Game Update
We’re getting a little closer to fix our character issue on the Force Organization screen. It’s become a real pain, but it seems to have something to do with the way we move troops to and from our toy box. Last week in particular I wasn’t in the mood to work on it, but I did anyway. A lot of my entries this week are going to be related to the book “Atomic Habits.” In the book it talks about how every time you do an action you are casting a vote for the person you want to be. That means that if I work on my game even when I don’t want to it’s casting another vote that says I am a game developer. It’s a choice to become 1% better each day.
I felt inspired this week to start working on a new feature. I know that feature creep can be a real problem when I’m working on the game but I wanted to strike while my motivation was high. I ended up duplicating and cannibalizing the class change section. In this way I figure I should be able to build a consumable section which will allow players to increase stats of troops. Once I have the basic increase working on a button I should be able to create a cost associated. It will definitely have to include money as we aren’t using that much yet, and then maybe adding a consumable resource. Maybe we could call it “Aspect Dust” or something.
Personal Update
The first day of school started this week, and it went smoother than I expected which is a good thing. I was really worried about the transition this year but everything seems to have been taken care of. Here in Florida we have a tropical depression moving through the area. It looks like it’s going to just miss where I live but there will likely be a lot of rain.
Game Development Insight
While working through the book “Atomic Habits” I’ve started to become more aware of some things I do each day as well as different habits I have each day. It’s interesting to break everything down to see some of the causality in my life. I think this is an important thing to know as a game developer as often it takes long hours to get tasks done. Often starting on a task, having motivation, and understanding yourself are the best path to getting that 1% better.
My main task this week, the thing that’s been primarily on my mind this whole time has been getting my game development area into a state where I will want to enter it to do work. Honestly right now my office where my desktop computer is has paper all over the floor, and is such a mess that I hate coming in here. I wanted to stream my development but I hated what I had behind me in the room, and so it felt like I couldn’t yet.
There were so many road blocks that I was completely unaware of. After reading “Atomic Habits” I discovered that often there are things that stop us from doing habits and one of them is when things are unattractive, and difficult. The book talks about how if you want to stop a habit one of the tools you can use is to make it difficult, or unattractive. As an example if my phone is becoming to distracting I can turn it off or put it in another room to make it more difficult to use.
Another concept from the book is to have singular areas for certain activities so that you don’t confuse habits. I could sit and my computer and work on my computer, or play a game, or communicate with people, or even work on music for when I DJ. I’m in a phase where I am creating areas and it’s likely that at some point I will remove some of those possibilities from this area, so that I can get in the right mindset when I walk into my office.
Finally, the book talks about habit stacking. This is the method of stacking one habit right after another one that you are already doing. For me I need to habit stack what happens after the kids are in bed as I believe that will be the best time to get work done on the game. I need to start a habit stack that way to really zone in and get more work done. It says to use the two minute rule when starting a new habit. The idea is to do just the minimum to start something and then later I will be in a place where I will want to do even more.
I have to be careful as habit stacking also works with habits I want to avoid. Things like waking up and looking at my phone first instead of getting up to start my day. It might be best to make it difficult to get to the phone by placing it somewhere other than my night stand. This might also help in the middle of the night when I wake up sometimes.
By writing all these ideas down I will be more likely to follow through so I suppose that’s why I’m doing this. This book has really opened up my eyes to what’s possible. I don’t think that I’ll see a lot of benefits soon but eventually if I keep up good habits I’ll get a watershed moment with a lot of gains all at once. At least that’s what the book says will happen. Even if it doesn’t I like the idea of being more aware of myself and gaining more control to do the things I want to do.