@@sage5296 Yeah usually the default go-to character placeholder is a capsule for the body and a box where say glasses/goggles would be. Think Among Us characters. This way you can still tell which way the character is facing which is very important. In the case of Sea of Thieves the wanted to be funny about it which ngl I totally feel XD
This is exactly how Splatoon was developed. They didn't have anything other than some basic shapes that they used to develop what became the core mechanics of the game. After that, they then developed the setting, characters, and everything else after the fact. I think it's a great way to approach game design and not burden yourself with details that aren't important at that stage.
This has been a lot of Nintendo's design approach in general for a really long time. Mechanics / gameplay-first development is why even in their not-great games, there's usually at least some core element of the gameplay loop that's inherently engaging and fun.
@@MasterPpv I figured as much, but Splatoon was an entirely new IP from them in a long time so it was a rare insight into how an entire franchise spawned from simply developing mechanics on the most basic of levels.
@@NervXT Oh yeah Splatoon is definitely a great example of what that design philosophy can produce. My personal favorite example of it is probably Luigi's Mansion 🙂
@@DamianSzajnowskiwell actually my landlord upgraded my mud hut to a paper house. I really appreciate the upgrade, much breezier and it’s nice when it rains.
Good. Keep this mindset. The more you do and further you get, the harder it can become to focus on that mindset. Keep this mindset, and you will make some amazingly cool shit. I've been a dev for over a decade in AAA, AA, and indie fields, and one of the hardest thing for people to do can keep the focus on just making shit work. Best of luck, and I look forward to seeing you at the Game Awards my friend.
@@Aedyn91Another problem (more in Triple AAA now) unsure about the enviroment of AA & indie but ~ I imagine its better. You got so many Companys with a lot of folks (to many chefs in the kitchen) and you end up ending with to many opinions and get in a common loop of meetings about a meeting, just to make a small demo/beta/update or trailer. *Bottleneck* in a sense. And the masses of NDAs and contract laws makes this an even worse experience. The industry needs a hard *Crash/Reset*
@@wilsonhiggsbury8542 No. He means Data Structures. How you store and interact with your data. Hash tables, arrays, dictionaries, queues, stacks, trees, etc. How you structure your database if you use one. Data can be a pain to refactor. So you try to plan ahead a bit. The rest can be botched and redone usually. If you don't create insane dependencies between everything.
I swear, in like 5 years, theres gonna be like 15 new absolutely amazing indie games and all of them will have thor in the credits for these shorts oml
@@TheConjurersTower Not yet, so far as I can tell, but it's great that you're discovering the game- it's led to some of my favorite playthroughs to watch!
Well said! It's vital to take things one step at a time and understand it's a process towards your goals. You're never going to be perfect on your first attempt of everything _and that's ok._ Back when I first started 3D modeling, I went straight into trying to make a complex character and I struggled to get anything done right. It took me so long to make any progress and it didn't work out as intended. I didn't even know how to get good edge flow for the mesh and yet I was trying to UV unwrap and rig a mess of polygons. So, I slowed down and got down to the basics. I learned how to block out my model so it has all the right shapes I want, I learned how to take that and refine it with sculpting so I could add finer details, I learned how to retopologize so my model can deform in the right ways, and so on. NOW I'm going to learn how to UV unwrap things nicely, then it's on to texturing. I'm looking forward to discovering the power of shape keys after that. By taking things one step at a time I have become immensely comfortable and confident in what I'm doing, so much so that the mistakes don't make me Alt F4 out of Blender in frustration.... I instead quickly interpret what needs to be done to fix things. I can't count how many times I retried the retopology of a character's paws, but it got better each time and then I was happy with it. Now, do I know everything about all the things I just mentioned? Am I a master of retopology? Perfect with my shape usage? A sculpter of the ages? Hell no, I'm still learning, and always will be... But I embrace mistakes as a chance to learn how to make better stuff. To the individual responsible for the TTS, I wish them all the best in their game dev journey.
This is a lesson that I think every creator has to learn the hard way. The entire first year I spent trying to learn how to code was spent learning how to scale back to the smallest steps imaginable. I would try to learn and come up with concepts that were far to complex for my skill level, get lost, get frustrated, get discouraged at the sheer amount of work it would be for someone who had no idea what they were doing. "If I can't seem to understand how to get this one thing to work after weeks of trying, how am I going to take on this other, larger task in the future? How am I ever going to have a finished project in a reasonable amount of time?" I would pick up a project, run into these issues, then put it down for weeks or months. I had to take a _whole_ bunch of steps backward before I could even begin to take meaningful steps forward. At the time, I felt like I was making no progress whatsoever, but then I realized later that this process in itself _was_ progress in its own right. I didn't have the right mindset that I needed to do things efficiently, and that was the first thing that I needed to learn. It was a very important lesson in the learning curve of how to properly organize projects and solve problems like a game dev. Much like you, when I adjusted my expectations and ate the elephant one bite at a time, as it were, I started feeling a lot more confident in what I was doing, knowing what small little bits I needed to focus on in what increments, and making larger strides in my journey. The main project that I'm working on now is _much_ simpler than my previous ones. Nowhere near done, but coming along nicely. And even through the occasional headache and frustration of getting stuck and not knowing what I'm doing sometimes, I'm genuinely having fun with it overall. I wish you well on your 3D modeling journey! May the learning curve of all this computer stuff not kick us all too hard lol.
As I read the comment I thought my childhood friend wrote it. I and him started developing a game 5 months ago. He walks exactly the same path as you right now. He learned modelling in blender. Rigging is the last part he finished. It's only animation left from his side. As my side, i also learned basic blender: little hard surface modelling and sculpting. But i always wanted to have connection with logical side of a game, so i didn't have much fun doing artistic stuff. So i started to learn graphics, code, shaders. Started to learn linear algebra conceptually. I'm lucky that I have childhood friend who has the same vision, ambitions and goals in life. Everytime we meet, we talk how unbelievable our progress is. Scale of problems which bothered us in initial part of development is noway near the problems we have now. Our approach changed and got way better after 5 months of ups and downs, doubts and reliefs. Problems became tasks. We are more resillient to fear of failing ourself and it feels amazing. I dream my game in top charts of steam and i'm sure oneday we get it done. I wish everyone chill and fun journey!
"Perfect is the enemy of good." That's the mantra I'm using to design the TTRPG I'm working on. I'm taking it one chunk at a time, and going from there. Playable, and complete, are two very different things.
Don’t do it for a living do it for fun! I have genuine fun coding (I suck at art tho😅) forreal tho the worst possible scenario is you try it and don’t like it.
Yeah.. *Game Dev* does that WoW-Original build from (before 2000) Looks vastly different too. This was *Common* in the old days, Now it seems like a distant old design.
As an artist that has been painting for over 25 years and this describes every single painting or drawing I (anyone) has ever painted/drawn! We all start with the canvas and then we add, add, fix, add, adjust, add, cry, add, add, accept, and then end with our art masterpiece!!! It's not a single step, it's a process!! Great advice Thor! 👍
Now I’m imagining Elden ring designed like this. Imagine getting to the Malenia boss fight and it’s just your square vs her square. Truly a fight for the ages.
I’ve honestly decide anytime I see this channel I’m gona stop and do something productive. Thank you for the messages you spread and the effort you put into your work, I love your channel and it has helped a lot. Keep up the good work
Man, im not even a big game guy, but you have lessons that are valuable across all fields of life. I think people have a lot to learn from what you have to say. Thank you for making the internet a better place. You are in inspiration.
The most important thing is starting to make a game, just make a box and then put together everything around it. Nothing is perfect in the beginning, the beauty is in the way of making it perfect 😊
Can confirm, this is excellent advice. This advice works for most artistic projects. I tried to make my first album start to finish and would not move on until I had perfected the part I was working on. It created a massive list of problems, not the least of which was burn out and a reluctance to allow my vision to change with the project.
I love how much creativity demands to be born. It's not just made or it just happened its like creativity is a criteria in a circumstance like this that forces you to work with what you got. I love hearing that so many games started out like this and that that creativity between so many different devs gets the chance to stand out and aren't beaten by a box
This is so true, and not only works in a game development, but also in every single development, when you starts perfect, it will only make you suffers as time progress
It’s crazy. You can take these lessons and apply them to anything creative. I do music, and just like he’s saying with the box, it starts simple, then over time it grows into something you want it to be.
as an artist, yes please don't worry about the art until everything else is almost done. I've heard so many people (and experienced that myself) that were working on games as artists before they even got the gameplay figured out and all of them ended in a lot of work that never saw the light of the day
Reminds me of that old flash game that was directly like this. It started as just a box, and as you acquired currency, and 'upgraded' the game with the currency it got more and more complex and detailed.
You know, i needed exactly this. Thank you. I've been getting into making games and i've got the ideas, i've got the engine and i've made a basic thing before with pre-made assets to simply learn. Then i wanted to make a new project. Immediately got stuck on assets, on making perfect art and just deflated. This will make me go back to it. Thanks Thor!
This is generally fantastic advice in any programming you do too. You won’t build an application, you build a print line that gives you the most basic piece of information you want, then have it construct that line instead of it being static, then have it return that line and utilised in the print line, then build the next piece and have it handle the output of the first piece.
This is so important. I lost count of how many game projects I started and give up because of this, trying to finish everything at once. I'm about to start another project and I won't make the same mistake again.
He almost made it to my favorite analogy involving creative works here, which is that creating anything is pretty much like building a mountain out of layers of paint.
As a painter, I start the same way. I decide on colours and think of rough composition and turn the canvas into a piece of shit and build it up from there. Everything can be changed and corrected. Working rough inspires me, because the ramdom mess gives me new ideas to tie in with my vision. Sometimes I don’t have a clue where I am going with it and I'll have it somewhere that I see it when I'm chilling out and I'll wait until I see something each step of the way.
You’re the best streamer I’ve ever come across and I’m not even a game developper. Keep up the good work, we need more people with your approach towards content ❤
Something so simple yet profound that translates over to life itself. You’re the box, stop trying to make yourself perfect, just do things until those things create the box you imagined and it’ll all work out.
It's called the "Prototype Phase" stand up systems that are needed, if you can make your game fun with boxes, it'll be even better with polished assets.
As a 3D animator and modeler, this is very true. We start with the blocked model, bare bones, and basic shape to use for scale. Then we add details, keep repeating that until the final product is done
This is the concept of prototyping, and after about a year or two learning game development, I've only just now really dedicated myself to this practice of prototyping first and only making the game look nice after the core mechanics are designed.
I actually really needed this today. Starting over on a new game creation program, and overwhelmed because I need to make all the art. But I like this concept of "make box do thing"
This actually makes so much sense because I've never been massively into programming but making custom matches(campaigns) in Starcraft growing up this is how it went and progressed, but at the time I never compared it to success, I was just like this is a giant mess and it sucks
as an artist, i can really relate to this, i always concentrate soooo much on the art, that i don't even have a box for that art yet.... that is some really good advice ❤
Im beginning to understand now why when Thor explains convoluted systems to his stream its a load of boxes connected in series. This man spent countless waking hours staring at boxes, probably dreams about them too 😂
I just realized why I like game dev logs, but I'd hate to do it myself. coding is another language and a game is the dev's works of literature and I fucking love to read.
This applies to anything creativity based. I hearing this helps helps me cuz I've always struggled with trying to make what I'm creating perfect from the start
I feel like this can apply to a lot of design-related things. Like i crochet amigurumi (creatures/animals/toys/etc) and one of the core skills of freehanding new designs is making and establishing how to make the right general shape, then refining that shape as needed until you get what you want. My process is very "make the pieces wonky and edit the pattern until it comes out right."
Not really, he had a game design document at the start, most agile projects have just basic requirements at the start and new ones get piled on every sprint.
@@RaukGorth true, but I was referencing Thor’s point of iterative design being agile, versus the other option he presented, which was to create the perfect art and character at the very start.
this is what basically threw me out of making my own game right from the start. I was obsessed with having good assets while they couldn't even move directly. Maybe I just needed to hear this enough times to pick it up again.
This is incredible life advice too. Make a plan, then get the materials in place, and start with something functional first. Worry about aesthetics after you establish your reality
I gain more and more respect and appreciation for Thor with every short I see. So glad there are still people left willing to help those coming up in the same field.
I always thought he had a special program or website for the illustrations and notes or whatever. I tune in to his stream and it's just MSPaint. This man is using MSPaint to illustrate his explanations. What a chad. I'm going to figure out how to make my base canvas in MSPaint black just so I can do this.
Crazy to think that Horizon: Zero Dawn was a bunch of boxes running around, hilarious with the possibility they were boxes that made feral machine-animal noises
Case in point: the way earliest footage of Sea of Thieves where they were just tictacs with mustaches
That's just what the average pirate is actually like in real life.
Dani: “THEY’re called BEANZ!”
“Is it me or is looking kinda THICC?”
Good to see they prioritized the mustache
@@ThemightyThoit actually would be useful too so you can tell what way the beans are facing, since that can be important for physics and other stuff
@@sage5296 Yeah usually the default go-to character placeholder is a capsule for the body and a box where say glasses/goggles would be. Think Among Us characters.
This way you can still tell which way the character is facing which is very important. In the case of Sea of Thieves the wanted to be funny about it which ngl I totally feel XD
This is exactly how Splatoon was developed. They didn't have anything other than some basic shapes that they used to develop what became the core mechanics of the game. After that, they then developed the setting, characters, and everything else after the fact. I think it's a great way to approach game design and not burden yourself with details that aren't important at that stage.
they put paint on the box and they were like "holy shit putting paint on this box was so fun lets make a game around that"
splatoon mentioned
This has been a lot of Nintendo's design approach in general for a really long time. Mechanics / gameplay-first development is why even in their not-great games, there's usually at least some core element of the gameplay loop that's inherently engaging and fun.
@@MasterPpv I figured as much, but Splatoon was an entirely new IP from them in a long time so it was a rare insight into how an entire franchise spawned from simply developing mechanics on the most basic of levels.
@@NervXT Oh yeah Splatoon is definitely a great example of what that design philosophy can produce. My personal favorite example of it is probably Luigi's Mansion 🙂
“The enemy of a good plan is the idea of a perfect one”
Holy shit that's a bar, saving that one
@kinghollownite that saying is older than the internet, I never thought I'd hear it being called a "bar"
@@Thedude3rd I'd never heard it before so I thought it was pretty good sounding lol
My Grandma always said to me, "L'ennemi du bien, c'est le mieux"
(Yes I am french)
Literally "the enemy of 'good', is 'better' "
@@Fantastic_Mr_Fox Yeah in English we have a more accurate saying (relative to the one further up) that goes "Perfect is the enemy of good"
Think outside the box ❌
Think inside the box ❌
Think about the box ☑️🫡
People always ask "Why won't the box move?", but no one ever asks "How is the box?". 😒
Sometimes you gotta put yourself in the boxes shoes.
Be the box if you will @@King_Luigi
This is your companion box. Take good care of it.
Think like a box. Became a box.
@nicholasfinch4087 you just triggered soooo much ptsd bro 😂
"We build a piece of sh!t"
"And we cover it in paint"
💀
EA?
Ubisoft?
And then another layer of paint
Todd Howard: *Looks good to me, I'm going to announce it next week*
why polish a turd when you can paint it!
"We build a piece of shit, and cover it in paint"
Landlords been living by this advice for a long time 💀
Aint that some shit😂😂
Y'all living in shit-mud huts?
@@DamianSzajnowskiwell actually my landlord upgraded my mud hut to a paper house. I really appreciate the upgrade, much breezier and it’s nice when it rains.
@@lex4478 and much easier to replace when it collapses due to natural weather patterns.
There is no punching a hole in german walls.
@@DamianSzajnowskiyes. Rent be 1.6k on god. It's cold in here bro, oven is one hut over.
When learning 3D graphics my teacher said that basically "Everything starts as one cube."
@@StealthMarmot_ But never the default Blender cube. You always have to delete it and then spawn a new cube. Then you are ready to create!
@@ikr555on God
@@ikr555and then subdivide it to make a sphere instead of using the default sphere.
@@firemyst9064 And then you end up with an imperfect, slightly boxy sphere because of the way subdivision works.
@caldercockatoo2234 but it's our slightly imperfect sphere :)
Im making a game with a friend at the moment, and neither of us is thinking is, "Why doesn't it look nice?", it's "why isn't it working?"😂
Good. Keep this mindset. The more you do and further you get, the harder it can become to focus on that mindset. Keep this mindset, and you will make some amazingly cool shit. I've been a dev for over a decade in AAA, AA, and indie fields, and one of the hardest thing for people to do can keep the focus on just making shit work.
Best of luck, and I look forward to seeing you at the Game Awards my friend.
@@Aedyn91Another problem (more in Triple AAA now) unsure about the enviroment of AA & indie but ~ I imagine its better.
You got so many Companys with a lot of folks (to many chefs in the kitchen) and you end up ending with to many opinions and get in a common loop of meetings about a meeting, just to make a small demo/beta/update or trailer.
*Bottleneck* in a sense.
And the masses of NDAs and contract laws makes this an even worse experience.
The industry needs a hard
*Crash/Reset*
Keep working on it until you ask each other "why is it working..?"
It's worth remembering that every sculpture and every cathedral started as piece of rock.
shit. this got me.
piece**
Wars have been faught over peaceful rocks
@@crusaderanimation6967 and every race engine starts out as a aluminum billet block before it gets machined
Is this a quote or just your brain? Cus bars 😩😩
I feel like I am being taught how to be a proper Jedi by Master Yoda
100% agree with the sentiment, but I get more Qui-Gon than Yoda vibes.
This applies to all development outside of the data layer
Yes. Data is forever.
Unless it’s a 1 man project and you procrastinate by refactoring.
@@adotinthecosmos you mean the coding aspect right?
@@wilsonhiggsbury8542 design, development...
@@wilsonhiggsbury8542 No. He means Data Structures. How you store and interact with your data. Hash tables, arrays, dictionaries, queues, stacks, trees, etc. How you structure your database if you use one.
Data can be a pain to refactor. So you try to plan ahead a bit. The rest can be botched and redone usually. If you don't create insane dependencies between everything.
@@kemeros3562 i see, thanks
I swear, in like 5 years, theres gonna be like 15 new absolutely amazing indie games and all of them will have thor in the credits for these shorts oml
This advice applies to everything. It’s an iterative process.
Yup lots of Thor's advice is able to be applied to life in general, it's great
Him eyeing DE at the start is such a tease dude
Does he play it?! I just discovered the game and having been watching everyone play it.
@@TheConjurersTower Not yet, so far as I can tell, but it's great that you're discovering the game- it's led to some of my favorite playthroughs to watch!
Goood, I wish he'd play it!! It's such an amazing game :0
bro that would be insane
@@TheConjurersTower you should definitely play it yourself ~
The Author of Thomas Was Alone just stopped at boxes.
*stretchy boxes.
top tier animation design.
Well said! It's vital to take things one step at a time and understand it's a process towards your goals. You're never going to be perfect on your first attempt of everything _and that's ok._
Back when I first started 3D modeling, I went straight into trying to make a complex character and I struggled to get anything done right. It took me so long to make any progress and it didn't work out as intended. I didn't even know how to get good edge flow for the mesh and yet I was trying to UV unwrap and rig a mess of polygons.
So, I slowed down and got down to the basics. I learned how to block out my model so it has all the right shapes I want, I learned how to take that and refine it with sculpting so I could add finer details, I learned how to retopologize so my model can deform in the right ways, and so on. NOW I'm going to learn how to UV unwrap things nicely, then it's on to texturing. I'm looking forward to discovering the power of shape keys after that.
By taking things one step at a time I have become immensely comfortable and confident in what I'm doing, so much so that the mistakes don't make me Alt F4 out of Blender in frustration.... I instead quickly interpret what needs to be done to fix things. I can't count how many times I retried the retopology of a character's paws, but it got better each time and then I was happy with it. Now, do I know everything about all the things I just mentioned? Am I a master of retopology? Perfect with my shape usage? A sculpter of the ages? Hell no, I'm still learning, and always will be... But I embrace mistakes as a chance to learn how to make better stuff.
To the individual responsible for the TTS, I wish them all the best in their game dev journey.
This is a lesson that I think every creator has to learn the hard way. The entire first year I spent trying to learn how to code was spent learning how to scale back to the smallest steps imaginable. I would try to learn and come up with concepts that were far to complex for my skill level, get lost, get frustrated, get discouraged at the sheer amount of work it would be for someone who had no idea what they were doing. "If I can't seem to understand how to get this one thing to work after weeks of trying, how am I going to take on this other, larger task in the future? How am I ever going to have a finished project in a reasonable amount of time?" I would pick up a project, run into these issues, then put it down for weeks or months. I had to take a _whole_ bunch of steps backward before I could even begin to take meaningful steps forward.
At the time, I felt like I was making no progress whatsoever, but then I realized later that this process in itself _was_ progress in its own right. I didn't have the right mindset that I needed to do things efficiently, and that was the first thing that I needed to learn. It was a very important lesson in the learning curve of how to properly organize projects and solve problems like a game dev. Much like you, when I adjusted my expectations and ate the elephant one bite at a time, as it were, I started feeling a lot more confident in what I was doing, knowing what small little bits I needed to focus on in what increments, and making larger strides in my journey. The main project that I'm working on now is _much_ simpler than my previous ones. Nowhere near done, but coming along nicely. And even through the occasional headache and frustration of getting stuck and not knowing what I'm doing sometimes, I'm genuinely having fun with it overall.
I wish you well on your 3D modeling journey! May the learning curve of all this computer stuff not kick us all too hard lol.
@@Just_a_commenter do to do not. There is no try.
As I read the comment I thought my childhood friend wrote it. I and him started developing a game 5 months ago. He walks exactly the same path as you right now. He learned modelling in blender. Rigging is the last part he finished. It's only animation left from his side. As my side, i also learned basic blender: little hard surface modelling and sculpting. But i always wanted to have connection with logical side of a game, so i didn't have much fun doing artistic stuff. So i started to learn graphics, code, shaders. Started to learn linear algebra conceptually. I'm lucky that I have childhood friend who has the same vision, ambitions and goals in life. Everytime we meet, we talk how unbelievable our progress is. Scale of problems which bothered us in initial part of development is noway near the problems we have now. Our approach changed and got way better after 5 months of ups and downs, doubts and reliefs. Problems became tasks. We are more resillient to fear of failing ourself and it feels amazing.
I dream my game in top charts of steam and i'm sure oneday we get it done.
I wish everyone chill and fun journey!
"Perfect is the enemy of good."
That's the mantra I'm using to design the TTRPG I'm working on. I'm taking it one chunk at a time, and going from there.
Playable, and complete, are two very different things.
Bro I don't even need to make a game for living but he makes me want to make game
Don’t do it for a living do it for fun! I have genuine fun coding (I suck at art tho😅) forreal tho the worst possible scenario is you try it and don’t like it.
Then do it. Go make cool shit. :3 I look forward to seeing what you can make.
@@Aedyn91 thanks for the encouraging words people:D I love doing art so yeah I could do something
And that’s why Thor draws a bunch of nondescript boxes whenever he explains something.
“Thor, how make game?”
Thor: “BOX SIMULATOR!”
Then run it in Virtual Box
Splatoon started off as unanimated cubes of tofu shooting ink at each other
Yeah.. *Game Dev* does that
WoW-Original build from (before 2000) Looks vastly different too.
This was *Common* in the old days,
Now it seems like a distant old design.
As an artist that has been painting for over 25 years and this describes every single painting or drawing I (anyone) has ever painted/drawn! We all start with the canvas and then we add, add, fix, add, adjust, add, cry, add, add, accept, and then end with our art masterpiece!!! It's not a single step, it's a process!! Great advice Thor! 👍
Ah, create Thomas Was Alone. XD
Now I’m imagining Elden ring designed like this. Imagine getting to the Malenia boss fight and it’s just your square vs her square. Truly a fight for the ages.
I’ve honestly decide anytime I see this channel I’m gona stop and do something productive. Thank you for the messages you spread and the effort you put into your work, I love your channel and it has helped a lot. Keep up the good work
Man, im not even a big game guy, but you have lessons that are valuable across all fields of life. I think people have a lot to learn from what you have to say.
Thank you for making the internet a better place.
You are in inspiration.
Thor basically said, "trust the process bro"
It's literally like a Bob Ross painting, you start all the way at the back of the image and build up each layer to create a masterpiece
"Thomas was alone" didn't even go *that* much beyond controlling rectangles. And it's still one of my favorite games.
Thomas was Alone is literally just boxes! And you end up feeling emotions for the boxes BECAUSE THE GAME IS JUST THAT GOOD
This is just genuinely good advice for most things in life. Start small and don’t sweat the finer details until you have the basics down.
The most important thing is starting to make a game, just make a box and then put together everything around it.
Nothing is perfect in the beginning, the beauty is in the way of making it perfect 😊
A wise man once said:
"B E A N"
-Danidev
“You start with boxes”
I’m just now realizing how often he does that while explaining something
Can confirm, this is excellent advice. This advice works for most artistic projects. I tried to make my first album start to finish and would not move on until I had perfected the part I was working on. It created a massive list of problems, not the least of which was burn out and a reluctance to allow my vision to change with the project.
I love how much creativity demands to be born. It's not just made or it just happened its like creativity is a criteria in a circumstance like this that forces you to work with what you got. I love hearing that so many games started out like this and that that creativity between so many different devs gets the chance to stand out and aren't beaten by a box
This is so true, and not only works in a game development, but also in every single development, when you starts perfect, it will only make you suffers as time progress
every marble statue starts as a square block of marble
This has been the single most helpful piece of advice I’ve heard for game development.
It’s crazy. You can take these lessons and apply them to anything creative. I do music, and just like he’s saying with the box, it starts simple, then over time it grows into something you want it to be.
as an artist, yes please don't worry about the art until everything else is almost done. I've heard so many people (and experienced that myself) that were working on games as artists before they even got the gameplay figured out and all of them ended in a lot of work that never saw the light of the day
Reminds me of that old flash game that was directly like this. It started as just a box, and as you acquired currency, and 'upgraded' the game with the currency it got more and more complex and detailed.
This is what people meant when they said to think outside of the box
You know, i needed exactly this. Thank you. I've been getting into making games and i've got the ideas, i've got the engine and i've made a basic thing before with pre-made assets to simply learn. Then i wanted to make a new project. Immediately got stuck on assets, on making perfect art and just deflated. This will make me go back to it. Thanks Thor!
Absolutely correct. It's like starting with a block of clay and slowly shaping it into what you want.
The amount of rectangles Thor has drawn is a thing on its own.
This is generally fantastic advice in any programming you do too. You won’t build an application, you build a print line that gives you the most basic piece of information you want, then have it construct that line instead of it being static, then have it return that line and utilised in the print line, then build the next piece and have it handle the output of the first piece.
This is so important. I lost count of how many game projects I started and give up because of this, trying to finish everything at once. I'm about to start another project and I won't make the same mistake again.
This must be why whenever thor explains something he always draws boxes. Bro is onto something
Love all of these shorts, they always motivate me to keep making things even if I don't complete projects very much
This is why every single Unity 3D tutorial begins with "Let's make a capsule..."
holy crap he's looking at disco elysium
Thor is the Bob Ross of Video Games.
Happy Boxes
He almost made it to my favorite analogy involving creative works here, which is that creating anything is pretty much like building a mountain out of layers of paint.
Applies to everything else in life.
Half-ass it, do it poorly is my mantra.
He really didn't say to half ass things
Iteration takes time and work. It's not half assing, it's the opposite.
@@doesntmetter6431 you have half ass it at the beginning.
I don't make games, but can tell this is how you do coding in general, the layers of paint comparison is so spot on.
As a painter, I start the same way. I decide on colours and think of rough composition and turn the canvas into a piece of shit and build it up from there. Everything can be changed and corrected. Working rough inspires me, because the ramdom mess gives me new ideas to tie in with my vision. Sometimes I don’t have a clue where I am going with it and I'll have it somewhere that I see it when I'm chilling out and I'll wait until I see something each step of the way.
You’re the best streamer I’ve ever come across and I’m not even a game developper. Keep up the good work, we need more people with your approach towards content ❤
This is explains why all of Thor’s drawings are primarily a series of boxes while he narrates over it.
Unless you're Thomas Was Alone. Then you keep it as boxes and *still* make it compelling.
Some people are thinking outside the box, developers are thinking with boxes.
Something so simple yet profound that translates over to life itself. You’re the box, stop trying to make yourself perfect, just do things until those things create the box you imagined and it’ll all work out.
It's called the "Prototype Phase" stand up systems that are needed, if you can make your game fun with boxes, it'll be even better with polished assets.
This is actually great advice for projects in general. This video just inspired me to spend the day working on designing my perfect Valheim world.
As a 3D animator and modeler, this is very true. We start with the blocked model, bare bones, and basic shape to use for scale. Then we add details, keep repeating that until the final product is done
This is the concept of prototyping, and after about a year or two learning game development, I've only just now really dedicated myself to this practice of prototyping first and only making the game look nice after the core mechanics are designed.
I actually really needed this today. Starting over on a new game creation program, and overwhelmed because I need to make all the art. But I like this concept of "make box do thing"
It's like how a huge percentage of the boss mechanics in WoW are cast by an invisible bunny.
thor is forever stuck in the box stage with his paint explanations
Even the greatest works of art started as blobs on a canvas. Gotta start somewhere
Love it, that you always show an indiegame in the background.
That's how I build in Minecraft, I start out with a pos, and I eventually get something pretty nice.
I love listening to these and being able to relate it to other art forms like writing
Hearing the word "box" said so many times makes me think of SCP Foundation
This actually makes so much sense because I've never been massively into programming but making custom matches(campaigns) in Starcraft growing up this is how it went and progressed, but at the time I never compared it to success, I was just like this is a giant mess and it sucks
Cloud imperium games: "Lets do that, but the other way around!"
as an artist, i can really relate to this, i always concentrate soooo much on the art, that i don't even have a box for that art yet.... that is some really good advice ❤
Another example of how his advice applies to everything
your shorts are pure gold - your streams are divine intervention.
Im beginning to understand now why when Thor explains convoluted systems to his stream its a load of boxes connected in series.
This man spent countless waking hours staring at boxes, probably dreams about them too 😂
this is a general motif across lots of things: coarse-graining first -> fine-tuning last. Like focusing a microscope.
I just realized why I like game dev logs, but I'd hate to do it myself. coding is another language and a game is the dev's works of literature and I fucking love to read.
You could even be like Thomas Was Alone and make the boxes the main characters.
This applies to anything creativity based. I hearing this helps helps me cuz I've always struggled with trying to make what I'm creating perfect from the start
'Thomas was alone" is a perfect example :P
That's why Unity starts you off with just a single *BEAN*
Big tower tiny square left us the box
I feel like this can apply to a lot of design-related things. Like i crochet amigurumi (creatures/animals/toys/etc) and one of the core skills of freehanding new designs is making and establishing how to make the right general shape, then refining that shape as needed until you get what you want. My process is very "make the pieces wonky and edit the pattern until it comes out right."
The box sounds like the frame work, and when you get to a certain point, you start putting in little details once you're happy with how the box works.
That's great advice honestly as a previous artist I totally agree even in art.
As our friend dani says. "Bean!!"
This is agile development vs waterfall development. 😁👍
Not really, he had a game design document at the start, most agile projects have just basic requirements at the start and new ones get piled on every sprint.
@@RaukGorth true, but I was referencing Thor’s point of iterative design being agile, versus the other option he presented, which was to create the perfect art and character at the very start.
this is what basically threw me out of making my own game right from the start. I was obsessed with having good assets while they couldn't even move directly. Maybe I just needed to hear this enough times to pick it up again.
This is incredible life advice too. Make a plan, then get the materials in place, and start with something functional first. Worry about aesthetics after you establish your reality
Blender's starter shape making a lot more sense now
I gain more and more respect and appreciation for Thor with every short I see. So glad there are still people left willing to help those coming up in the same field.
That's where I'm at. Just learn to make the box move. I'm glad I'm on the right track
I always thought he had a special program or website for the illustrations and notes or whatever.
I tune in to his stream and it's just MSPaint.
This man is using MSPaint to illustrate his explanations. What a chad.
I'm going to figure out how to make my base canvas in MSPaint black just so I can do this.
They say in woodworking one of the best first projects is a box.
It's funny how often that shows up in other places.
Crazy to think that Horizon: Zero Dawn was a bunch of boxes running around, hilarious with the possibility they were boxes that made feral machine-animal noises