Hell-weeks and the Game Dev Habit

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 27, 2013

First of all, I need to apologize for not having a post on Friday.  While I was expecting last week – when I was on the road in France – to be extremely busy, I sill managed to underestimate it somewhat. I guess the combination of crunch-mode hours plus jet leg plus the effort of getting around solo in a county I’m still not very familiar with (or speak the language) took me well over capacity. So I missed the last day’s blog.

On the plus side, although I almost had to cancel, I managed to get away Friday Night to Paris and hang out with indie game developer Charles Clerc of Olderbytes.com. We didn’t have dinner until 9:30 at night, and I was drooping pretty bad by 1 AM, but it was a fun (if too short) visit.  So that part was pretty awesome. Plus I get to say, “Oh, yeah, I swung by Paris for an evening of partying,” and it sounds really cool. BTW, he’s an overwhelmingly generous host. I’m humbled.

On top of everything else – I didn’t get any game programming done at all. Zero. Zilch. And I can’t really generate much concern over that right now… I honestly can’t think of how I’d have been physically able to do it. I didn’t actually get any significant game playing in, either. Most nights, by the time I got in, I had enough time to work on a blog post (for the days I didn’t have one already prepared), play a round or two of Go against the computer and maybe watch some video to unwind. Often falling asleep mid-video.

The trick now is getting back into the swing of part-time game dev. After defeating jet-lag on the other side (still working on that).  The only thing I’ve found that works consistently for me is setting a particular time for game development and sticking with it. After a forced hiatus due to a radical change in circumstances, I don’t think it’ll be too hard to slip back into comfortable old habits. But I’m sure I could find it very easy to neglect if I let it. Being a part-time indie means there are other things in life that must take priority. The trick is not to let it get buried amidst tons of other low-to-mid-priority items.

 

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