My game project is finally in a semi-testable state, so I’ll be getting some non-me eyes on it over the next few days. In the meantime, I’m looking forward to a running-focused weekend! Volunteering at parkrun tomorrow morning, race on Sunday. First race of the year, so I’m looking forward to it.
Tag: Adventures In Coding
Finding all the wrong stuff
I’ve been bughunting most of today. Maybe that’s not the right word. I don’t want to find bugs in my games, but it’s sort of an inevitable part of the process!
After a few passes on my own I will be able to turn it over to my testers, which is always an exciting milestone. Hoping to be in that stage by this time tomorrow. We’re getting there.
It’s been a bit of a mad month making this game, but it’s been such a breath of fresh air after finishing the more unfamiliar coding work I was doing on the TechUP course. I have so much fun making these things.
Finishing a story
I wrote the ending of the story for my current game project today. There might be some more bits to add in over the next week, but for all intents and purposes the writing is done. Looking forward to changing focus and working on some simple illustrations and a bit of experimental music.
Then I can start testing it. That’s when all the real issues will start showing up!
Census day
The early 2020s are the first time, as I understand it, that the Scotland census has taken place on a different day to the rest of the UK. The England / Wales / Northern Ireland censuses (censii?) took place in early 2021 as scheduled. The Scottish authorities decided the situation with COVID would make it too difficult to carry out the census in 2021, and postponed it to 2022.
What do you do in this situation if you’re a census fan? You make sure you appear in BOTH, of course!
Geth and I were at home in Newcastle for the English census last year. Today, we are visiting Mum and Dad in Edinburgh so that we can be in the Scottish census. Additional bonus: this means that I am yet to miss a Scottish census in my lifetime!
(And in quick non-census news: I took part in a podcast on Friday evening, talking with fellow Adventuroners about game design and the upcoming jam next month. It’s currently listenable here until 17th April – I’ll update with a more permanent link once it’s up.)
End of a productive week
So far, going into recovery mode to try and heal my knee seems to be going well. It’s still hurting a bit, but a little less so every day, and so I’m hopeful that my rest-ish week will do the trick before my race next Sunday.
I’ve been using the extra time to do more work on my current game project. It’s turned into a bit of a behemoth (don’t they all), but I’ve got some good work done on it this week and I feel like I’m nearly there with it. Hoping to get it largely finished over the next week.
Geth has had some really good news at work this week, so we’ll be quietly celebrating this weekend. Lots to enjoy at the moment.
Day of emails and writing
In this morning’s email: email from the London Marathon to tell me I was unsuccessful in the ballot for 2022. Not disappointed about not getting into the race (I don’t really want to do an autumn marathon again for a while as it doesn’t fit into my preferred race season structure – I would have deferred to 2023 if I had got in) but slightly disappointed that they don’t seem to be doing a rejection magazine anymore!
In this afternoon’s email: approximately 30 emails from other autumn marathons saying ‘Didn’t get into London? Come and run OUR marathon instead!’.
Also in this afternoon’s email: my official certificate for graduating from TechUP. Very happy!
I’ve been working on the writing for my current game project today, which is going to take up the bulk of my free time this week. It’s such an enjoyable thing to be doing while I’ve got a bit more spare time, and I hope to be able to do a lot more of it this year.
Weeks are ticking on
I’ve just completed week nine of my 20-week marathon training plan, so only a week to go until I’m halfway through. Of course, I will still be quite a long way from halfway through the mileage at that point, and it’s already feeling quite tough. I think it’s time to start varying up my routes a bit, so I’ll be doing that this week. Anything that mitigates the feeling of dread is a good thing.
I’ve also (pretty much) finished the coding for my current text adventure project today, and so tomorrow I can get started on the prose writing (which goes a lot faster). It should start coming together fairly quickly from this point onwards.
Keeping things contained
One of my bad habits when creating games is allowing them to sprawl and sprawl as I develop ideas. This is why I have a ton of really huge unfinished games among my files, waiting patiently for me to get going with them again. The last few years have been a learning process in this regard, and I’m trying really hard with my current game not to let it grow outwith its originally planned boundaries.
Usually I use jam and competition deadlines to help with this. I plan to enter a few this spring if my games are ready, but I don’t want to put any pressure on myself as it’s been a busy few months and I’m meant to be taking a break right now. We’ll see how it goes.
Enjoying some time off
I’ve had a very enjoyable weekend working on my new game. I also just checked my marathon training plan for the week ahead and Monday and Tuesday will be a little lighter than expected (presumably to save legs for Thursday’s 12-miler), so hopefully I’ll be able to squeeze in some game stuff during the upcoming week as well.
It’s been nice, over the last week, to have some downtime playing games in the evening as well. I’m currently working my way through Counterfeit Monkey, a text-based game I’ve meant to play for years but haven’t got round to until now.
No big plans for the week ahead other than running and creative stuff, which is fine by me.
Friday off
I was able to have a proper day off today and get into some game creation. There are a few competitions and jams this spring into which I am interested in putting my text adventures 🙂 It’s nice to be back doing something creative again.
Looking forward to playing some videogames as well this weekend. I feel like I’ve been saying that for ages!