Tim, this series is an appreciated gift. It's great hearing wonderful behind the scenes stories and lessons. Thanks.

"Perfect is the enemy of good" definitely applies to any creative endeavour, now that I think of it. This is a valuable video for explaining why.

A long time motto of mine. I usually sum it up as "good 'nuff" in everyday life. We live in a world where time is a very real factor and the persuit of perfection has diminishing returns.

I just want to share that even that im not a programmer i still enjoy hearing you talk about your craft. Im an art student and in every video i try to find something that I can apply or try to relate to something of my field. Im trying to say that this videos are highly appreciated ! Sorry for the weird English.

I have to say, one of my fondest memories of Fallout was how great the animations were. It might have been rough but that footstep movement matching was definitely a highlight for me

All I can say is I definitely noticed the smoothness of the walking animations in Fallout (without having that vocabulary at the time) AND I've always felt that the "janky" vertical running is part of the charm of that game. I don't mean to be pedantic, since it doesn't change the point you were trying to make, but I really like those things-I think the walking animations brought a kind of gravitas to the game experience, only seldom interrupted by a little Benny Hill routine that also somehow seemed entirely appropriate-so maybe perfect doesn't have an enemy sometimes? Or one could strategically plan their jank to allow them to perfect a couple things? I dunno. I just want to advocate for perfect a tiny bit.

I have this back-and-forth with my lead programmer often and the motto I always repeat is "The only thing better than 'good' is 'good enough'." It's good to have both someone like me who prefers doing things rough but fast and someone like him who prefers doing things slow but clean, so we can find a perfect balance between us, and he finds the things that I've left TOO rough, and I find the moments where he's TOO focused on making something clean.

I will say you mentioning the aligning the footsteps to the movement in fallout is something so subtle that I didn't overtly notice, but it is something I subconsciously noticed, if that makes sense. Especially in relation to it's contemporaries and Arcanum.

I also heard that as "Perfect is the enemy of DONE" which is something that I take to heart... especially after not finishing _a bunch_ of stuff.

Thanks for sharing that last insight on Fallout. As a long time player of the game I never noticed the smooth footsteps. Maybe it’s one of those things you don’t notice if it’s done right. Asides from the awkward straight walking, I fondly remember creating a chicken walking effect by repeatedly clicking to walk to the same destination!

Excellent advice. Sometimes perfection also violates deadlines with other repercussions. I remember John Carmack's answers to some gaming journalists' questions about Quake II: "Mr Carmack, why doesn't Quake II have 16-bit textures? - We wanted to ship the game. - Why didn't you implement a more advanced enemy AI system? - We wanted to ship the game. - Why didn't you add support for (whatever)? - We wanted to ship the game."

I really like the general advice videos like this, I'm not a programmer but so much of your experience can be applied to many professions. Thanks Tim!

Love watching these videos before going to bed. Sounds kind of funny, but watching these is sort of just relaxing listening to your thoughts and insights on things. Thank you for providing these videos!

I gave up drawing completely for several years because I let my perfectionism get the better of me (I thought it’d be better to just not draw ever than to draw badly), these days I try to live so that I’ll end up as “that guy who didn’t really succeed but at least he tried making a bunch of stuff” when I’m dead rather than “that guy who may have been good at something but we’ll never know because he never tried anything for fear of failure”.

Comments are off on your Making A KZfaq Channel video so I'm commenting here to say it's awesome. And so is your channel. I'm loving it. I love how you are so open and chilled and explain your process. Not just on that video but on the whole channel. I'm so glad you've got weeks of content stacked up. It's so clear you are really enjoying this. That's great and it's mutual.

These videos are so helpful! Sometimes my team share these to communicate and start discussions with one another :)

Related to your tangent on having to remove a feature late in development, Folding Ideas' video "The Art of Editing and the Snowman" dissects something similar happening to a movie.

I noticed the footsteps and I thought it was a mark of quality! I also didn't mind the jerky walk. It was a hex grid and I just sort of though, "yeah, it's a hex grid". Just thought I'd share my 2c. :)

Tim - I noticed the footsteps and appreciated them.

Thank you Tim for making these videos!

The fixed movement is something you dont see, but when they slide you do see an it kinda was part of what made games feels polished back then

Another great video, thank you, Tim!

Doggo making his presence known! I genuinely love it 😊

I was kinda sleep and read something about the Enemy of God and wow was that a topic for a gamedev talk hahahaha Thanks Tim for the actual video!

I noticed the footsteps in Fallout, and I always appreciated it, but I definitely don't care enough about it or straight-line walking to have a preference one way or the other. I'm happy with jerky hex-to-hex walking in exchange for glideless feet.

Yeah Arcanum has tons of unpolished stuff but it's what makes it unique and superb. I prefer unpolished gem over polished "decent"game.

Perfection is a consumer merit, entirely subjective.

Can you do a "resume video" where you talk about every game and project you did and 2~ short versions of interesting events or something so we can get a better understanding of your experiences in one spot? Like 60 seconds per project or company maximum to get high level

Q: Did companies of PC parts ever requested game to run slower on higher presets to sell new products? What does it mean if a game have company logo in intro of a game? Do they send parts, help optimize it or just pay so there is a logo at the begining?

awesome video tim. ur my hero

You briefly referenced your extensive ambient/amospheric music collection on "Making a KZfaq Channel" the other day. Can you talk about what's in the library? How/where did you collect them? Is there an intersection with your game development past or is this just for personal use? As a persistent listener of ambient music, particularly game atmosphere audio, I'd like to hear more about this.

I even consider myself that one of the Fallout fans that played on this game almost ever possible options as possible , played both first 2 Fallout games like more than 2000 hours probably but ain't really noticed that walking animations are more smoother than other games :) i even as myself a software engineer and interested in these kinds of small details mostly . Thanks for that valuable lesson Mr Tim Cain .

For what it's worth (which is not much) while I never played much of the original Fallout myself, I've seen many videos on it, and always enjoyed the fact that feet connect and look good doing it. I always notice and appreciate stuff like that, and really don't enjoy ice skating movement. Not saying that was the right call over anything else, but it's something that still stands out about it to me! I know that wasn't really the point of the video, but I think it's sad when small details get sidelined, even though it's totally understandable that important stuff has to come first and time is quite limited.

Love these videos

So interesting you say that about monarch, as I still thought it was the closest outer worlds got to that sense of exploration I felt in fallout games. Now I understand why, it had that in its soul!

I am a solo dev and I struggle with the balance between improving on polish vs adding more features. Thanks for talking about this. The biggest time sink for me is UI, trying to mimic some of the high-end games UI and find out it takes a lot to get all the tiny little things UI/UX people do to get that polish and it's unrealistic for a solo dev to match.

One aspect of this that I don't think you mentioned explicitly, that I've seen happen is, someone suggests doing something that would improve the game, but someone else has an idea of how to do that thing *perfectly*, which of course would take more time, and then the thing doesn't get made at all (because aint nobody got time for that) even in the good state. To me this is the "real" perfect is the enemy of good.

it's an almost daily struggle to not ask questions about The Outer Worlds 2 in these comments sections looking forward to it!!

Sometimes I think passion for what you do is tightly coupled with a susceptibility to addiction, or hedonism. You need an understanding hand sometimes to guide you back on track.

I feel like I need to watch this video about once a day

I think focusing early development after concept on "minimum viable product" applies here.

Thank you ❤

KZfaq is telling me comments are turned off on your newest video, "Making A KZfaq Channel".

Comments are turned off in your "Making a KZfaq Channel" video. You said you still get these comments in your feed so here you go! Thanks buddy.

A big positive of "perfect is the enemy of good" is: In a business where you aren't sure what will work and won't work, and you will get to iterate, trying to make the perfect feature may not be worthwhile. Just make it work, and make it useful, and we can make it better later once the business is solid. I know this isn't video game related, but it has meaning in different contexts too. However all the points to speak about are valid to all industries.

Hey Tim, what are your thoughts on video game length? Do you prefer longer games or shorter ones? What is the perfect video game length in your opinion?

Tim, just wanted to give you a heads up, comments are turned off on your KZfaq Channel video uploaded this morning. Not sure if it was intentional, but since you didn't mention it in the video, I thought I'd bring it up. there's a few settings that can cause it unintentionally, like marking it as 'for children'.

for what it's worth, I always notice sliding footsteps in games, and it does bother me haha, but I do agree that when weighting the pros and cons, the zig zag pathfinding would've been more impactful

I'm a big fan of "Good enough is good enough."

Would you consider making a mod for fallout that implements your idea for walking? I don't know how difficult it would be to do that because I'm pretty unfamiliar with the fallout engine, but I would love to see it working. My only experience "modding" with that engine was translating all of the dialogue in Fallout: Sonora, which wasn't a great use of my time because it wouldn't launch after I translated it and I never figured out why.

Wholeheartedly agree with this video; also, read this as "PERFECT IS THE ENEMY OF GOD" and was ready to get my robes on.

I mean I did notice it Fallout, and if some of the research in grounding feet during animation blending in games is any indication*, visual consistency like that really appeals to people. Maybe if I was a hardcore isometric gamer I wouldn't consider it. * Valve's "The Right Foot in The Wrong Place" from SIGGRAPH '21, for example

I read Lord of Light a couple days ago, based on your recommendation in one of your earlier videos. Now I'm sitting here thinking about your notes on how it would translate into a cRPG. Could you perhaps talk about that?

Good is the enemy of yank. And oh boy do I love yank

I don't always notice sliding, but when I do, it annoys the crap out of me. Maybe I've just discovered the real reason Fallout is my favorite iso RPG.

While early optimzation is often a bad idea, if some fundamental things don't take things like memory layouts, cache friendlyness into account it can be hard to profile. Because if the heart of your system is bad, everything everywhere will be slowed down a little bit which makes it very hard to know what is slow. I have a question for the game designer in you: Because a game is more than the sum of it's parts, do you find it hard to know if removing one feature will make the mayonnaise fall appart ? I'm not talking about bugs like your crafting example. But a feature that made the entire game coherent, and without it the game still works but it is no longer as special/interesting.

I have an inventory for my game that does 90 percent of what I need. However i added a double click to move item to a lootbox, but finding it very difficult to double click an item to move an item back to the inventory. Dragging items back and forth is a nuisance. I want to make quests but instead im trying to make double clicking work

Ah great topic and video! In the words of immortal Donald Knuth: "premature optimization is the root of all evil". It is so difficult to extinguish the drive to make something you built perfect; you often feel so attached to it. It might be an interesting video to make: How do you effectively choose what content/systems to cut in your game and when? And also how do you get mentally comfortable with it 😊

Monarch is still really big, honestly if it was bigger it might have turned into a slog I think

I get your point, but I'm glad you guys made certain things perfect on Fallout. That's part of what makes it such a timeless masterpiece. Also, I'm glad you never fixed the zig-zag walking issue or the herky-jerky chicken walking. So, counterpoint: Having things that are perfect can make a game great, which makes its flaws charming, not necessarily detractions. Having a bunch of good-ish things, but nothing perfect is called mediocrity.

To me thats what a lot of critical analysis misses out on in a lot of things really but to focus on games; To me if Im faced by a choice or mechanic Im not immediately smitten by I try to look instead for the things that balance it out or the wider perspective it was made with. Identifying what does and doesnt work in a game is of course important for the lessons that can be learned for either a sequel or by similar minded people who want to have their own attempt at making their own game. It bugs me that theres such a widespread discrepancy when it comes to this mindset, cause at the end of the day the thing exists whether you personally think its good or not and people dont make art because they want it to be all things to all people and theres not a whole lot of merit in comparing something like Elden Ring to Skyrim if you dont understand what those games where trying to individually do, their successes and failures criss cross and overlap and all that nuance is lost if you just say thing good or bad.

I think the way Fallout does walking is actually better than the straight line version. Yes, it's not consistent with our reality (real people usually don't walk in a serpentine fashion), but it's very consistent with the hex system and object placement: it simply _makes sense_ within the game's basic rules. If there were any clipping or inconsistency between animation and movement direction, though - that would break immersion. It would not make sense in terms of realism, nor in terms of the game's rules.

I really like the world map in Fallout and Fallout 2. It creates a unique feeling of distance and time and just adds atmosphere, also with the very varied random encounters. I wish we could have it in modern games. It is a great idea for a postapocalyptic game, as there is actual real wasteland with huge amounts of empty space, making a journey feel like an actual journey. I guess it was more a workaround for technical limitations? Could you give your opinion about it? I dislike e.g. Fallout 4, where everywhere is just some location maker on your compass and you never feel like in a real wasteland. Mainstream player base adaption for guidance?

Thats so strange I just watched the Black Swan and now this title :D

I wanted to ask this earlier but would you be opposed to a tumblr blog with all the transcripts of your videos. I started working on one just for personal use but wanted to ask if it was okay if I made it public!

The janky walking where there should have been a straight walk never bothered me when I played as a kid. Actually, it became part of what Fallout is to me ^^

Fantastic advice! Also don't waste time polishing a turd :P Make sure you figure out what the bad elements of your game are early on.

More like "Tunnel-vision is the enemy of Good."

Perfect might be the enemy of good, but who wants just good?

How many "95% of people wouldn't notice" things are actually "people would notice if you didn't do it" things, though?

Weird question Tim. I've noticed a consistent difference between games you've worked on and other big name RPGs such as from Bioware and Larian is the way the player can make their character romance NPCs. Only thing that comes to mind is Bloodlines. Is this a deliberate choice and is there a reason you don't care to much for this element of roleplaying in RPGs?

Snoring dog cameo!

I would really like to see you do a review on all the Vaults from Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas and how their experiments can relate to your original idea of the Vaults being experiments for space travel.

I cant speak for everyone, of course, but i think long-term appreciation for a game is more attributed to fun features instead of perfect ones. It may have been janky and unpolished, but people remember the crazy and unorthodox ways RPGs like Arcanum let them approach problems more than they remember any specific moment from a perfectly balanced system in a polished RPG. Ask any fan of any RPG that's been out a while, and you're more likely to hear about a fun but janky mechanic over how smooth and well-balanced the gameplay is.

My version was "Perfect is the enemy of profit margin." You can often ship several 95% good products in the time it takes to make one 100% perfect product. Those products still fulfilled the customer's needs and getting it to the customer faster may make the customer even happier than had to wait for minor improvements.

Completely disagree with conclusions. In art there is no greater sin than being mediocre. It's better to make a shitty movie than the average one. Tim games were great because they did not try to just make each feature good enough, they went beyond and made some of them great. The "just make everything good enough" approach leads to boring mediocrity lacking any real excitement.

Realistically, it's better not to feed players with promises that your game will have a WOW incredibly open world with interesting quests if you, as a developer, cannot even make 50% of the promised. A good example is the Ukrainian game Stalker, how better it is to cut off many functions than to work them out until an unclear release date.

no, ideal is an inhibitor of good though

I just have to say, hearing that you're only consulting on Outer Worlds 2 makes me lose a little hope for it... I really hope the people in charge appreciate your input.

You look like silent bobs dad

0:38 -> 0:47 This man just described the ethos of a book called "Manhood of Humanity". Our societal ratios are whack. Billionaires and destitutes, mathematical geniuses and morons. I am interested in the least of us.

I freaking hate when people say this. It's usually tied to arguing when something is or isn't "out of scope". Giant cop-out imo.