Re: Prototyping

Brandon J. Van Every wrote:

> ...I've gone
> through this "prototyping" thing before, with C++. I tried 4 different
> planetary models for Ocean Mars, over the course of 9 months, working 60
> hours a week. If I had just accepted the inadequacies of the 1st one,
> it might have been somewhat painful to work with, but I would have had
> something demoable.

Prototyping is not about "accepting inadequacies" before you can move
on; rather it is about "proving adequacy" before you commit to a path.
That is, the prototype is an experiment to confirm that the project
requirements can be adequately met within the project constraints using
a certain strategy or design.

It sounds like you had some requirement for "adequacy" which could not
be met with the resources available. The point is your prototyping
seems to have *proved* to your satisfaction that you could not meet
your original goals, but could meet revised goals. Thats the whole damn
reason to have done a prototype.

The extra effort sounds like it was due to not revising your
requirements immediately, but instead trying different strategies to
meet the initial requirements, which turned out not to be essential
after all.

> ...
> Prototyping is not a magic bullet or
> a license to just keep coding forever without actually making hard
> decisions about engineering tradeoffs and kicking the functionality out
> the door. Prototyping is also useless if you have to do everything all
> over again. There isn't time for a lone wolf to do everything all over
> again. Most things need to be "good enough" on the 1st try.

You seem to be missing the point entirely: the choices being discussed
were

A) Prototype
B) No prototype

You seemed to claim "A" is overrated when compared against "B". That is
manifestly wrong.

With the clarifications above, what you appear to believe is that the
choice is between

B) No prototype
A') Prototype, but with such vague problem definition that the
prototype stage spirals out of control, or with such poor project
management that you never reach your milestones.

That is a false choice. You are confusing "prototyping" with a totally
different class of issues, involving clear definition of problem scope,
requirements, and resource allocation, which can screw up *any* stage
of development.

Yes, prototyping in a bone-headed fashion is bad. But that is because
being bone-headed is bad, not because prototyping is bad.

As for your wish to get criticism from "indie game designers," in
Usenet, you get what you pay for. Offer to pay an indie game designer
to criticize you (in private, please), and I'm sure one will be happy
to oblige, if the price is right. Or, accomplish something substantial
enough to be *visible* to indie game designers, and they may do it on
their own.

Or, you could realize that your problems are easy enough to diagnose
without consulting a specialist, and accept the free advice you are
being generously offered.

.