---
title: Freeze your darlings
author: nek0
tags:
- english
- "devlog: tracer"
description: How I plan to deal with one of my older projects
---

There is a motto between writers, that is "kill your darlings".

I have a lot pf projects and some of them are very dear to me. One of these is
my attempt at a game called "tracer". This does not mean I am giving up on that.
Instead of "killing" this one of my darlings, I would like ot freeze it. This
menas I put it away for later.

"But why?" you may ask.

Well, simply because the idea has become too complex and difficult to achieve
with my toolset and knowledge. Additionally, I did not make much of a plan
beforehand what to incorporate in the game and how it should all work.

To cover the technical aspects I followed a
[superb tutorial series on OpenGL](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3gAzLwfIP0&list=PLlrATfBNZ98foTJPJ_Ev03o2oq3-GGOS2).
I can hightly recommend it, if you want to learn how modern OpenGL is actually
used. The tutorial series itself is taught in C++, but I was able to translate
it into Haskell, which you can see [on my gitea](https://gitea.nek0.eu/nek0/renderer-tutorial).

Secondly I learned a lot about the game design process from the book
["Level Up!" by Scott Rogers](https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Level+Up%21+The+Guide+to+Great+Video+Game+Design,+2nd+Edition-p-9781118877166).
I was recommended this book by one of my co-apprentices who used to study
computer science with emphasis on multimedia applications.

The findings from these will go into a new project, which will get its own
blogpost shortly.
