UBON'S PROFILE

I'd be careful about assuming that a premise that's frightening for five minutes and thirty seconds can be stretched to the length of a full game and still be as effective. (and I wish people would stop resorting to music boxes and children as an easy way of scaring people. it doesn't really... work. what scared you about this? was it all the people telling you you should be scared, I wonder?)

I think that if people want to create effective horror, they should try to avoid typical horror trappings like haunted orphanages and creepy children and nazi scientists and supersoldier programs. we know what to expect from them. horror is the process of forcing someone to face the unexpected when they aren't ready to do so, and so you as a horror developer need to push yourself not to rest on the same cliches you've seen used before. it's lazy and insulting to the player. (not that your typical scarecam celebrity doesn't do a great job of looking like an idiot on his or her own.)

e: that creepypasta was dumb, so it's science time: the cumulative process of aging (scientifically called "senescence") is thought to be caused primarily in humans by an imposed limit on the number of times a single cell may replicate itself by division. if you think of a cell's chromosomes as a tape recording, there exist at either end large blank spaces known as telomeres -- these areas exist as a means of preventing gene degradation. when a cell divides, a small portion is lost, and the telomeres grow shorter, until they eventually become too short and the cell is no longer able to replicate itself without damaging its chromosomes. when this happens, the cell no longer divides and simply dies out. the number of times a cell may divide before this occurs is called the Hayflick limit, and it has a purpose: by occasionally culling a cell population, the body lowers the extent to which damaged genes can be replicated. many things are capable of damaging our DNA and altering the information, and the presence of telomeres lowers the chances that this damage will accumulate and develop into cancer.

as the cells of children have their telomeres largely intact, cell division and replacement occurs quickly and efficiently. as a person grows, however, the number of cells still within the Hayflick limit slowly dwindles, leading to the formation of wrinkles and other signs of aging as the body is no longer able to replace its dead cells quite so easily. the skin loses elasticity, the heart and lungs begin to strain, the eyes develop cataracts, and the joints grow brittle. it's funny that our bodies protect us from cancer by killing us a different way, isn't it?

there have been experiments in lengthening expended telomeres, but the science is still in its infancy. gene therapy and infusions of telomerase have been shown to reverse the signs of aging in lab mice to an extent, but the relationship between telomeres and aging are not yet fully understood and it's uncertain whether the science would have the same effect on a larger and more complex creature like a human. there are species of animal with telomeres that actually lengthen as they age, and species with telomeres that don't change at all, and the length of a particular species' telomeres has not been determined to be proportional to its lifespan in any conclusive way. additionally, it's thought that removing the Hayflick limit would result in vastly increased incidences of cancer, as it would halt the culling of cells completely -- even ones carrying damaged genetic information. immortality, at any rate, is simply not on the table no matter successful these experiments are -- the body is worn down by more than just itself, and preserving the telomeres (or removing an imaginary "killswitch") would only be removing one of the ways the world slowly kills us.

("killswitch-ectomy"? seriously?)

I'd been counting on the last week after exams to be calm enough to allow me to catch up, but it looks like things are going to be a bit crazy from now until after the actual event -- so unless something changes, I'm gonna have to bow out from this. not having something you consider finished enough is one thing, but as it stands it looks like I won't even be around while it's going on.

so good luck to everyone who's still in it! it doesn't look like you guys are gonna have any shortage of releases, anyway.

author=Xenomic
Yes, I only intend on making this one game (there was plans for a "sequel" based on the bad ending, as well as a side game for this game for 5 of the more important characters so that the player could see what happened during their scenarios). Kinda why I'm tossing what I have into this one game. ^^;

I don't think this is the best philosophy to have when designing. you shouldn't be tossing every mechanic you can think of into a single game just because you think that's the only game you'll ever make -- for one thing, you may very well be wrong there.

the more important reason, though, is that if you succeed at this, the result is a confused mish-mash of mechanics with no unifying core. what you're doing right now is the literal definition of feature creep, and it's really no wonder you've been at it for five years if you just keep adding more things on.

so open up your game and go to town with the trimming shears. don't forget: "The fact is, if we all had unlimited resources and unlimited time, we’d all make the same crappy, meandering everything game and there’d be no reason to play at all. It’s our limited resources and time that forces us to make tight games that feel like they have a purpose."

please phrase your question in the form of an answer

some relevant advice from derek yu's excellent article on the subject:

2. ACTUALLY START THE DAMN GAME
Writing your idea down is not starting the damn game. Writing a design document is not starting the damn game. Assembling a team is not starting the damn game. Even doing graphics or music is not starting the damn game. It’s easy to confuse “preparing to start the damn game” with “starting the damn game”. Just remember: a damn game can be played, and if you have not created something that can be played, it’s not a damn game!

I'm not sure how much of those last five years has been spent working on something tangible, but I'll tell you this much: going over the plot in your head does not constitute actually working on it. a lot of people like to use taglines like "five years in the making, extra sugoi" when all they've done for the first three is brainstorm one-liners for the hero to say and doodle in their textbook. I'm not saying that's the case here, but if a majority of your "work" on any given part is just turning over ideas in your head, it's time to move on and come back to it later. which brings me to this one:

9. PUSH FORWARD
Feeling stuck? Push forward. Start working on the next level, the next enemy, the next whatever. Not only is it helpful for motivational purposes, but you want to get a sense for how your whole game will play out. Just like writing - you don’t want to go through it sentence by sentence, making sure every sentence is perfect before you move on. Get an outline down.

it sounds to me like you've been stuck in the database for a good long time and maybe lost sight of where all those bits and pieces are going to go. leave that for now! make some basic layouts for your dungeons, design a town or two, make a little space that you can play through in-game and then decide what scale you'd like to work on. and once you've identified what you might not get much use out of...

13. CUT. IT. OUT.

Oh shit, you’re way behind schedule. You have all these ideas but they’ll colonize Mars before you have a chance to implement half of them. Oh woe is you… BUT WAIT!

Well, that’s great, actually! Because now you’re forced to decide what is really important to your game, and what you could cut. The fact is, if we all had unlimited resources and unlimited time, we’d all make the same crappy, meandering everything game and there’d be no reason to play at all. It’s our limited resources and time that forces us to make tight games that feel like they have a purpose.

If you’ve been building upon some core concepts that are provably fun, just keep cutting until you get to the very edge of that core. Everything else is probably just fluff you could do without. Or worse, it’s fluff that’s preventing people from seeing the best parts of your game.

this is the biggest thing you should take away from that article, because it sounds like you're brain-deep in feature creep. working at something on and off for five years, it's only natural that your vision is going to drift a little bit. you could give yourself a big push by going through what you have and asking yourself plainly:

"is this absolutely necessary? is there a simple core concept at work here? does it work organically with the rest of the game?"

once you've pared down the bullshit the path ahead should become much clearer. things left over from two or three iterations ago aren't doing you much good, and odds are they're making it look like a much larger job than it has to be.

read the full article if you have the time, it's really quite excellent and comes from a dude with a bunch of projects under his belt.

good luck!