Settling In

Game Update

Getting to a place where I’m primarily just working through the normalcy of creating levels for the game. I’m getting faster at it which makes sense as I “get more reps in” like Atomic Habits talks about. It’s less exciting than making new features but it’s also more relaxing. The nice thing about it is that it gives me the chance to just chat with my mentor during our weekly sessions.

I don’t expect there will be a lot to report for most of the weeks ahead. I have thought off and on about some of the stories I might tell in the stages. It’s likely it will get pulled from a lot of my own personal experiences over the years. Still pretty judgmental about telling my own stories. It was pointed out to me recently that I am maybe a little to hard on the movies and shows I watch.

Personal Update

I missed last weeks music practice with my kids but we managed to re-organize the area and do a practice this week. Sometimes it can be difficult being a leader. I know that if I fail to step up things won’t “just happen.” I feel like I’m getting a little better about teaching the boys one on one. We have a long way to go. It’s another situation where I am getting my teaching reps in and they are getting their music learning reps in. Still having issues with my second son who gets frustrated easily.

I took some time to play a Magic the Gathering tournament this weekend, which went about as average as it can go. My record ended up being 2-2-1 for the day. I had some of the worst draws that day which was crazy. I’ve never seen so many bad hands, but some nights are your night and some nights are not. Still with all those bad draws I still managed to break even, imagine if I had better hands that day. I was also happy to have picked up 2 cards I had been looking for right before the tournament started. Still working out a lot of the nuances.

Spent some time with my new love interest this week too, which was very nice of course. We had a couple things to work through but nothing to difficult. It’s nice to have finally met someone so stable. It felt like I was going to have a hard time finding anyone with any measure of quality in this area that worked well with who I am. Doing my best to make good decisions while praying that God blesses the relationship.

Lies, Betrayal, and Renewal

Game Update

Still pressing forward with building stages. I’m starting to get a lot more efficient when I work. We finished 3 landscapes with their invisible zones to change the landscape the squads move through and fight on. We also have to place towns and create names for all the enemy towns that aren’t controlled by the stage boss.

Recently the idea of creating a stage enemy that is the focus of the players attention has come to mind. I should be able to do this with the text box system that we have already. The issue is that it can be hard to get a feel for the enemy or create a narrative if the player only speaks with them at their final base. We can have the surrounding towns talk about them though.

Some of the ideas I’ve had are a leader that wants the best for their area but their family drags them into poor decisions. Another idea is creating a very cooperative enemy that turns on the player at the end of the stage. Maybe that enemy could be an ally and a second main enemy would be for the stage with the ally being a double agent.

Personal Update

I’ve had quite a whirlwind in the past week or so. It’s been so much to deal with and I have to talk around most of it which is hard. Needless to say I’ve felt the deep hurt and sting of betrayal through lies with someone I trusted. It turned out their problems ran pretty deep so I did what I could for them but now they have pushed me away, which might be for the best within my family anyway.

Living through it taught me a lot about myself, and I really hope it doesn’t hurt my belief in people. I’ve experienced plenty of other people in the area that don’t have much trust in humanity at all. They are afraid to lose everything which makes them look for the bad in people. I find that whatever I seek is what I will find. It’s a bad habit to feed, to always be looking for the worst in situations. When I released the game I would often say, “I’m afraid, anything could go wrong” and a friend told me the perfect thing in response which was, “anything could go right.” It’s important to protect ourselves of course, and to set proper boundaries, but it’s also important to be looking for the good in life wherever we can find it.

I had said before that often things can happen quickly. Wednesday was one of those days for me this past week. I was going through my typical day when I met someone that started to change things around for me. Things have progressed and I’m hopeful again. I was worried my heart wouldn’t be open again, but she had a way of opening me up to make me feel comfortable. The word I would use to describe the last relationship was “unprecedented”, but I would say the word for this one is “consistency”. It’s in our nature as humans to always be comparing, and I would say that so far this seems to be the healthiest person mentally, spiritually, and emotionally that I have encountered. It’s nice not to have to worry although I seem to want to save people often. Trying to be cautious and hold to my standards and boundaries going forward. I’m cautious but hopeful.

We're Getting the Band Back Together

Game Update

The game levels are still being worked on week by week. Some levels have only a few things to do on each pass while others have a lot more. Right now were mostly focused on building the terrain and the invisible zones that control the movement and the combat scenes. I can feel myself getting more confident and speedy as I do it more. Sadly I’ve been bad about consistently getting work done outside of my weekly call with my mentor.

It’s funny to say, but I think the most important thing I can do right now is clean my office. It was cleaned so long ago before a lot of stuff happened this past year. I think I have discouraged myself from working in here. Although as I look around I do enjoy the decor that I have put on the walls, I seem to have a really bad habit of cluttering up my floors and not handling paperwork well.

Maybe I should take the Atomic Habits route of cleaning this and just set aside a small amount of time each day to move some things around in here and it will be clean before I know it. Who knows I might actually want to sit in here after I do that.

Personal Update

The holidays have been tumultuous to say the least. In a word I would call it unprecedented although I can’t say much more. The holidays tend to be hard on a lot of people, and I am no exception. Still I see a ray of sunshine at the end of the rainbow and so all hope isn’t lost yet.

On the bright side I have been getting closer to God during this time. I really felt like He was speaking to me and there were definitely times where I doubted myself, or asked why? Maybe one day I’ll be able to write the story.

Following through on what I had told my boys before the New Year, I picked up a drum set and a keyboard so we can do family band practice. The boys were mostly excited about their instruments, none more than my youngest. In fact it was his idea to do a practice tonight so we all sang while I played guitar. Well… 2/4 of my boys did some singing the others were more annoyed. We will try and work on it next week. I’m giving this experiment a year. I’m not surprised with the push back honestly. My shyest son asked if we were going to perform in front of other people. I see a lot of growth possibilities for all of them. I do need to set up the music area a little better too.

Holiday Slow Down

Game Update

Finished the basics on another stage and we are moving to the next one. By basics I mean that we created a landscape, towns, invisible zones, and set all the basic dialogue. It’s not much of an update this week as it’s mostly just content that I will continue to work at. I’m pretty worried about my motivation to get this done however. I do want to start releasing new stages for players to try out soon as well. We might work on an update to release up to three stages.

Personal Update

It’s been a whirlwind of a week as I finished up with my students before the Christmas break, prepared for two children’s birthday parties, and spent time with my girlfriend. I’ve truly been on quite an emotional roller coaster. Overall I feel very happy about where my life is going and how things keep recovering and getting better and better. It almost feels like I’m waiting for the next crisis right now.

Speaking of crisis, I’m still looking to fix my garage which will take quite a bit to do. I may have to save up for a couple of months to do it. After that I really want to focus on building my investment accounts as much as possible. This year will be the first year that I will be filing taxes for my small business. It’s likely that it will be pretty negligible as I spend a lot more than the game made.

I was listening to some self development video today after spending some time with my parents. It talked about focusing on only one goal at a time and putting all my effort into it. I feel like I’ve become pretty accustomed to taking “massive action” on some front or another. I’m not sure I’ve every put all my eggs into one goal, but maybe I was already doing it. It made me ask myself if my one goal was my video game or if it was something else. To be honest I’m pretty sure it’s something else. That kind of makes me a bit worried as it means that the game will probably take much longer than I intended to finish. I wanted to have all the stages built for the game this holiday season but I am way off the mark from that right now. I need to focus more.

Signs

Game Update

Still working on a better way to create invisible movement zones for the game. We think we have a good process nailed down between Blender and Unity. There is a little big of as learning curve for me as I create these zones for the game. I keep creating shapes with a concave section which won’t wrap properly.

The holiday season has made things pretty interesting for time as I keep trying to motivate myself to find more time. I’m looking at how I can stack time on to make it more enticing for me to sit at my computer. I think what it’s really going to come down to is cleaning my office to make it a more conducive place that I will want to exist in. It’s become very messy again.

Personal Update

My youngest child has been going through some difficulties lately. It got so bad that I had to threaten to take away some of his Christmas presents. I’m not sure if he isn’t sleeping well of or if it’s his visit with his mom over Thanksgiving that did it. At any rate I’m hoping that he can turn things around. Sometimes the holiday season can be very stressful for everyone involved.

Made a lot of progress with my new girlfriend. We made things official last weekend and are moving forward with the various challenges that this will mean for both of us. I’m very excited as I keep seeing signs that this is the right decision for me. That said I shouldn’t ignore confirmation bias either. Sometimes we want something so badly that we look for things to tell us that it’s correct.

She introduced me to the show “Ted Lasso”, and the movie “The Notebook”. Both shows that I think have a lot to say about how we live our lives. The hero in Ted Lasso is especially interesting to me. He is the kind of masculine man I aspire to be. Someone that is focused and brings the best out of people. I guess that’s why I love my job teaching so much. What a blessing to have this job.

The character Noah from “The Notebook” is interesting. I identify with some of his traits but not all of them. I like how hard he works at love, but there is an element to watch out for here as he runs the risk of being “to needy” for love. Still the movie had some very touching moments for me, and I’ve learned not to pass up a chance to cry.

Be Careful What You Pray For

Game Update

This week we worked on a way to increase our productivity on creating the various invisible zones that the player moves into that dictate combat and movement. The map system in the game is just a picture, and there are invisible zones that we need to layer on top of that. These zones know when a player or enemy squad has entered them. Entering a zone may slow down or speed up movement speed on the map. The zone also controls the combat screens.

In Unity we can only create regular shapes like cubes, spheres, etc… We are able to create irregular shapes in Blender and then import them into Unity. The one catch is that in order to use those shapes as colliders we have to turn on “Convex Mesh”. The further issue arises in a shape like a bean which has an indent on it. The indent is not represented when we turn on convex mesh for our collider. Instead the entire shape is wrapped. This means in order to create any indent we have to separate our objects accordingly. Still the creation of objects is still less objects overall, and much more precise in nature.

Personal Update

It’s funny how quickly things can develop in life. One minute there is a crisis with future hopes and dreams looking like they are all gone, and the next a completely new future course is being determined. The Thanksgiving holiday was a bit turbulent and costly for me as I drove back and forth, and searched for that special someone. I distinctly remember praying to God to ask Him for something I didn’t think I would get. As it turns out “ask and it will be given to you” seems to have been the order of the day this time. Still I’m doing my best to move cautiously, but I can’t help but be happy to think of what this new future and direction might bring for my family and myself.

My oldest son had a birthday party this last weekend. He asked for a bicycle and I wasn’t sure with everything going on if I would be able to fulfill his request. I couldn’t have found the right one without the help from a good friend. He was very happy to have a new sense of freedom. As a parent of course I worry about him being away from me and alone, but it’s also important for him to start getting some independence. When I was his age I mostly used my bike to go to my job, or to rent movies and video games.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Game Update

We are full steam ahead on building out the levels. Even if I only work on them with my mentor that will still be forward progress. I think I’m at a point again where I really need to spend some “game development” time to clean my office. I feel like the fact that it is a mess is hurting productivity for me a lot.

The game will be going on sale for the upcoming Christmas sale and so that’s a good thing. I scheduled all of the sales a couple months ago. It’s not something I’m extremely focused on lately as I still need to finish all these levels. I’m a little worried that it might not scale properly and some of the numbers might get out of hand at the higher levels. Marketing will be something I will focus more on when I have a completed project.

Personal Update

Thanksgiving driving was pretty tiring and costly. I drove 8 hours four times over two weeks to drop my kids off and pick them up. The gas cost alone was around $350. I think if I’m asked to do that location again I will have to veto it as it wasn’t that much different than dropping them off at the other location. Everything is in full gear otherwise. We just started setting up our Christmas decorations tonight and the tree is up now.

It’s been two years since I have had my kids available for Christmas, I’m really looking forward to this year. It makes me remember the last time I had this. Everything felt right back then. It was frustrating to see things not go the way I had hoped but I’m still thankful for that time. I think things will come back around again soon. There’s always something new just around the corner after all.

The Long Road

Game Update

It feels like we hit the accelerator on level creation. I found a couple more problems with the levels and I scrubbed through them all to make those changes. Each stage will need some work. I will need to set all the enemies, match them with spreadsheet entries, set way points, set the landscape zones, and build the nice landscape.

Personal Update

This year my kids will be away for Thanksgiving, and the drive was pretty tiring. I have to do it again next weekend and I’m not looking forward to it. Still I make the best of it by listening to self development books on the drive. I feel exhausted. I hope that I’ll be able to get some work done this week. I guess this is just one of those weeks where I don’t have a lot to say. Hopefully next week will be different.

Happy Memorial Day

Game Update

This week we implemented a new system that will allow for random events on towns to be triggered. The idea is to add this to all towns and then come back later to fill in some of the towns with more crafted messages. In this way I shouldn’t have to worry about the plot just yet and I will be able to come back later to fix it.

These random events are super cool because all the functionality we had before where we can manipulate money, stats, etc… will work here. I have to test if we can do yes/no dialogue with it or not. I might even try to build small trees of text using a gated system to unlock the end of an else statement. Basically a card that will track itself through game play and change each time it is accessed. Eventually it will leave the stack of cards after it has been accessed a certain number of times. Just an idea for now, but centralizing this system all in one place should make this idea easy to implement.

We can also control the portrait shown here which will allow for further control from stage to stage. We can do things like have alternate images for the same text. We could easily get very granular with it if we wanted too. The best part is that the old system is still available for use if we want to use that instead.

Personal Update

Memorial Day was this weekend, and it’s always good to see all the local people pay respects to the military. I don’t mind some of the local businesses that have special deals for active duty and retirees like me too. All things considered I had an interesting ride while I was in. Good times, and bad times it was worth the commitment for what it does for me now.

Preparing for Thanksgiving now as I have the boys get their bags ready for that week. The drive won’t be as bad as taking them all the way to where we usually go, but it will still be quite a long drive. They will be missed but having them here for Christmas for the first time in two years will be a blessing. The last time we did this I was just about to retired from the military and I thought I had it all figured out. Things didn’t turn out quite the way I had thought/hoped but I’m happy to be where I am now.

Still discovering myself and playing some Magic the Gathering. I had a positive comment on the last tournament. My opponent said that I was a pleasure to play against as I wasn’t so focused on winning. Learning to be social has helped in a lot of ways, and I see things a lot differently than I used to. I’m still working on my Modern Deck. I’m not sure how much more I can do to push the envelope with it. It may not be as good as I originally thought given some of the cards in the game that completely shut it down.

Finances have been of concern ever since I had some problems with the house. It seems like every time I turn around there’s another liability that wants my money. It’s very difficult to focus right now. I hope I can get back to investing soon, and have my house repaired. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to have everything back in line. It’s still stressful for me.

Dreams

Game Update

We had a sobering look at the game this week. I we have one new stage completed and have busted all of our timelines to complete levels. There has been a lot going on for me, but I think the bigger question is if I really want to do this anymore. Then again a book I recently read said that everyone that is successful has experienced this phenomenon. The difference between the winners and the losers is that winners push through even though they feel like giving up.

In order to attempt to make levels more quickly we are building some default text for the towns. This default text will have 4 or 5 random phrases that will launch. Later I will be able to add more and more messages to this default script to beef it up a bit. Basically we could have a deck of cards that will randomly launch events.

Personal Update

Still working on playing Magic the Gathering Modern. I learned a lot from the last tournament that I played in. I learned that Tefri, and Chalice of the Void shut off the cascade for the deck which makes 8-11 cards almost worthless. I managed to get rid of white and found a blue creature that will bounce those cards. I also found that main decking artifact and enchantment removal with Foundation Breaker.

Had some dreams recently that made me remember the past. It’s probably because of my recent break up. I suppose it’s pretty natural to relive things. I’m worried that I might not be emotionally available. It might be that way for me for a while. I guess there are some things you just never get over.

The boys are doing well and they are ready for the holidays. I’m so blessed to have them at home. This will be the first year in 2 years that I will have had them. It’s amazing to look back and see where we all came from. They are growing up before my eyes. My oldest son says that he wants to try making a clicker video game. We will look at that soon I hope.

Reconnecting with Myself

Game Update

Stage 2 is completely broken and I’m working on repairing it. I think it has to do with some of the testing we were doing to make the all new event system work. It’s likely that we updated a prefab and that had unforeseen consequences. I scrambled to try and fix it but I had a hard time rolling back the level from a previous version. It won’t get repaired until I talk to my mentor on Tuesday most likely.

We did publish a new version of the game, and plan to start pushing out more updates soon. I still need to buckle down and build more content. I haven’t built up good habits to get that done however. I think I am allowing other things to take priority instead and I’m finally getting to a place where I need to really understand if this is what I want or not. I’m not acting like it is.

I have the breaks and the gas on at the same time, and that’s no way to get something done. We all have that issue in our lives. We want things, but we get in our own way. I’m in my own way to get this done.

Personal Update

I’m leaning heavily into playing the Magic the Gathering modern format. I played this years ago but it is completely different now. As such there is new life to explore within some older cards. It’s interesting to see the current trends, because it feels like people forgot about a lot of what was available that came before. Then again, maybe I just think some of the older cards I used to play with are better than they really are.

A long time ago I ran a show on YouTube called “Deck Building w/ Da Squire” and I really enjoyed what I was doing back then. I put a lot of work into the show each week and it never quite got the traction that I would have liked. Starting this week I am going to post my Modern Deck and give updates on some ideas I have about Magic in general. I tend to be someone that looks for ways to break the system, and I’m hoping that the deck this week will do that.

Magic the Gathering

“Glimpse of Tomorrow” is a very interesting card to me. It allows me to reset my entire board and play random permanent cards off the top of my deck. So I got to thinking about the best way to break this card and I don’t think that the current elementals shell is as good as my humans shell due to the creatures being weaker and the need for the elementals to combo off. I started by remembering the old Restoration Angel and Kiki-Jiki the Mirror Breaker combo that makes infinite angels. As a bonus we have placed some other creatures with come into play abilities in the deck as well in case we don’t see our angels with Kiki.

The new Modern Horizons 2 set has also opened up some interesting creatures with evoke like Subtlety, Fury, and Solitude. When you evoke these creatures you can place their come into play ability on the stack and then flash them with Ephemerate to keep them in play instead of sending them to the graveyard. This only costs 1 mana and 3 cards with one card being discarded. I am interested to see how often we can do the same thing but use Restoration Angel instead of Ephemerate.

We can also combo our Restoration Angels with Omnath, Locus of Creation after cascading into a Glimpse of Tomorrow. If we reset our Omnath we can do all of it’s triggers twice as long as we have the fetch lands to do them the second time. That means that we might be able to heal for 8, generate 8 mana, and deal 8 damage to our opponents entire field and life total. This won’t happen that often but even just healing for 8 can be devastating when our board fills with 5-10 creatures.

Deck List

• 4 Blade Splicer

• 1 Eternal Witness

• 1 Fury

• 3 Huntmaster of the Fells

• 2 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker

• 4 Omnath , Locus of Creation

• 4 Restoration Angel

• 4 Shardless Agent

• 1 Subtlety

• 4 Wavesifter

• 3 Glimpse of Tomorrow

• 4 Violent Outburst

• 1 Ardent Plea

• 2 Arid Mesa

• 1 Breeding Pool

• 4 Cavern of Souls

• 1 Forest

• 1 Hallowed Fountain

• 1 Island

• 4 Khalni Garden

• 1 Plains

• 2 Misty Rainforest

• 1 Mountain

• 2 Scalding Tarn

• 1 Sacred Foundry

• 1 Spara’s Headquarters

• 1 Steam Vents

• 1 Stoping Ground

Game Update

Still moving forward although I’ve lost a lot of motivation. I might be in some sort of crisis where I’m asking if I’m even interested in getting it done anymore. I’m trying to re-ignite my fire for this. It’s at this point that I lean heavily on following through with commitments to work. Having a mentor that I work with every week at least ensures that I do an hour every week to move the needle forward. Just like Atomic

We worked some more on checking the text system and started making changes to how we will do portraits for the characters in the text boxes. I would say that our text system is pretty clunky right now which makes it difficult. The good news is that everything is working. The bad news is that it’s difficult to work with and I should probably create a text document for each stage that has the dialogue written so I can easily copy and paste it in.

I am looking to put a new build out soon. I’m debating on adding new stages to it or not. It will have a couple new features which I won’t spoil here, and if we do add a new stage that will also have some new features in it which will enhance the game play experience quite a bit.

Personal Update

Took two weeks off of my blog as I’ve had a significant life event. It really crushed me, and I’m still recovering. I started to remember some things about who I was a long time ago, before I divorced and was placed in a full emergency mode to take care of my kids. I can’t believe it but I might actually play Magic the Gathering Modern format again. A long time ago I used to stream video games and run a YouTube channel that was all about the game Hex the Shards of Fate. I kind of want to do something like that again, but I know how difficult it will be.

My boys are doing well. We have moved into what I call the “birthday season” in which there is a birthday every month for four months. This year will be the first year that I will have them for Christmas. I missed the last two due to transitions and other complications. I’m looking forward to spending time with them over the holidays this year. I’m not entirely sure what I will do the week of Thanksgiving however.

Still looking at possible business ideas revolving around gaming in the area. I like the idea of premium Dungeons and Dragons games, but I’m still working out the kinks with it.

No Blog this week

Going through a crisis, hoping to be back next week for the blog.

Plot Hooks

Game Update

Plugging away at the levels as always. I think the plot will need an overhaul in the initial stages. We are just putting things in place right now with a pretty loose beginning and end in mind. My industry friend said that they would typically start with an end in mind and then work towards that. I suppose there are plenty of other book authors that also do that.

I need to start getting more intentional with my time spent to build these stages. Things have been rather busy lately, but it’s really no excuse. I did feel like I had a good idea for a board game which took some of my creativity away from Six Aspects but I felt like it was a necessary gear shift to give myself a rest. The way things are going I’m not sure when I will have the full release done by. I wanted to get it out by Christmas but it’s not likely that it will be ready.

It’s a blessing that I don’t have a lot of visibility right now. I can do a lot within the game and it doesn’t matter much when not a lot of people are watching it. I’m not putting anything in that is offensive, but I do have some nods to various things in pop culture that I enjoy. Eventually you just run out of names for things.

Personal Update

My five year old turned six this week and so we did a nice birthday party for him on Saturday. Things looked like it was going to get really crazy with around 30 people showing up but luckily it slimmed down to around 15 or 16. My son had a great time and it was fun entertaining everyone. I even had a chance to DJ which I haven’t done in quite a while now. I’m so happy that my girlfriend was able to help out too. She really made the difference between a good party and a great one.

My garage door broke a week ago and it’s going to be an expensive fix. Luckily I will be able to get it fixed this week but it’s still an unexpected cost that I’m dealing with. On top of that I had a Kickstarter cost that I’m also dealing with for a Wyrmwood GM Screen. I’m also looking at another kickstarter for a game table which will end next month. It’s just cost after cost coming down the road fast and furious. The good thing is that it has pushed me to get more creative with trying to make money and I finally got around to starting to sell some of my old games, and Star Wars collection.

Back in the 1990s I played the Decipher Star Wars game and I really enjoyed it. It’s been hard thinking about letting go of my collection. Even more frustrating is as I was going through it I realized that I have an entire deck of cards that is completely missing. I have no idea where it went but I was in the military for a long time and so it probably disappeared in a move or something to that extent.

I see that the DM Lair will be here in Pensacola next month and they are looking for GMs so I volunteered. I have a bunch of terrain that I think would make for some great games, so I hope they will give me the opportunity to run games for them. I sent them an e-mail and filled out their form last week but haven’t heard back yet. I’m hoping it will be an opportunity to start moving toward professional Dungeon Master.

Happy Labor Day

Game Update

This week there was a request made by one of the fans of the game to give players the ability to rotate around the overworld maps. We spent about 40 minutes building that feature this week and I think it will be a nice option for players to have now. It will show a lot of that extra work we do on parts of the terrain that weren’t able to be seen before.

We finished up the zones for movement on one of the stages. I’m still unsure about the plot line for the game and I’m not getting as much done as I need to. Still forward progress is happening and eventually if I keep chipping away at the stages we will finish.

Personal Update

I’m still feeling more interest in working on my board game than I do on my video game which might be a problem or it might be the break that I need. I spent some time with my girlfriend and her mom which was a lot of fun. My boys had a great time too. We got to go swimming, play board games, watch TV, go to a park, and watch a sunset together. It was nice to have this family time together.

I have a lot of costs coming up which have me a little worried, but not for good reason. I’m looking at using it to leverage myself to get more creative in making money. I’ve been talking about working on an Ebay account forever and I need to get that in place. I just need to focus and start doing it.

My friends from work have started a D&D game and it was a lot of fun to do the first session together. I’m still looking at trying to creating some sort of premium experience for people in my local area. I’m not sure how much of a market there will be for something like that, but you never know until you try.

What's in a Name?

Game Update

Still getting used to my schedule with the boys in the house which has reduced my work output substantially. I was only able to get work done with my mentor on our regular meeting time this week. We are testing to see how long it will take to finish one stage, and we got sidetracked in a good way.

We found that we had tied the stage achievements to a script that holds all of the stage names. Those stage names populate the map and are supposed to also come up on the summary screen when the stage is over. They are the boss town names on each stage. Because the job could be batched we ditched our “finish one stage” and just spent the time coming up with names for each stage.

I will confess that coming up with so many stage names can be a daunting task. Often I find that I take some references that I know and work those in while changing a small piece here or there. I wonder if anyone will get it in a few years. We had a discussion about the worry of infringing on other artistic work, but honestly the game is so underground that I don’t know it would be important enough for the big companies to care about it. We’re still a very underground project even though it is public on Steam. I always tell people it’s hard to be completely invisible on the internet just like it’s hard to get popular on the internet.

Personal Update

My family had some milestones for my sisters daughter this weekend which was nice. It was even better because my girlfriend was able to visit. It’s getting more difficult to deal with the distance, but I also think that we were pretty spoiled over the summer time. I also think at times that all the travel and time spent probably hurt some of my productivity this summer.

It’s likely that the next big step will be starting an Ebay account to get rid of some of my old nerd stuff and then push that money into my investment accounts. I’ve been pretty focused on a lot of the lessons from Rich Dad Poor Dad and so I’m trying to apply them. I’ve also considered doing some professional Dungeon Mastering and creating some sort of rental program for all my Dungeons and Dragons Dwarven Forge terrain. I’ve even looked at opening up some sort of physical hobby shop. I have a lot of dreams but I need to start executing to see what works and what doesn’t.

I’ve started to revisit the board game idea and I think I finally have something that will be fun. It has to do with making an arcade and using the worker placement mechanic made popular in the game Agricola. It’s a pretty rough game right now but I expect that it will get better quickly as I iterate on it.

Think and Make Games

Game Update

This week was an off week with my mentor Chris, but I still managed to get some work done on one of my stages. I feel some pressure, but it’s probably not enough pressure. Releasing the game to early access might have been a big mistake due to the motivation push back that I keep feeling. Something inside me says, “it’s already on Steam move on with your life.” I have to counter it by telling myself that it’s not done yet, and there is so much more I have to give.

Reducing the number of stages was the right choice. I could see myself cutting even more possibly. Maybe it would be best to work on the final boss stages and then start filling in gaps. As I think about some of the best RPGs that I’ve played when I was young they did have some sections which were filler. Padding out the time to finish the game seems OK in theory, until you don’t have the manpower to do it.

Personal Update

Most of this week was spent either working on my old board game idea or cleaning up my painting/modeling area. My office needs to get cleared out too now. It’s almost been 2 years and I had a pile of junk all over the corner of my bedroom. I cleared it to give my girlfriend a nice place to have her coffee and figured out how I could set up my painting area to watch TV and work.

I hit the Arcade Board game idea again and this time I’m going the “worker placement” route. It feels much better this time around so I’m hopeful. I really like the idea of creating mini arcade machines for the game that the player would place in their arcade. It will also use dice as patrons and have some sort of color matching system. Somehow the system of 6 elements from 6 aspects made its way into the game although this might be forcing something unnecessary. Time will tell I suppose.

Returning to normalcy with the school year in full swing means a lot of things that I need to keep in check. I haven’t been on my treadmill as much as I had been before so I need to be more intentional about that. My kids will have to pay for lunch this year, which means I had to weigh my options this week. I’m not able to see my girlfriend as much as I had been over the summer, and she’s been having a hard time lately. I wish I could be there for her more easily. The long distance part of this relationship has made things more difficult in many ways.

I started reading the book “Think and Grow Rich”. In the book they talk a lot about believing in what you are doing or you will limit yourself. Although the book is primarily about making money I extended it to what I’m doing to get this game done. I have to believe that I have something great on my hands. I have to know deep down that the game will be something that people will love and understand. Simply put if I don’t believe in what I’m doing than no one will. Tony Robbins also talked about this with his idea of watching the language patterns that I use. I’ve even noticed it in other people. Often when someone says something like, “why do I always have bad luck” they will inevitably attract bad situations and play the victim. The book talks about when people were about to give up on things many times they were so close to greatness. I have to believe that about this game. Like I said if I don’t then no one will.

Teaching the Next Generation

Game Update

Still working on stages for the game and feeling like I’m gaining some momentum. I need to create a habit around sitting at my computer every day to become more productive. I took time this past week to prepare for a Dungeons and Dragons game that I was the Dungeon Master for, which I am partially doing to learn more about story telling.

I also started the process of teaching my oldest son how to create stages in an effort to get more work done. I’m hoping that it will be an improvement overall, but it might not work in the long run. I’m expecting that it will take four times as long to create a stage with him compared to doing it myself. But if I do it well enough even if he is making stages more slowly they are getting done. On the other hand if they aren’t up to snuff we can always make them bonus content for a random stage generator that I made. It will randomly pick stages for the player to play, it doesn’t randomly generate the entire stage.

We also ran into a new problem which is the dependencies that are require in every stage in order to use our now choice system, and display messages to the player in general. I will probably go through all the stages and add it before getting back to the meat of level development.

Personal Update

School has begun and there were a couple of growing pains but overall it seems to be going well. This year I will have to pay for school lunches which means that I will have to do some additional work that I didn’t have to deal with during the pandemic. My time this last week wasn’t just occupied by preparing for Dungeons and Dragons it was also spent working on some nice shelves for my board game collection. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while and I finally pulled the trigger on some shelves from Sams.

Things are good with my girlfriend. She was able to break away to visit the boys and I this weekend. She’s so good to me. She helped me get ready and even played some Dungeons and Dragons with my friends and I. We had a small family crisis related to some upcoming holidays but we worked it out. It’s important to make sure to take a leading position when problems come up.

Less is More

Game Update

This week I worked out what it would take to build all the levels for the game to get it to market, and the outlook wasn’t great. I promised 30 stages primarily to match up to content that I have seen before. The issue is that forcing myself to create this number of stages is a lot like forcing musicians to create 15 tracks when they really only put their heart into 4 of them. So I reduced the number of stages in an attempt to increase the quality. It doesn’t mean that we can’t add more stages and content later but for now this is the decision that has been made.

The current plan is to complete a new stage every two weeks, however this isn’t the whole story. Right now I have five passes that I go through to make each stage. Each one of these passes has further components. All together there are about 15 items that need to be completed. Some items take a lot longer than others and I’m still worried about the plot line for the game.

It’s likely we will complete a lot of the basic structure for stages first and then move on to completing the plot line next. I expect more work will be done with our new decision system. An interesting decision that I saw in the original Ogre battle is on Stage 2. The first boss says, “It’s not to late to turn back, will you join the empire?” If the player says yes the game actually ends and goes back to the start screen, and the default option is yes.

If anything I have my work cut out for me. It was a sobering moment to lay out all the work in front of myself. I need to re-focus and get moving on this. I was hoping to give myself more motivation to get things done and this might have done that.

Personal Update

Having the boys back in the house has been good for my productivity, but it takes more time and energy out of the day to keep things running here. Still They are doing a good job at helping with the household chores. I’m hoping that I can teach my oldest how to make levels so that he can help out with the work load a bit.

Things are still good with my girlfriend. We are growing together and discovering deeper and deeper parts of each other all the time. Sometimes these things can be painful and difficult to work through but in the end its worth it to feel this vulnerable with someone. There are times that there are issues, and we don’t figure it out until much later. Communication has been key to get to where we need to go, and I have faith that she’s the one for me.

Back to School

Game Update

Still working on the first pass of all the levels for the game. It might be something where I should do them in small batches of 5-10 instead of tackling them all in one go. It takes a fair amount of time to do each pass and there are 8 different passes.

This week I moved from a hilly forest city to a more coastal one. Luckily I had recently visited a city which was key for some of the inspiration on this stage. The history of one site had multiple forts protecting a small waterway to shipyards. This was an interesting idea so I took that and built it into the stage. It’s nice when I can be inspired by something real world.

Personal Update

My boys are all back in town now after a grueling driving weekend. It might have been one of the more difficult drives this last time due to traffic, weather and a pretty unsavory stay at one of the worst hotels I’ve been to in my life. It was so bad I actually felt like I let my boys down by staying there. Luckily we are all back home safe again.

It’s kind of crazy how much my attitude and focus shifted automatically now that they are at home. I actually thing I will be more productive with them around instead of less. That’s kind of a crazy thing because I typically spend a lot of time correcting them which eats into other things I would be doing. I find that when I am alone that I am much more lazy sitting down on the couch to watch tv, and not get much done.

I’m not unhappy about my productivity this summer. I managed to complete 2/3 major items I was aiming for which is great. I expect that this will help me continue to improve our lifestyle here at home, and eventually it will pay off in other ways as well.

I’ve been thinking about how much time I have with my boys lately. I think it might be time to start to focus on pouring into them a bit more. My oldest son has taken real interest in game development and has given me some really interesting ideas for the game. I hope they will make it in one day but for now we are primarily focused on building all the content. I can’t wait to put him on a stage and turn him loose to see what he can do.

I miss my girlfriend terribly even though it’s only been a week since we were able to be together. She’s so supportive and good to me. We will be slowing our visits a bit during the school year but plan to make time each month to meet up. It’s nice that we are now in a place where we can be around each others children. I can’t wait to get involved with her through all of the children’s birthdays and all the holidays that are just around the corner. Our one year anniversary is coming up which is quite a milestone for both of us. I can’t wait to see what’s in store for us next!