Elysian Shadows Devs Have Inspired Me

Head on over to http://elysianshadows.com to check out their projects status.

Quite a few years ago, I ran into "Adventures in Game Development" on YouTube (must have been about 4 years ago). What they were doing looked fun. So, this lead me to start into game development of my own. I tinkered, a lot. I wrote mostly experimental code, as time went I tried writing a small game. I actually completed a break-out style game, then I tried another platform-style game. Anyway, the game-dev days kinda fizzled out - as is true with most projects I attempt.

Many years ago, around 2004 I was working on a mapping program. I learned a ton, and had a working application with only a few minor bugs. That project never panned out to anything. Then a few years later, I stumbled across Qooxdoo. Immediately, I thought - hey, this is perfect for that mapping project I was doing a few years back. So, I began learning the Qooxdoo Framework and made pretty good progress. Nothing that would be publicly usable, but a fun little toy was born. I stopped working on it after a few months and again, nothing came of the project.

Then in February and March of 2011, I resurrected the old Qooxdoo mapping project. I had to rewrite pretty much everything, because Qooxdoo had gone from version 0.6 to 1.2+ in that time. After about two months I had the same toy as before, entirely re-written. I had added a few new features too. But, as we all know, the project again fizzled and faded.

Okay, now onto the actual title of this post...

I was just browsing around and happened to end up at the Elysian Shadows website. Wow, it has matured. And, they are still making "Adventures in Game Development" videos! I thought, these guys rock because they can do what I have never done... They have stuck with the same project for four-years and it's still going.

So, that got me to thinking... Just think if I stuck with my mapping project since 2004. That would have been eight-years of development. I was thinking how cool my mapping application would be if I had spent that much time dedicated to one thing. So, hats off to you Elysian Shadows Dev-Team! You have inspired me!

Time to turn this what if, to why not. Why not spend the next eight-years on my mapping project. Sure, I could have long breaks from it. But, when I do work on stuff - I already will have the project sitting there waiting - calling out to me. No more, hey this would be fun to try! I've spent most of my programming experience as a tinkerer - a tinkerer that never actually has a true-project.

I know I can finish projects. I've programmed for other people before, and completed their projects. Might as well complete one of my own for a change. Or, not complete, but continually develop would be a better term. Good projects are never complete. They are continuously evolving into something grander and grander.

We'll see how true to the words of this blog-post I am. Will I follow through and stay dedicated to my mapping project? I should almost start a poll. If I look at my track-record with personal-projects I'd vote NO. However, maybe this is a turning-stone. Maybe I can follow through. Only time will tell.