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Recently, there have been a few threads on the forums - I'm not going to dignify any of them with linking to them - that, ignoring the moaning, ignorance and naivety, struck a chord with me. In these threads there are two opposing views as to the type / scope of games people wanted to make.

On one side are people saying that they "don't want to make flappy bird clones" and are instead wanting to make AAA style games.

On the other side are people saying "there's nothing wrong with flappy bird clones", and that, as community, we should be proud we're getting a good quantity of games onto the various app stores.

I generally side with the latter of these, that it's better to have a realistic expectation of what can be done in a reasonable time frame so projects actually get completed. Making AAA game, in terms of graphics and depth of game play, is unrealistic for the majority of people on these forums, not for lack of skill but more because people are working on their own and or in their spare time.

However, for the past few months I've been feeling that maybe the pendulum can swing too far and what I would call "realistic" is actually more a lack of ambition. My first "proper" game was Purple Complex and, regardless of it's quality, is the most ambitious game I've made but took me three years to complete. My next game was Hover Car Race Challenge Accepted! which was a game that was realistic as a project, which I made in about ten weeks. Then there's Alien Killing Room, which is a game of such low ambition that I find it a little embarrassing.

My current project is probably an a par with Hover Car in terms of ambition and I've almost got it finished. In my defence, I'm going through a bit of a learning curve with AppGameKit and touch screen controls and what not. I like that I'm actually finishing projects - it's a good feeling - but I'm wondering if I aught to show a bit more ambition for my next project. The problem is, I don't think I can face spending two or three years on one project and taking on multiple projects is just a recipe for disaster.

The other thing I worry about is that maybe the advice we give to people to be more realistic in the way they choose their projects is really little more than encouraging mediocrity.

I feel we should celebrate ambition, maybe even over ambition, and that an ambitious project half finished is just as good as or maybe even better than a fully playable "flappy birds" clone.

I think the best approach is to create games that result in a framework for bigger and better games in the future.

There's no point in wanting to recreate World of Warcraft for your first project. But you can build towards this:

Project 1: Pong - create a control system
Project 2: Space Invaders - Sounds and multiple enemy libraries
Project 3: Pac Man - Intelligent enemy algorithms
Project 4: Fruit Machine - HUD Mechanics and libraries

and so on. Eventually you have all of the systems you need to build a big project block by block.

I've had many ambitious projects. What happens with me is I find I need a particular system to help perform a specific task for the project - collision, physics, way points, a world editor, terrain creator, etc.

I wind up getting so wrapped up in the design or creation of the tools, that those usually end up being the finished product. And once a particular tool or goal along the way is finished, I feel a sense of accomplishment and also feel "I'm done."

One example: I had the intention of building a limitless terrain where the character would go on various randomly generated adventures. I needed some kind of terrain generation system (at least). So I studied perlin noise, tried different available APIs, looked at fractals, etc, etc. . I finally came up with a system where a terrain heightmap was basically randomly generated (and finite), then I used drawing tools to add features to the map. Then I built a terrain generator that would change shape and texture according to the position the character moved on the heightmap. The system worked (sort of raw) and I was so happy that I got the heights and texture to change properly that I was done!

Someday - I tell myself - I'll actual smooth the system out and apply it to that game I had in mind!

I see what you mean by this but this will only get someone so far. Whilst I agree that making smaller games helps someone to learn and to grow a library of functions, algorithms and basically how to do things, making an ambitious game still takes a lot of effort. Creating unique media is always going to be time consuming.

I also think that someone can be in danger of doing exactly what Latch describes. I can see that creating some universal HUD functions, for instance, would speed up the development of making future games but it could end up being a daunting task and someone gets lost in the creation of tools. Purple Complex almost turned into an engine, an FPSC lite if you will - I can add new levels and npcs without having to edit the code - but I realised that I wanted to make a game not a game engine. That's why it got finished.

Personally, I think the biggest lesson that anyone can learn is how to finish a game. The problem I have is that I do the exact opposite of Latch and cut out features if I feel it's all taking a little too long. On the plus side, I now have my first game on Google Play - check the link in my signature. Not quite "flappy birds" but no where near GTA V, heck not even GTA I.

I would agree - learning to Finish the game is big! I can see the two sides here:

1. make something simple and you are likely to finish it and learn something along the way - including laying down the foundation for the next thing.

2. Make something ridiculously big - and learn something along the way! though it may never get finished.

However, if you are a person that doesn't finish anything, or jumps from one thing to the next midway (without even getting a tool or two done), the size of the project doesn't matter - it will never get done. That kind of person might be an "ideas" person. they love the concept and are excited about the "what if we do this or that" stuff. But when it comes to the work getting done, they need to hire a team.

I think we have to accept and be prepared to change project scope, abandon projects and also take on projects that we don't even like.

I mean, I don't like flappy birds but made an AppGameKit game with that theme. Sometimes it's actually a lot of fun to take a game formula and shake it up a bit. Making my birds clone is more fun than playing it IMO... even though it's not a horrible game of course.

Hell, my most recent game is a ZX Spectrum 48k version of Super Meat Boy. I didn't make it because I love meat boy so much, I actually don't enjoy those games much at all, but I figured that making the game and dealing with the challenges would be fun, and it was. Sometimes it's not the game, but the development that is worthwhile - lets face it, 99.999% of games made here will be forgotten quickly, it's often more beneficial to sharpen skills and aim to complete a project that people will remember. I started messing around with the Speccy as a side hobby for when my main hobby get's tedious... kinda like when a cyst forms a head

I have a couple of ever-evolving game ideas that I want to do, but they are fairly ambitious, and starting a project of that scope wrongly would end up with it dying. Really, for most people, every project is a step towards the project that you really want to make.

I'm finally getting onto a big project, and really the idea of doing everything myself excites me - its gonna be a long project, probably with a few small projects along the way. The main thing though is to earn it - earn your stripes with smaller projects until you feel able to tackle something more ambitious - there really is no other thing you can do.

I'm not entirely sure I could cope with making an game I wasn't interested in. Developing a game is difficult enough as it is without an extra layer of misery

I'm kind of struggling to start a new project at the moment so am currently "doing a Latch" and playing with some ideas.

I kinda miss doing 20 line challenges.

There's a board that used to be on this forum that I miss quite a bit: The Showcase Board. I don't remember it's exact name, but there was an FTP site that housed DarkBASIC and DarkBASIC Pro games and apps that users had made - mostly from competitions, but some were just projects.

I think I have Vanseam somewhere (a painting app). Written in DBC, I believe by Van B?

There were quite a few games and apps that people had programed in the different flavors of DarkBASIC. Some were quite good. There used to be a lot of experimentation and it seems like produced results.

That page was quite inspiring, I thought.