Building Browsergames

Ask the readers: what’s holding you back?

Are you working on building a browsergame? Have you got all your ideas carefully sketched out and organized, so that you know exactly what to build? Have you designed your game’s database properly? Figured out what makes your game unique? Started?

It might sound surprising, but a lot of the great ideas out there never start. They get planned and planned to death, and there are dozens of ideas on how to build them, but they never actually get implemented.

Are you having this problem? What’s holding you back? Is it a lack of time? A problem making some sort of difficult decision? Trouble making up your mind in regards to a certain approach or language? A lack of resources?

What’s holding you back from building your own browsergame? Why haven’t you started?

Building Browsergames exists to try and help people who are interested in building a browsergame, but aren’t sure what step to take next - and that means that we’d like to help you as much as we can towards your goal. Send an e-mail to buildingbrowsergames@gmail.com and tell us: what’s holding you back?

Your Productivity Tips

Last week, I asked people to send me their productivity tips - and this week, I’ve received a few that I want to share with you.

Christian emphasizes that the trick is to make yourself start:

I work as a programmer for a military contractor. I deal with programming or thinking about programming 40 hrs a week. When i get home, usually the last thing to ever pass my mind is to work on something programming related for myself. However, I have found that if i make myself sit down for 30 min and just work on something, be it a login page, some templates, or just about anything that has something visual to show, i can usually stick it out for a few hours and end up getting so much more accomplished. The trick is to sit down and make yourself start.

Nick practically wrote me an entire blog post on what he does to stay productive:

I currently work self-employed at home as a webmaster so staying productive, avoiding distractions, is key for me. Here are a few things I’ve always done to stay productive;

Usually, if I don’t feel like doing a project (let’s use a browser game as an example), I’ll think of the least difficult, quickest change I can make to the project to further improve it towards my goal. Spelling errors, a line break, emboldening something, slight change in combat formula, anything tiny that’ll take 5 minutes at the most. This might be just me, but when I open up the project, even if I’m ‘intending’ to do just 5 minutes of work, 99% of the time, once I’m done, I’ll find myself in the mood to do even more. Perhaps it’s because I see it as a win-win situation; if it puts me in the mood, I’ll do more, but if not, I’ll still have improved the project in some way.

Another thing I do that helps my productivity is to take it in small, tiny steps; not worrying about the bigger picture. I’ll have an idea of what I want the outcome to be, but when I take out a notepad, I just list the absolute basics. I put the game development into ’rounds’, and at the end of each round, the game must be in a somewhat playable and stable state as a rule. First round for a game = registration page, login page, very simple ability to fight (perhaps a random number generated for both you and the opponent, no stats). Consider your game ‘completed’. Now you just upgrade it, open up a new page on your notepad, and start designing the game all over again; next round, you add stats/leveling/rewards, zones. Game ‘completed’, everything stable. Next round, add monster lists, combat modifiers, ability to attack other players, equipment, etc, and repeat adding rounds until you end up with the finished version you originally envisioned.

Obviously if you want something basic my previous technique won’t apply, but if you’re aiming for something more ambitious, it definetly helps. If you try to add (and list) everything all at once, the project just seems daunting, and sooner or later you’ll start putting it off. The best part is, even if you decide to stop working on the project, you’ll have completed every feature up until that point, and can easily re-use the code in other projects or if you continue at a later date. No wasted development time.

Last of all, unless you need to upload frequently, disconnect your internet. You can still work and test on the game offline if you’ve set up PHP and Apache on your system. Chatting with friends, YouTube, onling gaming have always been the doom of my projects, so I just disconnect my internet. Self discipline is key to any project, rewarding yourself for completed work, such as giving yourself an hour online before getting back to work not only gives you a break, but pushes you to achieve the goals you give yourself. Not only that, but you start to feel guilty whenever you do your ‘forbidden’ activities without having earned them.

It seems to me that the overarching statement coming from both Nick and Christian is a simple one: just do something. Both of them seem to emphasize that no matter how small, the trick is to just start, at which point you’ll usually get into the mood to work on your project more. That also tends to be the approach that I follow, and I can’t fault them for it - it’s worked great for me so far.

Do you have any other productivity tips, or a secret method that keeps you productive? Send an e-mail to buildingbrowsergames@gmail.com with your tips!

Got any productivity tips?

Between building a browsergame in my spare time, writing this blog, and writing a tutorial on building a browsergame, one of the issues that I have consistently struggled with is productivity. It’s sometimes difficult to determine what would be the best use of my time, and where to start on a particular project.

While I like to think that I’ve come up with a pretty decent way to get myself into the right mood to start cranking out code, I’m always looking for better ideas - what do you do to keep yourself productive on your projects, even when you’re not in the mood? Send an e-mail to buildingbrowsergames@gmail.com with your tips on how to stay productive - I’ll compile all of the responses, and put the best ones up here for everyone to benefit from.