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The Happiness Cycle (Jun 1, 2005)

In my efforts to bring ever new groundbreaking material from the behemoth that is my crazy mind, I present to you, The Happiness Cycle:

This charts how happy I am with a map throughout its lifetime, and generally applies to all my maps. The start is the placing of the first brush, and the end is commital/completion/release. Think of the cycle as lasting about a month.

Generally, things start out well, and get a little better still as my mind rushes towards something terrific. Then comes a big dip as I suddenly doubt the whole idea and question whether the map is fundamentally flawed. I spend a good amount of time in that stage, up until the map is completely playable.

Then, as testing begins, happiness tends to grow as it's never quite as bad as imagined. It'll never beat the happiness at the very start of the project, but it'll come close as people are seen to enjoy it and find small bugs. Then a slight dip at the end due to nerves.

That is all. All Hail The Happiness Cycle! (even if it isn't really a cycle as such, really just a line with a kink in its neck)

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user comments

Steven_m64 at 08:27 on Jun 2, 2005

Haha Interesting.

Atrocity at 19:37 on Jun 2, 2005

Just might be the funniest thing I have ever read hehe. I have found out that I'm usually not happy with my end product too.

daveh at 20:34 on Jun 3, 2005

Interesting, this is mostly the same for everyone. You have a great idea, but then as it's being created you question it and yourself. I doubt many people are as happy with the output as DaveJ though :-O

zooyork at 22:22 on Jun 4, 2005

lol yeah thats pretty true man
same thing for me
but usually i stop in the halfway point, and dont finish the map
so far ive started like 20 maps
and only finished about 3 good ones
(the rest were test maps)

i gotta get to finishing the other ones i started =]