Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/04/11/death-to-my-unfinished-game-de.html
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I have never heard those four words put together before.
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Now they will haunt your dreams, and other things besides.
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Wow, you know a LOT about games. And have some awesome ideas! (And really like tetronimos).
Vale, in particular sounds - hey, wait
Linky is missing and I really wanna see that picturebook!
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I really like the premise of “INTO THE WILD BUT YOU’RE BEING WATCHED”. I wish you would have finished it!
I always have trouble coming up with side projects. I always want to start on something, but I never have a concrete idea to work with 
… anyone else have this problem??
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I like the idea of Outrun Nights, but with drug runners.
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These games sound neat. You really should finish them!
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throw money at him until he surrenders? it worked once
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@beschizza I’m stealing ALL OF YOUR IDEAS! Within weeks, I’ll bring them all to fruition and bask in wealth and glory as you stand simpering in my shadow. I just need to finish this short story, two novels, and a Ph.D. First.
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Mornington Crescent.
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There’s quite a number of decent ideas. As you said, ideas are cheap but the ones presented are probably good to wipe clean to the bare essentials and then build it back up with a partner or group. That way you’re not bogged down with the work you feel attached to.
The one with the monochromatic dungeon with the two adventurers did give me a spark of an idea. Could work as a story or game, sadly i’m not much of a writer or coder 
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You can abandon a game project, but you can still learn from the attempt.
I’ve got over 20 years of folders on my computer and boxes filled with handwritten notes, and published works, for games that were deemed unworkable, unmarketable, failed, or otherwise went unfinished. Occasionally I revisit them to steal ideas for new games, or to remind myself of why those projects didn’t work out.
I no longer suffer from idea debt; I use it.
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I have a graveyard of game design notes all over my desktop and unfinished updates to my scripts, extensions, plugins, and libraries. Feel blessed that you never start.
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Ideas are cheap, but these ideas are amazing and accomplishable and maybe I’ll give up my dreams of early retirement and career change into something creative like game design and just keep doing the system-software QA thing until my soul is reduced to dust and I welcome the sweet embrace of death.
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Embeds might be wonky in our feature template.[quote=“Rotaryd7, post:5, topic:98717”]
I really like the premise of “INTO THE WILD BUT YOU’RE BEING WATCHED”. I wish you would have finished it!
[/quote]
This one in particular I haven’t give up on-- it’s just not game material, I think. I bet it would work better as a fake Krakauer-style article about finding the guy: diaries, odd photos, theories about what happened, that sort of thing.
What kept this idea alive for too long was Cannonball, a reimplmentation of Outrun’s original code in portable C++. Just astounding work and put it tantalizingly within reach!
I will be MORE than happy to assist anyone who wants to take any of these specifics, so long as it means I don’t go anywhere near code. Cheerleading is easy!
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I was into game Dev for yeears. My three favorites were Manatee Quest, where you were a pirate ship and had to kill all the evil manatees. One of the bosses was named Hon Jodgman.
The other was a browser based MMO and world creator called Nightfall. This was waay before web sockets, so it taught me tons about polling optimization and Apache tweaking.
The last one I worked on was an isomorphic universe creator. It was gorgeous, largely because (without permission) I snagged tons of images from NASA.
Edit: prototype
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Oh the huge manatee!
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This seems very complete! Sometimes I would think: if I can just get this to 75%, I’ll hire someone else to do the slow arduous technical work of polishing it to shippable condition.
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I have one idea, and a text file full of notes, for a light-duty game that could make for an interesting app. A “tycoon” type game.
Alas my coding skills are, like, Perl and half-remembered early-days Java and C++.
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