas if you catch my drift. I use 3D rendering to get those scenes out on my own personal canvas, even if you have to adapt the information in your head to what assets is available in your programs.
Its a shame that the progress of the game is what it is. He's sort of stuck himself into a hole he can't get out of. I'm sure this is what he wanted to do for a living, or else he wouldn't spend so much time researching about the theme of his story. Its that or he has a backround in the subject at hand (maybe former SAS?).
I really liked the new style of the game (whatever version this is now) and had big hopes that it would release an episode every 2 months or so. It seems reasonable in my head. I've been working on my project for two years on my spare time and I have done close to 3000 renders - where most of the first six months was learning and becoming better at Daz Studio.
Since then I've been forced to redo my first half of my story because my renders from the beginning was not up to par with my latest (at the time) work. Now I've rewritten the story and redone the renders of that time (over 600 renders) over the past 3-4 months while having a regular job. If I can do that in that time with little experience, I think spending 5 months of this latest episode is a little excessive...
EDIT: Another point is the fact that I've worked on my project without releasing it as a early access or version 0.1 etc because of;
1: I don't like releasing half-finished work and I've played too many games like that (Games like BDIK is great because they release their work as episodes, which is much better IMO).
2: It puts unnecessary pressure on me and dampens creativity.
3: I'd rather release the full story and then work on improvements like adding animation, music and multi-choices story and eventually in-game systems.
I think I'm quite a bit more defensive to crushstation than most people here because I see myself in him a lot. I love writing 'useless' detail. The military/spy lingo in this game is phenomenal, I live for this shit. And believe me, this kind of thing is a time trap. I can get stuck reading about side stuff for hours and sometimes days, just taking notes and internalizing stuff, just to get my head inside the general mindset of my characters. And he does that a lot. He's either a military guy who was stationed in Thailand for a while (which is obviously quite unlikely) or he's just like me, as described.
And so it's like we both said, he put himself into a horrible situation. He's not inspired, he gets sidetracked a lot. I just hope the best for the story.
Oh I always go back to Girl Life. Awesome game with an awesome team. I don't know how you people do it. And it's awesome to bring GL up because it kinda does what I was saying. I don't feel like your team get caught up in the details. You just write stuff, and sometimes it's not that tidy but it's completely fine (and always very hot). Girl Life can have quite a few disconnects between content, flow, pacing and stuff, but it's such a huge game that it's to be expected and at the end of the day it works perfectly.
I brought up the movie screenplay thing because I'm writing my story in a screenplay editor. I'm used to the format and it's helping me tremendously flow/pacing-wise (I can't recommend KIT Scenarist enough if you want a screenplay writing tool). And like I said, just like crushstation, I'm so slow at writing. I have a story in mind that simply HAS NOT been made into a game before and I'm dying to get it out there but man... I'm disconcertingly slow at this.
