The 9-5 Experiment, Day 9!
Well this update i’m not disappointed in. Oh I didn’t follow a schedule today either, but what I did do is work today. Okay in a way i’m disappointed in the work I did as well, but then again i’m not. You see I got up this morning and was essentially researching game engines - still haven’t found anything i’ll totally use just yet but I can chalk it up to research. I did a search, and came up with a few engines.
Most notable was Panda3D - It’s a free 3d engine written in c++ with python bindings. I don’t really know anything about python, but I proceeded to read through the first few tutorials - it looks interesting enough I could use it for Hypno-Joe, and as easy as Blitz3d — of course then again I could still use blitz3d. I also stumbled on another one called Ray Game Designer 2 - this is a very dated game engine made to make simple first person shooters and possibly 3rd person adventure/platform games. Okay so essentially Panda3d took me most of my morning.
Then in the afternoon I decided to try to work on Hypno-Joe by starting to do some drawing (animation with a pencil, paper, and everything). Only problem is my lightbox is buried somewhere in my room (this room is so messy, like moving messy, although I haven’t moved anywhere in 5 years). Besides that I couldn’t find the regular clipboard that had some paper for me to draw on (I could have made do with it). So I figure well I need to clean up this room ( imagine, boxes everywhere, papers strewn about, clothes thrown anywhere, and old computer gathering dust literally on a wooden chess).
So I realized I need the table in the living room so I could put on this old computer - which by the way is a 386 sx 12mhz machine fully loaded! (SB pro, 256k or 512k video card, super vga monitor at 640×480, about 600+ megs of hard drive space, speakers, msdos 6 and windows 3.11) - put this machine onto the table. You see I want to see if I can get rid of it, with extra goodies like tons of old dos programming books, turbo pascal 6 and 7, delphi 1 (never been opened) - various things like this. I’m thinking of putting it in the local adds for 20-50 bucks for the whole hog. Assuming I don’t get anything for it i’ll just give it to good will.
I would love to waste my time learning to play with the thing, but the problem is I just don’t have the time. (That’s what this experiment is all about and why this catagory is labeled ‘time management’) — plus this thing is just taking up tons of space. In order to spiffy things up, find my lightbox, then start animating hypno-joe, I have to get this other computer which we found near a dumpster off (basically we’re salvaging parts from it to put in our other computers). So once the parts are put in, the old case is thrown out, the table is cleaned, and I get this old 386 out here, then I can probably start finding stuff in my room again. CAN YOU SEE THE PROBLEM HERE? - Just totally unorganized and thus can’t manage my time as well.
So I took and installed this old hard drive, formatted it, getting it ready to put in my old computer (that my brother owns now). Then after that I grabbed a shower, took a walk to my local library came back. And that’s about all that happened. I’d say it was a full day. Did I accomplish anything, well yeah I did get some ideas of what some game engines were out there, I did get this hard drive formatted and ready, and I managed to get in a walk. So I consider it a full day. Was it 9-5 - well in a weird way I think I did manage that - did I stick to my schedule? well not really but it’s not so much the schedule as the hours you put in and the fact you made progress.
Until Next Time
Keith
January 27th, 2006 at 1:28 pm
Forgive me if this is too harsh, Keith, but it seems to me most of your time is spent on busy-work. You’re busy all day long but none of the work you do actually gets you anywhere.
It’s not about the hours you put in, but what these hours accomplish.
At the end of the day, what matters is that your game is closer to completion. Research is fine, but too much research can suffocate you. At some point you actually have to get started. ;-)
(Oh, and paragraph breaks are a good thing.)
January 27th, 2006 at 2:22 pm
Well I did have a few paragraph breaks ;-) Yeah lately it has been mostly busy work. I don’t feel the research was “too much” - only because I don’t do this kind of research everyday, I also feel my time was well spent, mostly because I didn’t spend it searching for junk that I won’t use in these particular (game) projects.
“It’s not about the hours you put in, but what these hours accomplish.” Yes and no. I haven’t really attempted to put in hours is the problem. Although like I said it wasn’t a complete waste. Now today (friday) was sort of a waste, not only did I wake up late, but I also have been having problems with my rechargable batteries, to make matters worse I have only one set of regular batteries, so i’m typing on an old wired keyboard, with the good batteries in my wireless mouse. So I have to decide what to do. I find when there is only a small problem I tend to take it like it’s a big one. I could actually function on this computer if I really wanted to.
But I don’t have the inclination to do work until conditions are “normal”.
Okay so it’s a problem, so i’m going to deal with it.
Keith
ps. i’ll put in more paragraph breaks
pps. yes I know a ‘real’ paragraph break doesn’t involve an extra space, but i’m doing it anyways.