Dumb old things you did

[Syaxamaphone]

What are some silly overly complicated things you did when you first started making games to achieve the effects you wanted.

When I was like 12 I didn't know global variables were a thing so for a Mega Man fangame I did I stored the first 4 robot master's complete state in the score variable as '1101', '1001', etc and the other four in lives.

When I learned about global variables my world exploded.

[Action Lemon]

About a year or so ago, I didn't know how to efficiently put music in my games. I would put full songs (P. I. M. P., Footloose, etc.) on mp3 or wav files and plop them into my dinky little games and it would completely bloat the size of them.

[Catonator]

When I was working on Tenebris, I didn't really know that much about global variables, and I didn't know how to use them properly, so I generally avoided them. Tenebris was built on a lot of global variables, however. So I chose to build the game almost exclusively on one object, obj_game, which then puppets the other objects around. The system became a massive mess very quickly, caused multiple memory leaks and runs horribly.

Also I didn't really know how to use loops or arrays for a long time so I used variables like listVar1, listVar2, listVar3 and performed loop functions manually.

Catonator.net | Twitter | YouTube | Soundcloud | Bandcamp

 
signatures are hard pls listen to music thxbye

[Turly Gang]

When I was really really really early on in my Game Maker learning experience, I tried to make a custom boss with a health bar in Hello Engine 3. It was just a giant spiny that would spawn an instance of an identical object when killed which would spawn an instance of another identical object when killed, and on and on. There were about 6 separate objects total, titled "obj_spinyboss_6health," "obj_spinyboss_5health," "obj_spinyboss_4health," and so on down the line. At the same time, I created 6 different health bar objects that would spawn the next subsequent health bar when the corresponding spiny boss object died. The health bar was just placed in the corner of the room, and wasn't attached to the HUD in any way.

I thought I was pretty slick...

[CGWorks]

when i started trying to make bosses, i programmed different boss objects of the same boss specifically for one move, so the final boss in my first game "super difficult mario bros" is comprised of like 4 or 5 different bowser objects

[Friendly Dictator]

i didnt know tiles were a thing in gm so i made every different block look a separate object

DO NOT under estimate this lakitu to much or it will be the end of that life (note: do not over estimate him either).

LONG LIVE LITTLELUND

[darkblueyoshi]

Back in my Game Maker days, I didn't know the difference between step, begin step, and end step events. I also didn't know what a while statement did.

When I was learning C++, I would dynamically allocate every variable... To avoid memory leaks.

I used to overengineer stuff because I didn't want people criticize me for lacking abstractions. A simple idea would have an entire framework of message busses.

On a related note, I wrote a rigid entity component system similar to Unity's. Bad idea.