Sunday, June 13, 2010

FAangband and the meaning of life

I have been working on FAangband for nearly five years now.

Currently the Future section of the FAangband website says:
  • More AI improvements
  • Maiar more Tolkienesque, and playable Spirits, and as a consequence
  • Playing as a monster, Posband style
This is a lot of work, and I haven't really started. I'm not playing much FA, or any other variant, lately. And my mind is full of questions:

  • Do I want to make these changes?
  • If I don't, what will I do?
  • Why am I doing this, anyway?
  • Is it for the glory of people playing my variant?
  • Am I merely imitating?
  • Could there possibly be anything more stupid than starting a developer blog when you're having second thoughts about being a developer?
  • If there is, surely it's starting a blog with such an incredibly whiny post.
  • That last one wasn't even a question.
  • Nor was that.
I'm sure inspiration will re-emerge - the creative process is not a steady one. In the mean time, having been sufficiently self-indulgent to start a blog, I'll continue to indulge myself by whinging about how hard it is to do something that is completely voluntary.

If anyone is still reading (oh, look, the self-consciousness still hasn't stopped), feel free to comment.
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5 comments:

  1. MagnateJune 14, 2010 at 4:55 AM

    Chin up - I've been blogging for four years and have yet to convince myself it's worth anything. At least yours has a clear focus, and is quite distinct - AFAIK there are no other blogs dealing with both roguelike development *and* existential angst. If I can work out the RSS feed url I'll be hoping for a post every ... oooh, at least month or so.

    Best,

    CC

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  2. Seany CJune 14, 2010 at 8:34 AM

    >>Could there possibly be anything more stupid than starting a developer blog when you're having second thoughts about being a developer?

    Best time to do it, I'd imagine - otherwise, it's just a things-to-do list and you've got one of them already...

    From a non-developer POV, I'd suggest not being frightened to put development on hold once you're happy-ish with the end product - for now. I can think of a couple of 'band variants (Z, pre-Z+ and ToME) where the variant was working well and mostly stable, (around 2.28 for V, 2.3.4 for ToME) and further development turned horribly messy...

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  3. UnknownJune 14, 2010 at 10:25 AM

    TBH I'm not convinced that playable monsters a la Posband is what the game needs - Antoine

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  4. Doovy DoovsterJune 14, 2010 at 10:26 PM

    Your at-man shield is awesome!

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  5. JoelJune 26, 2010 at 7:00 AM

    Sheesh ... if you quit working on FAangband I'll have to go back to Vanilla Angband. That's like tossing out my copy of the Silmarillion and listening to the Lord of the Rings audiobook *adaption*!

    I've started with Rogue on the computer system at my local library ... I was 13 or 14 at the time. We got 45 minutes of time, and it was a toss up between Rogue and Adventure.

    FAangband is the best *band out there ... which covers a lot of history of me playing Moria and Angband version after version after version.

    ReplyDelete

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