On Knowing When To Move On
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.พ. 2025
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Man tried to make a rom hack and made a philosophical statement instead
par for the course honestly
Life's lessons are where ever you find them.
@@drew_nikonowicz
If you’re wondering why this video is doing so much better, I think it’s because you may have just stumbled onto something a larger audience of people are looking for: Introspective observations on commonly felt (but rarely discussed) emotional seasons of life.
"At the cost of sounding dumb, I love learning new things" I gotta use this irl
I didn’t realise the whimsy of that statement untill i saw it written.
If you wanna learn new things, you aren’t dumb
Knowing when to cut the scope is a valuable skill. It’s easy to get stuck in an “all or nothing” mindset, which means nothing gets done.
I've worked on game dev for probably a decade by now, and what i can tell you is that being able to stop and finish the project is by far the most important thing.
I've more or less wasted 3 years working on a VR sneak game for example, went through many complete remakes, I have a hidden steam page for it, but I never ended up publishing it because i never felt like I was done.
No amount of skill or perseverance can overcome the inability to finish something.
All that to say is, great job! I believe you'll do great with game dev!
Thanks!! I sure hope so. I have another video where I talk about projects never being finished but rather being abandoned. And even in a state of relative polish, that’s exactly how I feel I am leaving Super Thesis World. Abandoned. The psychology around making things is so fascinating. I hope you finish the sneak game! I love a sneak/stealth game a lot haha
Another thing is being able to work consistently on the same project. It's a delicate balance. As a younger kid, I kept bouncing between 5 million trading card games I wanted to make but never committed. When I was 13 or so, however, I finally decided to crack down and force myself to stick with something, refining the ore of my creative babbling into speech to say something meaningful.
This isn't to discredit you, however; if I hadn't set the attainable, real goal of 100 cards in base set, I wouldn't be where I am.
"No amount of skill or perseverance can overcome the inability to finish something." - My wife says this to me almost nightly
I write a lot of music, and what you said really resonates with me. The hardest part of the process is negotiating that space between your initial inspirations for the project and what you can actually achieve. I’m playing through base game Mario world right now, so I’ve got some training to do, but Super Thesis World is on my list of rom hacks to check out!
Thanks for the comment! Yeah, I'm constantly at odds with that problem of ambition and realistic goal-setting. If you play Super Thesis World please let me know somehow! I'd love to know how you enjoy it. Just dropped a 1.2 update of it actually. haha
As a musician, I was thinking the same thing.
I am a very amateur musician and the dichotomy is such a canyon. It's rough because, I just sit on projects because I'm not satisfied, so I tell myself I'll practice more and come back, but then I come back and I'm still not happy because what I want out of it is still not in the scope of what I am capable of, but unless you finish projects and just make more stuff, you'll forever be stuck there. So I have to swallow my pride and just make more stuff so I can get to a point where I can make something I am ultimately happy with, but doing that is rough.
art is never finished, only abandoned
I have another video titled this ;)
@@drew_nikonowicz lol I just saw that. such a great quote.
It’s one of my all time favorites for sure
Here from a completely different community doing a completely different thing, and I find what you've said to be extremely useful for me.
I definitely needed to hear this lol
Thanks!
Welcome from completely different community! Glad you found it helpful 😁
Same. 🥺
As a musician, this video spoke to me and came to me at the right time. Please make more!
Working on it! Glad you enjoyed :D
Oh shit, love your stuff twikipedia, wild seeing you here
The first thing I learned from making games is that we tend to radically underestimate the time and effort it takes to get things done. When you plan something, you can cut it in half, and you'll still end up with something too big to make and need more cutting. You planned 34 levels, so you should have immediately cut it to 17, and then after you've done the first 4 or 5, evaluate more realistically whether 17 is actually doable. Maybe 12-14 is a more acceptable number.
I can very much relate with this
Discipline. Consistency. Deadlines. Creativity. Reflection. Repeat.
🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨
"Before I start, I must see my end. Destination known, my mind's journey now begins. Upon my chariot, heart and soul's fate revealed. In time, all points converge; hope's strength resteeled. But to earn final peace at the Universe's endless refrain, we must see all in nothingness... before we start again."
🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨
-- Diamond Dragons (series)
Shadow of the Colossus was originally planned to have 48 colossi, but it was first cut to 24, and finally settled on 16 to maintain the desired quality.
Whoa, Super Mario and a philosophical take in one video? I must be dreaming!
It reminds me of my own situation, although it's not like your's. But ever since my mother asked me to help her at work for a week because she couldn't do it on her own anymore, something made click in my head and I started to be in the mood to get the things done that I wouldn't do for 2 WHOLE YEARS, like my driver's license for example.
I dunno what caused me to be this lazy and attached to boredom, if it's a coming and going depression or an aftermath after this really intense relationship + break-up last year, but the fact that it almost ruined my future because I was almost thrown out of vocational school with my bad grades, really became more clearer in the last few weeks.
Whatever it is, I gotta keep pushing so I can finally concentrate on becoming more mature and move on with everything. I'm 20 and I still struggle so hard with starting my own life, it's embarrasing af and I can't stop thinking of myself as some incel who wouldn't stop complaining about everyone and everything, which maybe helped a little too lately. The biggest and baddest obstacle is still in my way, but I wanna beat it no matter what!
Thanks for this video, I hope my rant/vent wasn't too much. It was a Mario video after all, heh.
Thanks for sharing! Yeah "getting out of your own way" is such a real thing. I've been there. But yeah, chunk up what needs to be done into more palatable pieces and keep going! You got this :D
edit: also nothing embarassing about struggling! Again, you got this
A lesson I'm currently learning while working on a Godot game from scratch. I kept trying to broaden the scope in what you described as "arbitrarily" ambitious ways, but finally realized sacraficing the ideal scope in my mind in favor of a scope I could practically execute is the right move.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Thanks for watching! Yes, finding a balance is so tough. It sounds like you (like me) get excited about the project and start dreaming about all the things you can add. It can get overwhelming fast haha
This video is gonna get hundreds of thousands of views soon.
I hope you're right!!
It makes me feel good seeing people make stuff where they obviously care a lot and put in a ton of effort and it pays off in the way this video has, good work man for real
Thank you! I super agree. I love being around people making things they love, and seeing the results. 💪
Learning is a nice objective, even if you recognize that achievement after the fact.
I remember this moment in my organic chemistry lab where one of my lab partners said "Imagine not knowing about NRM spectroscopy. That's where we were 2 weeks ago."
Such a simple appreciation, but I do that when evaluating my work on a personal level. I was once someone who hadn't done that project.
Sometimes it’s really lovely to look backwards and see how far you’ve come ☺️
i have no idea who you are but this video is surprisingly well made and thought provoking. great job!!
Thanks! It’s not who I am, it’s who I’m becoming 🕺
felt this title on a spiritual level, on a game dev level and beyond.
Excellent video. Back in 2012 my high school had a special class where pretty much our only goal between January and May was to pick a project, finish it, and present it. I chose Mario ROMhacking since I thought that would be a really interesting place to look at those vanilla levels and figure out what makes them work so well and try to recreate it. This was years before Mario Maker so SMW ROMhacking was probably the easiest way to make a 2D platform at the time.
It ended up being way less ambitious than I had hoped because of the steep learning curve and time constraints but I ended up presenting a pretty decent six levels that each had a theme, some direct inspiration, and everyone who saw my project wanted to play it themselves. Actually being forced to abandon it for the sake of a project made it way easier to just publish and move on with my life.
If you jump into making your own games, one of the biggest things I can suggest is hitting up one of the discords out there and find some other people who are willing to help. It's definitely a different skill from working alone, but you'd be amazing at how quickly you can put some of your ideas out there once you get a couple more people on board. I struggled in solo game dev for 5 or 6 years working on different projects and abandoning them when I got tired of the scope, but I've been working with a group of people for almost a year now and things move so much quicker. There's never been a better time to jump into game dev.
Great peek at the process and reasoning, permission, and catharsis to when to let a things go. Can’t wait to play!!
🙏🙏🙏 I hope you enjoy it. I gotta get you the 1.2 update haha
I'm making my second hack myself. When I heard the number 34 I said "WHAT" out loud, haha. My first kaizo hack (Sauna Mario World) had 15 exits and it took me almost two years to get it to the point where I was completely happy with it. Nice video and congrats on your release!
Great video. I'll be checking it out
I just finished my first game (for Sega Master System though, not SNES) and knowing when to move on was definitely something that I learned through this process. Realizing what you're capable of if you push yourself, and realzing what you can actually reasonable get done to take a project to the end are two very different things, and knowing where and when that is is the most important thing to know for sure
Hey as a game dev I wanna say that making levels, however you do it, is super informative. Sure, coding is learned by coding, but you made all these cool video game levels, you worked out the pacing of the challenges, the aesthetics, how to mix and match mechanics. There’s something valuable in all that.
Also yeah, I know what it’s like to cut something short, either dropping it or polishing what’s there. It’s never easy but a perpetual learning experience at least, so it’s never a waste! Cool vid man
Thanks for watching! Glad you enjoyed it. Def check out my other recent videos too for a similar vibe 🤓
Loved this. Nice work
I am making a blender animation of mario and luigi. This video really is ehat i needed to hear. Thanks.
Bonkers how the universe knows what to put in front of you exactly the moment you need it, if you’re willing to open your eyes. It feels like you made this video specifically for me, friend. Thank you for posting it 🙏
🕊️➕❤️
You’re welcome! Wishing you all the best with however this may have helped you
Love this. Thanks for sharing :)
totally feel you on this, for my most recent chaos mod i made for dr. robotnik's ring racers, i had to set down a good definitive timeframe of stuff i wanted to get done, lest the project spend eternity in feature creep hell
and i was able to get everything done mostly in time, even despite the fact i had to trash my entire codebase and start from scratch, due to me using a codebase that was basically 4 years old by now lol
and indeed, there were a lot of features that i ended up not doing for the sake of *actually* releasing my mod
but in the end, i made something that's good enough, and was a marked improvement over my last mods, so it was good enough for me. there's always time to update it in the feature to do what i want, though, i think i'll save that for a different ambitious project i have in mind for backporting my work to SRB2... which i have grand plans for, that i know will be trimmed back by the time it comes to release, but that's what ideas are for lol
Holy shit, changed my life
Whoah you changed MY life so weird! Happy birthday
Pretty insightful. Its always difficult for me to change scope in a project but nothing beats the satisfaction/relief of completing a project
Yeah it’s a tough balance to strike! Thanks for watching
This video is amazing. Very inspiring.
I started my own video game studio last year. For this exact reason.
I want to put what I care about out there.
Thanks for the kind words! I hope your studio is super successful 😁
I love how you used Lunar Magic to make the visuals for this video.
And damn, this hits sooo close to home! My head is a treasure trove of ideas that I think are pretty great and would benefit a lot of people, but feel like they'll just be stuck in there forever. The most difficult part of any project is just getting started with it, but the second-most difficult part setting a realistic scope - or, if not that, knowing how to deal with scope creep and reduce scope as it becomes unachievable. I'm exceptionally horrible at all of these things, and many of my past projects have already died to this.
I still have the will to create. I still want to achieve at least some of those projects. I just haven't found the way yet to do that within my own personal limits yet.
Thanks! I’m quite proud of the visuals lol
You got this. I find the best way to do it is to just get started. That and chunk the project into pieces that feel doable. Little by little it will turn into something!
You have no idea how badly I needed to see this video.
I find that when I look back at my projects in retrospect they don't so much end as I lose interest once my skills have plateaued. Returning to said projects years for complete overhauls with the new skills I've learned is incredibly satisfying for that reason.
Yes for sure! Coming back to a project is really exciting sometimes. I think it’s a great way to give something space before you dive back in.
This was really relaxing. Also motivating as well.
All the best things have an end.
nothing endless has ever been good.
In 2021, I made a whole game on Mario Maker 2 (ID: 67M-GR0-PYF), and it took a good chunk of my life. Even when it was "done," I felt like more could be added, more could be polished... Eventually, you have to step away from those things. It's something I still struggle with today. This video resonated with me!
This was beautiful.
wow what a great video about how to approach any creative project
hey thanks! I appreciate the kind words :)
I keep coming back to wanting to make games because I have so many ideas, and every year I get closer and closer, but my ADHD really holds me back as I always move onto something different. It means that stuff never get's finished, but I do hope that later in life that calms down and I start to notice that I finish a lot more longer lasting projects ♥
I wish you well! My strategy has always been to engage with smaller projects or break my bigger stuff into smaller pieces. But sometimes even that doesn't work. I hear ya!
thanks for this one :)
i love this video, thanks for making it :)
Better plan: never make the romhack and just fake it.
what are we faking?
This video helped. Thanks :)
I don't think i ever finished a project of my own that i really liked, i either go back to them and update them from time to time or i just tell myself to "do it later" and never do.
It's not just because i dont want to though, i kinda have the fear of going back to something i liked creating and not being able to add anything else on it that's good. The frustration of not being able to do a certain part of a level the way i wanted, or trying to create a 2nd hand melody for one of my music only for it to not fit at all. I don't even know how to finish this comment, i've been reading it again and again for minutes now and i feel like it's lacking what i originally wanted to say here
Not knowing how to finish your comment is fitting to the initial statement haha. But! You did finish it. There is a conclusion. Maybe you’re too hard on yourself. Sometimes I am overly critical of a project because I’ve finished it and I’m better than I was when I started. But that mindset forgets that when I started I wasn’t as skilled.
stellar vibe on the thumbnail
Thanks! Very proud of that door haha
"At the cost of sounding dumb, I love learning new things." That's the dumbest thing I've heard all day... Don't sell yourself short like that.
The smartest people in the world are the ones who are brave enough to dive into a new field of study and expose their knowledge gaps, so they can fill those gaps and come out better on the other side. In other words, the smartest people understand just how much they *don't* know, and never stop chasing a more thorough understanding of the world.
Confidence sells, because it feeds people the illusion that you know everything there is to know about a topic. But no one is that smart, and at the end of the day, you'll just be exposing your incompetence to those who know more than you. But if you keep that growth mindset and keep learning new things, you will continually get better at learning new things, and people will see how smart you are because of how quickly and effectively you can learn them.
Learning new things doesn't make you sound dumb. At worst it makes you sound like a genius in the making.
Great video, man. Keep it up.
thanks for the comment! Had me worried at the start there hahah. I over-qualify most things I say :D But I super agree - I have an insatiable desire for more knowledge and to learn new things, and I'm not afraid to own it. Heck, I cowork on Twitch often while I learn new stuff. But I also can't help but qualify the statement haha.
Glad you enjoyed the video!!
I worked on a Mario hack for several years, and one day took a break. I always intended to go back to it. That was 15 years ago.
I am chronically ill and haven't been able to finish any of my long term projects as a result. So this kind of is bittersweet to me, I'm unsure what to do at this point in my life because I feel like it's already basically ended. In a way I can attribute this both to my projects and my life. I often philosophize about similar things but just lack the words to express it. (I don't often think using language) Interesting perspective piece though.
Will definitely play this soon, it looks short and sweet.
Enjoy!! Thanks for checking it out. Make sure you grab the latest version if you do play 🤓
As someone who spent a lot of hours working on a romhack that I realistically wont ever be able to finish, this video definitely hit home. Especially the stuff about these skills not being transferable.
I’d always heard about devs getting their start by modding, but that mostly only applies to modding pc games. Old console stuff is way too specific. You’ll learn a very small number of memory saving tricks, but whatever tool suite you use wont transfer to anything modern developers use at all.
That’s my experience from modding Super Mario Bros 1 and Smash Bros 64 anyway, but it seems to be the same for most old console games.
I don’t normally go for kaizo stuff, but I’ll check out your romhack for sure.
Super real! I will say, I do think there is some transferable knowledge about making hacks if you focus on the level design and playtesting aspect. You can learn a lot of the core concepts of how someone experiences a thing you make through those processes. But yeah the programming component is not transferable whatsoever hahaha. Unless you’re making games in assembly lol.
If you do check it out I hope you enjoy! Sorry in advance for the jank, I hope you laugh at my jokes lol
splendid
As someone that co-dev'd a pretty extensive Pokemon romhack, "I hope you hate it and then love it and then hate it then love it again" sure is the name of the game haha. This is awesome, can't wait to check it out and the commentary itself is really relatable; over-blowing the scope can be so hard to avoid, our hack ended up being pretty technically advanced which we're proud of but at the cost of a half a decade of dev time, so so much time for original projects kinda got swept to the wayside.
I love lunar magic
Your experience sounds so close to mine.
I learned this lesson the hard way when I worked on my first major game project in GameMaker Studio. I wanted to make a platformer type game, with 4 playable characters and 16 levels. I also wanted it to be more polished than the average first game project. In hindsight, I definitely set my goals for the game way too high. >_>
After a long time of developing and redoing things many times, I started getting burnt out. The game had quite a lot of progress, but I couldn’t bring myself to finish it. For a while, I felt like I HAD to, or else my efforts would be wasted. Finally, I decided to stop worrying about the game. I left it as a learning experience.
With my newfound knowledge of how GameMaker works, as well as a lot of art and music practice, I’ve been working on a much smaller game. This game will only have one character, and 5 levels. It’s not that far along, but I’m just going to take a stab at it every now and then. Hopefully I can finish it. ^^
You got this! I think you can finish it for sure
@@drew_nikonowicz thanks :)
i also tried to make a romhack, and somehow managed to create something beyond human comprehension. nice video
I'm mot smart enough to join the conversation so I'm just gonna smile and nod.
Every circle begins with its end.
🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨
"Before I start, I must see my end. Destination known, my mind's journey now begins. Upon my chariot, heart and soul's fate revealed. In time, all points converge; hope's strength resteeled. But to earn final peace at the Universe's endless refrain, we must see all in nothingness... before we start again."
🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨
-- Diamond Dragons (series)
I've learned that when speaking about game dev (or art in general), you will never have a project finished. You just get to a point where it is acceptable, then abandons it and move on.
That's the healthy way to do it.
I think the developers of Silksong need to hear this message
🤭 hahaha. Nah they got this. 💪
when [if] I finally get the full Ristar on the NES!
thank you bennet foddy
i have so many projects that were abandoned. Massive minecraft builds, game challenges, and recently, im trying to get into blender. And it always starts out with so much optimism and hope, but then i realize that the scope of what i want to do is just too great for my current mindset and energy and motivation, and they all end up utterly abandoned. And they sit in the back of my mind forever. Sometimes i just want to throw together a half assed thing to "finish" the project and call it a day, but my brain would know that it wasnt "finished". It would be rushed just to call it finished. So, when a project is abandoned, is it considered done? Or are you just done with it?
The short answer is I just don't have the same mindset. Dialing back a project so that I can sustainably finish it is just about being realistic for me. I don't experience the regret of "this could have been better" because there's always something new I'm working on. It's all progress toward my own personal growth. Wherever that takes me is to be determined.
@@drew_nikonowicz thank you for the response. thats a hard mindset to learn, but i want to strive towards a journey of growth and improvement instead of always feeling like i couldve done more. Im in the middle of a major mental hurdle that im doing my best to get over, and this video couldnt have shown up at a more opportune time. Its so nice to see and hear other peoples perspectives when one is overwhelmed with their own. Thank you again for your response!! :)
investing in this video
how much you going in for? 💰🏦
@@drew_nikonowicz 1 milon dolar
@@drew_nikonowicz 1 milon dolers
@@drew_nikonowicz dollars
I'm also investing in this video... a like, a comment, and a subscribe 😎
a channel with 1000> subscribers making niche content that vaguely peaks my interests and keeps me hooked the entire time. this is why I love youtube
Get subscribed because I’m not done yet 🤓
cool cake
i've found the most important thing when making shit is to actually get it done, like... sure, maybe you wanted to put more in it, but why not spend that extra energy putting things into a new project? in general i find it much better to make small things and let them balloon out (if it happens) rather than trying to make citizen kane 2
this just kinda popped up on my homepage, but damn can i relate.
i make minecraft modpacks every so often, and always go from a decent sized list of stuff i wanna change to barely doing a quarter of it since everything takes forever.
it's partially my own fault for still barely knowing how CraftTweaker and KubeJS work (i've used the former for over half a decade and still only do very basic recipe changes lmao), but another part of it is java being stupid as fuck (alongside my brain), which prevents me from adding the obligatory "custom mod that changes shit" every real modpack has.
in the end, i just kinda give up for a year or two until i randomly feel like updating or working on one of them again (even now i've been planning a big final update for all the 1.12 packs, and a big one for the first pack i ever made that'll remove all the super-cringe descriptions for things and simplify the quest system as a whole).
and with the recent drama that's randomly popped up, i've just kinda dropped one of my longest-lived hobbies. The modding community is fracturing before my eyes, and i don't really care. I'm just annoyed that it makes me have to do extra work just to make a damn modpack.
Philosophers aren’t gone, their all just playing smw
Haha probably true!
Came for the philosophy, stayed for the gameplay (but mostly philosophy lol). As a filthy casual once-in-a-blue-moon Mario enjoyer, this shit would be wayyyy too goddamn frustrating for me, so I'ma just politely compliment the clear hard work that went into it and also not so quietly think to myself about how people who like to play levels that difficult are masochists and how people will read my comment and be like "pshhh this ain't anywhere near as hard as a level can be" But yeah, great vid.
hey thanks! haha yeah I am 100% a masochist, and Kaizo Mario only scratches the surface. But also true that this is barely even skimming the surface of how hard this stuff can get.
If you're here for the philosophy, you might like my video Art Isn't Finished, It's Abandoned ;)
@@drew_nikonowicz Oh nice, I'll take a gander at it. Thanks!
How would you recommend to constrain a project? Like just as a general rule of thumb. Its a personal project, you have basically infinite time to work on it, no real deadline, and no real end point. How do you take that kind of nebulous concept and compress it down into something that is constrained to have that "compass"? I guess what im asking is, if you did it again, how would you scope out this project so that you only needed the one compass? How might you think about a project to try and make it only serve your direct needs from the start?
Or is the idea here just to sort of be ok with doing less than your original goal?
I’m working on a game right now and the way I’m constraining that project (using it as a way to answer your question) is by having core requirements and bonus features. I’m also often doing things because I want to learn, so that’s an added factor. Even if the project fails partially, I probably still learned something so it’s not a total loss.
I like to write up my goals and organize them. So in the case of this current project I don’t have a deadline, but I do have a core 2-3 goals in mind. That’s my approach. But also just in general, giving yourself one constraint just for the sake of having it can make a huge difference. “I’m going to make X to the best of my ability and I have to ‘finish’ in two months. Or whatever it may be. Then stick to the rules. It can make a world of difference for motivation and the quality of the project in my opinion.
sometimes we need to make like 4 or 5 new compasses
@@sloanwise ha ha ha nope I just need the one for sure 😶🌫️😅
@@drew_nikonowicz *opens trenchcoat* psst hey can I interest you in some compasses... excellent quality definitely not broken. 🥸
This whole thing reminds me of the game: Getting Over It
Great game
I got this recommended right after being broken up with 😖
TH-cam knows 😅😧
3:30 I SEE SOME VEEEERY FAMILIAR COORDINATES ON YOUR PINBOARD... let's warp to them and see what happens ;)
::)
i also make hacks but sometimes Im not sure what to change should i stick with normal character hacks or level hacks. Maybe change some music?
btw the game im hacking is kirbys adventurre
I would try one of each, and see which you like the most!
Try smbx2 tho
Basically pokemon essentials for super mario games
I’ll stick to Godot hahah
There’s no way out, my life is filled with disappointment.
alexa play "earth is ghetto" by Aliah Sheffield 🙃
Join the club
0:22 deltarune
?
Basically in deltarune chapter one you enter a cabinet with a dark void inside
It's like the intro of the game
@@drew_nikonowicz
I see Windows, I leave.
lol ok
Fitting how I got recommended this video after finishing my first full-length novella. I know it's different from SMW romhacking or game design, but I found myself grappling with some of the things you mentioned as well.
Different but still super valid! I didn’t elaborate heavily but I think these struggles are applicable to so so much stuff from relationships, to work, to personal projects, etc. huge congrats on finishing the novella! Such a big milestone 😁
i hate it
o7
Very good video, I was sent here by Tumbleweb.
ah thanks! What's tumbleweb? :D
@@drew_nikonowiczThat would be me! I reposted this on my Community tab after I left my comment :)
@@drew_nikonowicz the other guy that commented about the godot game