For all of the programmers here, what were the top mistakes (in order) you used to make when just starting out with programming, or learning how to program and attempting to do a project?
Back when I made some games (or tried to), these were the mistakes I used to make:
1 - Concentrating too much on the presentation: Or, in this case, graphics. I wound up like this guy, the one that spent 6 months creating a prototype. Basically, I would try to do too much at once on the screen. I wasn't content with dummy-text based data at the time. I thought I'd have to redo the entire program if I were to do that.
2 - Hardcoding: Granted, it might not be bad in itself all of the time, but... when you start coding like this: (keep in mind, this one relates to Turbo Pascal, which is based on an actual code example)
and it's all in one file, things can get pretty hairy. Sure, it's possible to make a game like this, but debugging it, or adding stuff to it just isn't going to be pretty.
3 - No gameplan: I never had things analyzed like, "What does the player data look like? What does the item data look like? What does the tile data look like?", and so on. I didn't even have files to be included that were seperated into things like graphics, and classes for other game objects.
4 - Staying on one piece of code/feature for too long: This was pretty much evident in my trying to solve the graphics presentation problem for years on end while trying to program a game at the same time. I attribute that to my Polish stubborness gene I probably inherited.
5 - Arrays: This was mostly with C++, especially after coming from Turbo Pascal. TP would start at 1, and if the array was initialized to have 10 items, that's the last number it would be. (i.e., int somearray[1..10]; would be somearray[1] to somearray[10].) So, naturally, after making the switch to C++, I would write:
int i[10];
then think, "Ok, that's 1-10. No, wait, C++ starts at 0. That's 0-10!".
Now, depending on the compilier, it would either spit out garbage, throw a hissy fit, or throw a general protection fault (in some cases - my friend liked causing these for some odd reason - practically the only thing she did...).
So, my code would look something like:
for(int i=0;i<=10;i++) (or, I might do i<11 just to get the 10). It took me quite awhile to break the Pascal habit of 10 being 10, and not 9.
Back when I made some games (or tried to), these were the mistakes I used to make:
1 - Concentrating too much on the presentation: Or, in this case, graphics. I wound up like this guy, the one that spent 6 months creating a prototype. Basically, I would try to do too much at once on the screen. I wasn't content with dummy-text based data at the time. I thought I'd have to redo the entire program if I were to do that.
2 - Hardcoding: Granted, it might not be bad in itself all of the time, but... when you start coding like this: (keep in mind, this one relates to Turbo Pascal, which is based on an actual code example)
Code:
town1() begin ... end;
town2() begin ... end;
town3() begin ... end;
drawmap() ... (I would actually have every tile drawn pixel by pixel in this procedure)
GameLoop
drawmap();
CaptureMapMovement();
If (x=3) and (y=7) then /*(this was my "event" trigger code)*/
begin
town2();
end;
.
.
.and it's all in one file, things can get pretty hairy. Sure, it's possible to make a game like this, but debugging it, or adding stuff to it just isn't going to be pretty.
3 - No gameplan: I never had things analyzed like, "What does the player data look like? What does the item data look like? What does the tile data look like?", and so on. I didn't even have files to be included that were seperated into things like graphics, and classes for other game objects.
4 - Staying on one piece of code/feature for too long: This was pretty much evident in my trying to solve the graphics presentation problem for years on end while trying to program a game at the same time. I attribute that to my Polish stubborness gene I probably inherited.
5 - Arrays: This was mostly with C++, especially after coming from Turbo Pascal. TP would start at 1, and if the array was initialized to have 10 items, that's the last number it would be. (i.e., int somearray[1..10]; would be somearray[1] to somearray[10].) So, naturally, after making the switch to C++, I would write:
int i[10];
then think, "Ok, that's 1-10. No, wait, C++ starts at 0. That's 0-10!".
Now, depending on the compilier, it would either spit out garbage, throw a hissy fit, or throw a general protection fault (in some cases - my friend liked causing these for some odd reason - practically the only thing she did...).
So, my code would look something like:
for(int i=0;i<=10;i++) (or, I might do i<11 just to get the 10). It took me quite awhile to break the Pascal habit of 10 being 10, and not 9.
I think I must've missed those looking at that code.
