Guys, what is better for a beginner?

Guys, I’m just thinking if is it better for a newbie to go solo, and go make a game or first go make a collab work with a friend? Just want to hear some opinions because I, myself is doubting if i can finish my game. Thanks

That has got to be very much a matter of personal preference. While it can be a comforting thought to have someone more experienced make your code, or write your story if you are decent coder it brings a whole different set of problems with it. Because of how quickly most stories branch you are near constantly approaching another fork in the road which you would need to discuss. So while it might be quicker for two people to write a choice book it wouldn’t be twice as fast. And two people could write two choice books on their own much quicker than a pairing would get a second out… Choosing a partner would also be tricky as if you pick someone who loses interest mid story you have effectively wasted a month or so writing something that likely won’t be finished.

1 Like

I’d say go solo. It’ll be a chore at first, but that’ll force you to learn how to use ChoiceScript.

Once you’re comfortable with that, you’re free to do whatever you want.

1 Like

Like others have said, it’s very much personal preference, but my personal recommendation would be solo as well, since once you get over the initial learning curve CS is quite easy to use. Besides, there’s many reasons having someone else do the coding can be problematic, like if you have a falling out mid way, or for some reason drop out, the other is left up a creek. And while I believe there are some currently co-authored be made, I don’t think one has successfully been completed yet.

1 Like

As has already been mentioned, collaborating is a lot harder than it seems, it’s not a simple case of 2x people = 2x as fast. If you’re not confident you can finish a game solo, I don’t think you’ll be able to finish one collaborating either - so I’d sort that out first. The biggest problem we all make is choosing something big, epic and complicated as our first endeavour - don’t - make it short, sweet and simple - once you’ve finished that, however small and mediocre it may be - at least you can look at it and say “Yeah, I can start and finish something” - and that will do you a world of good.

2 Likes

I went solo for my first game, it’s exactly like CJW said, don’t go too crazy, I went with a shorter quality storyline and even then, I struggled, in the beginning, writing was fuel by passion, then eventually it became a chore and desire starts dying off, ideas starts running dry but you have to pull through and finish strong, work on it daily, treat it like a job even, once you got it done, it’s a great feeling.

but ya, I think it’s important to master choice script on your own first. =)

I think solo is better when you’re learning because then you aren’t afraid to try things out and make mistakes because who’s going to see? You can add in all sorts of things that might not stick around in the final version, but were good ideas that you might be able to use in the future,and you never have to worry about meeting a deadline or keeping someone else up to speed. Case in point, my bigass game that I’ve been working on for a year plus has things like a party system straight out of Dragon Age, dynamic events calling back to many events, RPG battles with skills and levels, and even a friggin day/night cycle. In a CS game. With no visuals and only a few scenes that ever even mention the time. What the hell? Needless to say, all of those are rarely put into these games, and all of which only exist because one night I was like “I wonder if I could do this?” and because there was nobody around to tell me no, I did! That’s the fun with solo work.

Needless to say it’s a lot harder to finish things solo, though. In Collaboration, you can really focus on your strength, and you have someone else around to tell you when you’re being unrealistic, which can help make the finished product a hell of a lot more professional, as well as keeping feature creep down in general. So it really depends. For the first time, working with someone else would really only be preferable if CS games had a very distinct set of structured rules for everything like lots of code teams do. They don’t though! As far as I can tell, everyone and their mom is doing things their own way, and there’s no reason you shouldn’t either.

So yeah, first time? Do it solo. You’ll be glad you did.