YoYoGames Wiki talk:Posting Conventions

By "the lone developer" I mean the lone,lone developer. The sort of Buck Roger's character with no Tonto to support him. The lone developer is someone who must do most of the work themselves,or pay someone else to do the sticky parts. It is these sticky parts that present with the omnipresent gestalt of the web-hype and pretension.

There is of course no way of knowing if the sticky part will ever get handled by someone who understands what they are doing. Everyone assures you that is simple and ducks for cover. The truth is everyone is looking for the mystical tech ,the way kiddies of three look for father christmas. Someone to do that pesky programming for them,while they continue to pose as gurus and pure graphic designers who cannot even draw. Everyone struts his bit publicly and cannot do or really understand the most simple processes.

The fault may lie in the medium. Computing resolves itself for the most part ,into following meaningless sequences with minute precision.

This is not an activity designed to promote intelligence but one which promotes self promoters.

A short examination of the difference between Lingo and ActionScript makes clear this point about following meaningless sequences. Both programs do more or less the same things now.Director(Lingo) is more expensive and still has cross platform difficulties within the development process; However for every line of Lingo in a process ActionScript can manage four.

Now one cannot help imagining that if both programs are doing something simular,that this is unecessary and perhaps both could economise on the amount of knowledge of the rote learning and kinetic RSI sort that they demand.

The lone developer is faced with "trying to find out how to do and if anyone else could or can do it" as one of his most fundamental problems.

The other problems of motivation,planning, client interaction,research,budgeting,time management etc. pale into significance beside this assault on the cidal of pretension that the lone developer must storm. Most of these are amply covered in any book on project management,managing digital project books and of cours web project management portentious or just plain pizzazy tomes.

But tat pesky programming remains a problem,as Adobe and Macromedia and Microsoft grind out endless incomprehensible routines all different from the sequences that proceeded them and all equally meaningless.

Meanwhile the lone developer if they want to get things done must wade through the constant frustration of others showing off what they can do while being unable to explain how because they copied it from someone else ,or followed instructions in a book which can only give one result and which they devoted themselves to with the loving minuteness previously associated with stamp collectors.

No straight forward stuff on the subject seems to exist .And for example even such fundamental problems in game development(in Flash), as getting a game to play for a time then to tune out and go to another scene are obfusciated in the plethora of show off examples. One can find which in fact iether rely on duplicating movie clips and removing them or subjecting every item to the same process before quitting.Or on audience responses.

All up the lone developer has only his nerves to support him through a gruelling process.