I’ll do it on monday!

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

Well same thing for day 8. And you may be asking yourself why i’m bothering to put this up. I just want people to know that i’m not giving up. Going to try again until I get it.

By the way day 8 was technically yesterday (wednesday the 25th)

Keith

Okay, well I read all the documentation on the Scrolling Game Development Kit including the tutorial, and the scripting docutorial, and breezed through the gamedev script reference. Then I did the tutorial (not the *quick* tutorial, but the regular one). I had some problems “creating” graphics with it’s built in fullscreen graphics editor. But I decided after it crashing several times to instead use the premade bitmap. Which is fortunate for me because i’m going to be loading in graphics I have premade in other programs. Anyhoo I got an idea of how to use the kit. So what’s next is animating a Hypno-Joe walk cycle. Of which i’ll scan and probably post on here. Then i’ll start a project for the Hypno-Joe prototype and add him walking on platforms. Should not be too hard. The hard part will be the animation. Anyhoo, i’ll let you know how it develops, and possibly put up files to download or view. I’m considering also making a page for Hypno-Joe via wordpress active from my blog. Welp stay tuned folks!

Keith

Gone too. In fact I may not have the whole week. It really depends. I’m taking some antibiotics that require me to stay up till 12. I somehow tend to stay up past that, and then wake up late. Although I am working. So in essence it’s not a total loss. But I don’t know when i’ll be getting back to normal. I do know i’m going to try to do it “for real” starting february 1st, as all of this month is “setup time”

Keith

They were complete busts. It looks like today day 6 is not going so hotly either. My tooth is partly to blame. I’ll be going into the dentist sometime this week. And today i’m waiting for a call from the dentist. So I guess this is just my adjustment period. It’s okay though because starting february things kick into high gear.

Essentially to test out the idea of taking a calender and planning out my goals on it, I got one of those big desk calenders but instead of putting it on a desk I hang it up in front of me. So far that’s not going so hotly either however like I said adjustment period. The reason I picked January for adjustment is this calender is used, it was actually a 2005, so 2006 only goes to september. So i’m hinging my time on the 8 months from february to september to do hypno-joe in. (not to mention pre-preproduction work on Enchanted Lands, learning C++ and doing my other contracts).

Of course even though it’s the adjustment period, I need to make sure the rest of the week the 9-5 experiment works correctly. I’m going to attempt to have my dentist’s appointment on Monday the 30th and take that day off, but it’s still within January. So February look out!!

Keith

Okay it’s not a total wash-out, but to tell you the truth I didn’t handle my time as effectively as I should have. Last night I went to bed late. This morning I still woke up early. I had done okay until my first “break”.
Originally I said I could put two hours I had planned to do before 9 instead push the start time back to 7 (as I get up at 6 am), and then meld each hour before 9 into each of the two 15 minute breaks resulting in 1:15 minute breaks. These aren’t breaks like you think. Yes I get away from the computer however, on one hand I clean for an hour (and still do the 15 minutes doing nothing or sitting or snacking or something), and the other I take my hour walk for exercise, that extra 15 minutes is devoted to getting ready to go.
In any case today while I was on my “cleaning break” I tried to scare up some music via internet radio. But it seemed to take my time to find what I wanted. I usually try for Christian rock music. But it’s hard to find as most of it is of the “easy listening” milk-toast for over-35 soccer mom type of christian music. And that’s perfectly fine if you’re that kind of person. But i’m 30, i’m male, and sometimes I like to rock out to the likes of Pillar, Relient-K, and others. You have some traditionalists who believe that rock music is bad for Christians. I happen to think we need to have that around for the kids/teens to listen to, just as long as it has the message of Christ’s Love. Anyways i’m getting sidetracked. To make a long story short, some of my cleaning time got cut down searching for the music.

The other concerns my walk break. Since I was in bed late, I was tired as all get out, and it gets even more tiring reading a dry c++ book. So I sort of dozed in my chair for about an hour, from 1:30 - 2:30, so I was late there. Today is my sis-in-law’s birthday so I walked over to the store, bought my sis-in-law some chocolate, walked over to my brother’s house, gave it to her, talk to them for a while, and then came back home, it was almost 4 or something. My dad was home, we were talking, so essentially I didn’t get alot of my work in today.

It’s okay, the important thing is I didn’t surf the web, or play games, or anything, and still “worked” as-it-were. I did get my c++ program done today, that ended chapter 2 of this book. So I still have 2 days to get through chapter 3 to be back on schedule as far as that goes. As far as Hypno-Joe, today I continued reading docs for the SGDK. So I guess I won’t be animating him this week. Maybe I won’t get that small part done this month. By the month I wanted the tutorial done and hypno animated walking and in the SGDK just walking around. Who knows though there’s still almost 2 weeks left.

As far as Enchanted Lands, I decided on a new way to work on the story(stories). Well in a movie you have the various plot points, you have the inciting incident that gets it all into motion, you have plot point 1 which starts to take the story in a new direction, midpoint which totally changes direction, plot point 2 which turns again, climax (big battle scene) and resolution (marrying the princess or whatever happy ending), inbetween inciting incident and plot point 1 you usually have character introductions and maybe subplots introduced. At plot point 2 usually (at least in Lucas and Spielberg movies) the good guys somehow end up on the wrong end of the rope, essentially they get beat for lack of a better word, before the climax which is the good guy finally regaining himself (or herself) and winning. Okay so that’s in a movie, but this is INTERACTIVE I hear you yell. Indeed, this goes back to my string-of-pearls method of storytelling and interactive game play. Actually I got the idea for the string-of-pearls method by watching the movie “The Rock” with Nicolas Cage, where he opened the missle with the chemical weapon in the famous “string of pearls” configuration. Essentially each ball was connected by a string (or like a string) as if they were pearls on a necklace. Anyways back to the game. The method goes like this. I write the plot points down and they become the basis for cut scenes. Then I design the interactivity inside the “pearls” as-it-were, to get from one end of the “string” to the other. How you get from one cinematic to the next is how you define your game play in the adventure game. So that’s it, starting tommorow i’m going to write those up for the main characters, display them in the blog, then start working on maps where they interact, then i’ll work from there.

Keith

Well I modified my madlibs style program. I think i’m ready to move on now. But before I do I want to share with you this wonderful story. A story of mythical creatures and great heros, of villagers and problems, a story where good ultimately triumphs over evil :

There once was a unicorn who scared poor villagers and stomped down their butts. One day the village hired a Knight named Sir Mixalot. When the unicorn came out he tried to stomp down some butts, but Sir Mixalot defended them with his sword and shield. Finally Sir Mixalot asked the unicorn why he kept stomping down their butts. The unicorn could only spit stomping fire. Finally Sir Mixalot asked the villagers to go to a nearby stream and fill up a bucket with water. He took the bucket and tossed it into the unicorn’s mouth. The unicorn finally spoke and said, “Thank you, my throat has been stomping for ages.”

Quite epic, don’t you think? This wonderful monstrosity was brought to you by the program below :

// Funny Story.cpp : A wacky madlibs like program to turn boring
// normal stories into funny wacky ones!

#include "stdafx.h"

const std::string FICTIONAL_CREATURE = "unicorn";
const std::string ACTION = "stomp";
const std::string NAME = "Mixalot";
const std::string PLURAL_THING = "butts";

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
	// To hold words.
	std::string creature;
	std::string verb;
	std::string name;
	std::string nouns;

	// in lieu of input
	creature = FICTIONAL_CREATURE;
	verb = ACTION;
	name = NAME;
	nouns = PLURAL_THING;

	// Output
	std::cout < <
		"There once was a " << creature << " who scared " <<
		"poor villagers and " << verb << "ed down their" <<
		std::endl << 

		nouns << ".  One day the village hired a Knight" <<
		" named Sir " << name << ".  When the" <<
		std::endl << 

		creature << " came out he tried to " << verb <<
		" down some " << nouns << ", but Sir " << name <<
		" defended" <<
		std::endl << 

		"them with his sword and shield.  Finally Sir " <<
		name << " asked the " << creature << " why" <<
		std::endl << 

		"he kept " << verb << "ing down their " << nouns <<
		".  The " << creature << " could only spit " << verb <<
		"ing fire." <<
		std::endl << 

		"Finally Sir " << name << " asked the villagers" <<
		"to go to a nearby stream and fill" <<
		std::endl << 

		"up a bucket with water.  He took the bucket " <<
		"and tossed it into the " << creature << "'s" <<
		std::endl << 

		"mouth.  The " << creature << " finally spoke and said, " <<
		"\"Thank you, my throat has been" <<
		std::endl << 

		verb << "ing for ages.\"" <<
		std::endl;

	return 0;
}

whatcha think?

Keith

Failure. You read it right. Day two would have been yesterday (Tuesday the 17th). Unfortunately I didn’t get up early enough to do my full schedule. So I counted it as a day off. In fact I’ll have more days off upcoming, especially when I get one of my teeth “fixed”. Anyways yeah it’s wednesday and yes i’ve been doing my schedule just fine, read about it later today when I do an update.

Keith

Well a quick note. I had to make two concessions in my regular “9-5″ day. Firstly, we watch alot of movies and as such go to our local library all the time. I can’t really get to the library on the weekends or evenings so I need to do it during my day. Well since my Day is supposed to start at 9, that means when I wake up at 6 I have 3 hours to do anything else I want. Well it’s filled easy enough. 1 hour for a shower. Granted it doesn’t take me a whole hour to take a shower, but it’s the first spot on my day so I drink some coffee wake up a bit, and then take a shower. The other two hours consists of cleaning house for an hour (I can’t believe i’m actually scheduling this in), the last is excercise, namely walking. A brisk 1 hour walk suits me fine these days. But in order to go to the library, I have to wait till either 10 or 11 for it to open. Well what I decided was I could clean earlier and walk later. In fact I decided to schedule these extra hours around my 15 minute breaks. Which turns out to be more like an 1hr 15 minute break. of course for an hour i’m either cleaning or walking. It still doesn’t cut into my day because I start two hours earlier, and it has an effect of keeping not so bored with work when I have large “breaks” even if i’m doing something constructive.

Okay so one concession is my day starts at 7 and still ends at 5, but i still get my normal time in. The other concession is I keep my instant messenger/irc client open. I’m using trillian which means i don’t have multiple programs. I have a channel on Starchat called #GameDevelopers so i’m automatically logged in to there. Nice thing about that is rarely do people talk in my channel, if they do it’s usually interesting, intelligent, and mature conversation. (note I said mature not adult - meaning we don’t get vulgar or obscene). Most of the time people are two busy making games to talk, which suits me just fine. I need AIM and Yahoo IM up (via trillian) so I can keep in contact with people I work with. I don’t usually chat for chat’s sake so that’s cool. I did answer emails as they came up because i’ll get daily “work” related emails. I don’t do alot of emailing outside of work related stuff.

All-in-All the 9-5 day proved successful. I hope to have more success tommorow. Today I got a build of the phone game in. Tomorrow I need something else to keep me busy.

Keith

In a thread I started on the indiegamer forums I posted a link to a news article about a company making their employees only work from 9-5 (only an 8 hour day) and not allowing them internet or games during their work day. Supposedly they hit every milestone and no one is overworked and the work generally flows smoothly. I’ve also read other things that suggest only doing 8 hours a day (40 hour work week) is a good practice (in game development) as it’s used successfully in regular jobs.

So the experiment is this. I get to “work” from 9-5, i get 2 15 minute breaks and a 30 minute lunch. During this time I don’t get to check email, or forums, or blogs, or play games, or anything and just “work while i’m at work”. I may even turn off my instant messengers/irc while i’m working (right now i’m using trillian but essentially not starting up trillian).

It will be tough at first to adapt to it, but I think I can get the hang of it. With that I still get to take a shower in the morning, take a 1 hour walk for exercise, and clean house 1 hour, each day. I will actually have done 7 hours of work (not specifically 8 hours because an 8 hour day includes breaks and lunch). This the challenge. To see if you can do the same.

Now you may ask just what constitutes “work”. For me it’s anything involving the computer, or maybe I shouldn’t worry about that so much as “work” is the time in the period from 9 am to 5 pm in a given work day. I’m doing this because I may do other extra game stuff afterwards. Stuff like drawing when i’m watching tv for extra art. Or getting on at night to finish studying some stuff or to scan some drawings in. However during these extra times, from when i wake up to 9 am, from when I “get off” at 5 pm till the time I go to bed, I may do anything like surf the net or play games.

So if anyone reads this maybe they can take on the challenge too. I really want to see if this keeps my productivity high. If not then i’ve lost nothing, just gained whatever I did accomplish.

By the way an 8 hour day can be flexible, in other words, the 9-5 experiment doesn’t have to be 9-5 it could be 7-3 or 12-8. (or sometimes you can do 9 hours like 8-5 so you actually get in 8 hours of work, with breaks and lunch). Point is that you do the breaks and the lunch, and you make sure nothing distracts you from the work you do at that time. And when you break actually get up and leave the computer or whatever you’re doing and then come back to it afresh after the break.

What do you think?

Keith