The timetable experiment was not a big success, maybe only a small one?.. But I think it helps me gauge my time better, I’m now thinking what to do next. Boy this is going to be a long post.
Fact is, I’m a very ambitious man, there is so much I want to do, experience, and master, it may take me my whole lifetime to go through just the major stuff. So now, I’m questioning my tendency to do everything and not abandon any of my interests no matter how silly, which seriously impacts the bigger goals I have.
I think the reason for this tendency is that when I learn and build experience with something for sometime, say 6 months. Then not work on it for a year. Then trying to go back to doing something with it, I discover it’s as if I never really learned and experienced it. This is really frustrating for me, it feels like I lost all those months and now I need to lose more months and put more effort into getting it all back.
Today was, am… not work day, I didn’t even look at the timetable.. shame on me. I’ll write a post-mortem tomorrow detailing my next step.
I spent the day researching the american constellation space program that Obama terminated (I blame Microsoft) which involved going back to the moon by 2030 using our new technology. It’s embarrassing that human space equipment in operation now are mostly 50s and 60s technology, very outdated. Alas, it has been canceled even though it entered the final stages of development.
Today started with a beautiful TED talk about trying something new for 30 days, I was pumped with excitement! :D
I’m a bit out of energy today for some unknown reason, I don’t remember the specific details of what I did during the first 8 hours! but it involved playing guitar from written musical notes for the first time, I got carried away with the practice and spent nearly 3 hours plucking the strings, my fingers hurt a little and I didn’t feel them by the end of the practice but I could have carried on for 3 more hours. Maybe it’s that TED speech?
lol, I don’t know it just got lost somewhere, I considered it my day off or something. Which means today is work day! however, not much coding took place.. the reason is that I wanted to update Flash, and that process had fallout like FlashDevelop acting weird (turns out I must update it too) among other issues like my C: running out of juice, windows 7 somehow managed to suck nearly 50GB alone. I blame Microsoft.. again.
A mysteriously crashed Windows 7 which meant the Alarm software didn’t sound the alarm, AND the mobile battery is dead… meant I didn’t wake-up, and when I finally did, it was 3PM and I started cursing Microsoft for how long I slept (for once it wasn’t completely their fault, only partially, but they still get cursed. My rules).
Things went downhill from there, the whole day was backwards timetable wise, I started by spending 2 hours researching an idea of a music-based abstract game I’m planning for sometime now, a producer/music composer by the nickname hektikbeatz contacted me expressing his interest in collaborating in such a project if it ever became reality, take an eavesdrop here: Hektik Music
Things went surprisingly well! mostly… ehm… er.. I didn’t exactly stick to schedule, here’s how it went:
Waking up like a soldier, I was shaved, showered, worked-out, and started working within 15 minutes of bailing out of bed. Work and creative endeavors were so successful and precise to the minute (and my fingers are killing me after trying a few guitar chords), but I slacked in the AI study part, the two reasons I blame are: finding a russian band willing to compose awesome post-rock instrumental music pieces for games for the shear fun of it, and they are looking for a developer to participate.. ding ding ding proximity alert :D
I’ve been living as a student for more than 20 years, 8 of them in University… I spent about 4 years jumping around majors, universities, and countries. This tends to embed loads of bad habits specific to students, like the habit of depending on university to control my sleep times, or the homeless-like life of eating what you can find when and wherever you may find it (my favorite hehehe).
I may have mentioned I’m developing my first flash game which will be released on Kongregate (or similar game portals), since this is the first one I wanted something small and simple that would take about a month to develop and polish including actually learning Flash and ActionScript…
When I started working, I took the simplest candidate idea I had, and under the principle of K.I.S.S. (Keep It Stupidly Simple) I overran all my limits.
So here I was wondering today what steps are needed to upload a game to say.. Kongregate? and what can I change later? No better way to know than to actually upload a test game.. appropriately I have First Defense test lying around which served it’s purpose as concept grounds.. and.. done! here: First Defense Test
This doesn’t look anywhere near the actual First Defense I’m working on now, but the basic gameplay mechanic involving directing and firing a cannon is the basis on which both stand.