Hello.
I'm self-diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, but I also have an official diagnosis of Dysthymia (under treatment), so I wonder if this issue do relate to AS or not?
When working in something, has anyone felt overwhelmed of the "possibilities", so much that the mind would keep over-thinking about it but do less action about it?
Learn an activity, master it, then focus all effort on doing it "as perfect as possible"? I guess this is how it has pretty much went, but now that I nearly became an expert and am capable of doing anything I want within given activity, the productivity is much lower. But I wonder if am I just braking for external issues? (stressor agents, dysthymia itself, etc) or, is it a common AS trait that is possible to "workaround" in a way?
I'm self-diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, but I also have an official diagnosis of Dysthymia (under treatment), so I wonder if this issue do relate to AS or not?
When working in something, has anyone felt overwhelmed of the "possibilities", so much that the mind would keep over-thinking about it but do less action about it?
Learn an activity, master it, then focus all effort on doing it "as perfect as possible"? I guess this is how it has pretty much went, but now that I nearly became an expert and am capable of doing anything I want within given activity, the productivity is much lower. But I wonder if am I just braking for external issues? (stressor agents, dysthymia itself, etc) or, is it a common AS trait that is possible to "workaround" in a way?
I kept this part in a spoiler box because here I expose my case; I'm going into specifics, so feel free to ignore it if you feel like it.
Now that our previous leader is gone... it's mine turn to lead development for Mega Evolution 2. An arcade-themed game, we target 1:15 hours adventure, which is "short", but we do it in favour to make it more intense! (add more features and gimmicks).
Not only do I have to work in the programming here, but also take a major role in game plan, pixel art/animation, managing people, "advertise" it properly for its final release, and directing. Not a romhack this time, I'm almost done re-arranging a new engine from scratch (except physics (but I add bugfixes), because we'd like it play 1:1 to that from original games). We really want to make it as much professional as possible, and if everything goes well, we'd attempt to begin a career on the indie scene, as an independent developer team.
I got an issue, which has left me stuck for months and it's hard to "move on":
I had a friend, who I will name "Green Viper" she's an autistic logician thinker, Professional So**c Hacker (TM). Didn't talk much to her before, but we both shared a same history when joining and beginning in the community, sometimes I helped her coding, etc.
She asked to join our Mega Evolution 2's team, and I accepted, based in the previous experience. Days later, she became girlfriend of my archenemy (the "best hacker" from community, who secretely took a private prototype from a previously unreleased game of mine to reverse-engineer it). This added to mine self-insecurity, but none of our team ever dealt with a "hard character" person: She, as a professional, would dislike and prove how 90% of our ideas are bad, criticize my leadership, and the cherry of the cake, that my code is lazy and ilogical. I wonder if was it to throw mine/our mood down, but who can say?
I was in the middle of an autistic burnout, and my mom asks me favours every 5 minutes (shameful, but it's incredibly hard to focus 100%). For all these reasons, I admitted all my faults, and switched from an "agile workflow" to an "hyper-focused workflow", where I'd try to make content in the most careful way. I'd spend sleepless nights writing, reading, re-reading and re-re-reading my code, yet it was never enough. In the end, and because I was peaking the worst of my burnout, I had no other option but to put the project into hiatus, and she just left. We haven't talked again since then.
I'm "awakening" and recovering myself again, but I seriously don't know how should I continue. There's a lot of work left to do, code, drawings... but I feel I lack the enough energy for it.
I'm just a mere creative thinker, damn it!
I wonder, is it that wrong if we brainstorm, implement, evaluate, and only THEN polish things up? (agile workflow) I really don't know how can we go anywhere if should we force ourselves to do everything right the first time. BUT, hyper-focused workflow would... well, make our game next to un-criticizeable in most member's eyes.
Should work be done the hyper-focused or the agile way? Not from a "professional programmer" point of view, but rather a "professional game developer".
I just want to make the funniest possible game, not the most advanced program. On the other hand, I wonder if Professional So**c Hackers (TM) are mentally capable to create a long and full-fledged game, though. They never did, so I have my doubts.
I joined a "rom-hacking" forum years ago. I wanted to learn about how to make games in a 16-bit console; I'm a fan of a lot of 16-bit games (not for "nostalgia" factor (I born in 1996), more because the way gameplay is employed (which matter more than the story), how certain objects/sequences work in the screen (multi-joint sprites, certain "movement patterns", etc), which makes the programming also look like art). I just find them comparatively more fun than the modern ones.
In these forums I learnt deep computer programming for the first time, being 14 or 13 years old I got the hang of the "Motorola 68000" instruction set, and slowly begun writing program and special effects in 'Assembly' language. They thought I could be stealing code from other romhacks, because I was learning too fast and mine behavior on the forums was too "noobish". I noticed that most of "high-level" members (yeah, those who always criticize negatively most of my work lol, some self-named "Professional So**c Hacker (TM)" ), who are "logician thinkers", do program that is the "most arranged and "cycle-perfect" as possible", disassemble code from other people/games and criticize the coding quality, complain how much it sucks and determine which game does worse, etc. Whereas I, and just like most of the original game developers from the era, only apply a minimum threshold of "common sense" regarding optimization in the code, to save time/effort and "prototype" the most as possible; quality over quantity of course, but what matters the most is check how our ideas do affect the gameplay, we're likely to discard a lot of stuff, but we need to try them first, so...
Years later I'd meet other friends on the internet, and we would release a game that I will name "Mega Evolution" here, which also happens to be the first "complete" or full-fledged romhack that the community has seen so far.
The game was a success publically, except for one major issue: None of us as a team felt satisfect with the final result. Our leader had just "too many issues" to deal with on his real life, and he had to cut our deadline off. We had to rush a lot of things, drop some ideas away, and even had to make the final boss and ending sequence in a timespan that totals to less than 1 week. IMHO, the latter sprites/animations look like Dragon Ball Super Episode 5, in-between frames mostly, but still.
In these forums I learnt deep computer programming for the first time, being 14 or 13 years old I got the hang of the "Motorola 68000" instruction set, and slowly begun writing program and special effects in 'Assembly' language. They thought I could be stealing code from other romhacks, because I was learning too fast and mine behavior on the forums was too "noobish". I noticed that most of "high-level" members (yeah, those who always criticize negatively most of my work lol, some self-named "Professional So**c Hacker (TM)" ), who are "logician thinkers", do program that is the "most arranged and "cycle-perfect" as possible", disassemble code from other people/games and criticize the coding quality, complain how much it sucks and determine which game does worse, etc. Whereas I, and just like most of the original game developers from the era, only apply a minimum threshold of "common sense" regarding optimization in the code, to save time/effort and "prototype" the most as possible; quality over quantity of course, but what matters the most is check how our ideas do affect the gameplay, we're likely to discard a lot of stuff, but we need to try them first, so...
Years later I'd meet other friends on the internet, and we would release a game that I will name "Mega Evolution" here, which also happens to be the first "complete" or full-fledged romhack that the community has seen so far.
The game was a success publically, except for one major issue: None of us as a team felt satisfect with the final result. Our leader had just "too many issues" to deal with on his real life, and he had to cut our deadline off. We had to rush a lot of things, drop some ideas away, and even had to make the final boss and ending sequence in a timespan that totals to less than 1 week. IMHO, the latter sprites/animations look like Dragon Ball Super Episode 5, in-between frames mostly, but still.
Now that our previous leader is gone... it's mine turn to lead development for Mega Evolution 2. An arcade-themed game, we target 1:15 hours adventure, which is "short", but we do it in favour to make it more intense! (add more features and gimmicks).
Not only do I have to work in the programming here, but also take a major role in game plan, pixel art/animation, managing people, "advertise" it properly for its final release, and directing. Not a romhack this time, I'm almost done re-arranging a new engine from scratch (except physics (but I add bugfixes), because we'd like it play 1:1 to that from original games). We really want to make it as much professional as possible, and if everything goes well, we'd attempt to begin a career on the indie scene, as an independent developer team.
I got an issue, which has left me stuck for months and it's hard to "move on":
I had a friend, who I will name "Green Viper" she's an autistic logician thinker, Professional So**c Hacker (TM). Didn't talk much to her before, but we both shared a same history when joining and beginning in the community, sometimes I helped her coding, etc.
She asked to join our Mega Evolution 2's team, and I accepted, based in the previous experience. Days later, she became girlfriend of my archenemy (the "best hacker" from community, who secretely took a private prototype from a previously unreleased game of mine to reverse-engineer it). This added to mine self-insecurity, but none of our team ever dealt with a "hard character" person: She, as a professional, would dislike and prove how 90% of our ideas are bad, criticize my leadership, and the cherry of the cake, that my code is lazy and ilogical. I wonder if was it to throw mine/our mood down, but who can say?
I was in the middle of an autistic burnout, and my mom asks me favours every 5 minutes (shameful, but it's incredibly hard to focus 100%). For all these reasons, I admitted all my faults, and switched from an "agile workflow" to an "hyper-focused workflow", where I'd try to make content in the most careful way. I'd spend sleepless nights writing, reading, re-reading and re-re-reading my code, yet it was never enough. In the end, and because I was peaking the worst of my burnout, I had no other option but to put the project into hiatus, and she just left. We haven't talked again since then.
I'm "awakening" and recovering myself again, but I seriously don't know how should I continue. There's a lot of work left to do, code, drawings... but I feel I lack the enough energy for it.
I'm just a mere creative thinker, damn it!
I wonder, is it that wrong if we brainstorm, implement, evaluate, and only THEN polish things up? (agile workflow) I really don't know how can we go anywhere if should we force ourselves to do everything right the first time. BUT, hyper-focused workflow would... well, make our game next to un-criticizeable in most member's eyes.
Should work be done the hyper-focused or the agile way? Not from a "professional programmer" point of view, but rather a "professional game developer".
I just want to make the funniest possible game, not the most advanced program. On the other hand, I wonder if Professional So**c Hackers (TM) are mentally capable to create a long and full-fledged game, though. They never did, so I have my doubts.
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