--- 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.