Finding Balance

Greetings everyone. I am alive.

With the higher stress of this new schedule of training at work, my life had been slowly falling out of balance for the last couple months. I’ve had zero desire to get in and program anything or continue taking steps toward my overall plan of developing myself and my future business ideas. My wife and I have been having a hard time taking care of our bodies beyond the basic exercise we were getting from walking everywhere we need to go. We haven’t been working as hard on the relationship we have with each other. Along with that, we have also been letting our relationship with God suffer some in the hustle and bustle of life. While none of these areas had fallen behind to the point of being noticeable by others, they were at a stage where we needed to take action before it got worse.

One night a couple weeks ago, my wife called me out on that lack of motivation that had been affecting all of these areas of my life, and since then we’ve had long conversations to try to find the core problems that were getting in the way of the drive that used to be there. I’m glad to have a partner that will talk to me honestly like that. The problems were both internal and external reaching deep into various aspects, which is why it took these past two weeks to regain the groove and momentum. At this point I can’t change my work situation but thankfully many of the other obstacles are due to the way we have operated on auto-pilot at home. We got that much needed wake up call to address these issues at a very good time before we both got too set in our ways and more permanent damage occurred.

I am getting back to the basics of the entire reason I want to develop games. It is a motive that I need to take some more time to examine so I can clearly express it for myself and for everyone else that asks. I will make a blog post about that very topic sometime in the near future.

Development for Color Combat will be put on hold for the next couple months at least. I got too far ahead of myself and tried to do more than I could accomplish in a reasonable time frame with my current limitations of my skills and limited support that I have. The idea is something that is still ever present in my gamer’s heart and I will make it come to life at some point.

For the past week, I have been learning javascript to improve my capabilities with HTML5 games through GameMaker: Studio. It also serves to improve the way I think about code due to the different approach that the javascript language uses compared to the other languages that I have used before. If things go well over the next week, I should get back to working with GameMaker: Studio more.

Also, I finally got off of my lazy butt and went out running semi-regularly. For someone that used to avoid running with the exception of chasing a ball or Frisbee, this is a pretty big deal. The goal is to continue to push to turn that semi-regular running into a solid regular schedule of running, though minor health issues have been slowing the process down somewhat.

This update has gotten long enough at this point; I got a little too excited to share with you all again. The rest of the information can come in a later post.  Please bear with me as I get back into the swing of things.

I hope you have a great and fun week!

Change, The Constant of Life

Hello everyone!

The past two weeks have been a whirlwind of changes at work which left me with very little time for rest and recuperation. I’ve been put into training for a new position, which means my work schedule has changed. It will change a number of times again in the near future before things stabilize. Along with that, I have to actively focus on learning a mass of new information needed to perform the job properly; no more taking the free time at work to think about game development or learn new tricks. Because of all of this I’ve been trying to reduce the amount of time I spend developing or playing games in order to spend more time with my family when I’m not at work.

I will temporarily pull back to posting these blogs every other weekend and aim to have them ready by Sunday evening my time. Once I’ve learned the job properly, the schedule will stabilize and the stress levels will go down considerably. The process shouldn’t take more than two months. Then I can return to spending more time working on games and reaching out to you all. This is the process of life, growing and changing.

See you in a couple weeks! (If I find the time/energy I will make a post next week)

Challenge Failed – Learned Much

Hello all! I hope you’ve been having a good week.

I’m a little sad to report that I have failed the Seven Day Roguelike Challenge this week in the primary goal of completing a game within those seven days. Once I had declared that I was taking part in this challenge, life decided to interrupt early and often. I didn’t get much sleep at night the first few nights due to our son waking up and being noisy. Then there were a number of events that my wife wanted to go to, so I had more baby duty than normal. My typically low stress days at work were fairly busy leaving little energy to get any coding done afterward. There were a number of other small things that served to drain my motivation to work during what free time I did have. And finally my wife is coming down with what is potentially strep throat. Individually these problems would have just been minor setbacks, but all combined during this past week created a pretty hefty wall to try to climb over.

With the goal of learning about new things, I had a lot of success. When I was really interested in procedural generation, I tried making a roguelike following a tutorial. However I quickly ran into a number of roadblocks and ended up putting that type of game out of my mind for a while.. This 7DRL challenge got me to think about those issues again and I managed to design the code in a way that worked this time around. The main areas I was having issues were dealing with high object counts to slow down the game logic each step, separating the camera from the game world, noticeably slow draw times, and designing a Graphical User Interface system. I have working solutions to these areas now and will have that code base to work with on future projects including next year’s 7DRL. Along with that, some old ideas that had been lying dormant for years have resurfaced; I will probably end up working on a game inspired by Final Fantasy Tactics and Fire Emblem in the future.

I look forward to seeing you all next week!

First Game Jam

Hello everyone! Are you having a nice weekend so far?

Today I am participating in my first game jam ever, the 7 day rogue-like (7drl) challenge. Starting now I have 7 days to make a small but complete rogue-like* game. This is going to be a very interesting experience. I had started a rogue-like project a couple months ago, but ran into a bunch of coding and design snags, and eventually had to put that aside. I am excited to start over with that and hopefully be able to have a finished and working game by this time next week. A bonus to this challenge is that it lines up with my short work week, and so I will be off and free to get busy on “winning” this challenge.

Last night, with the help of my wife, I’ve finally upgraded to a real desk. It is weird having a clear space for all of my computer equipment and an open desktop space. I actually want to sit at my desk to work again! My wife is happy about that since I was hogging the use of the laptop that she prefers to use for the past week or two. It is also slightly safer for a walking toddler to be around; the dinner tray setup that we used to have was fairly unstable and would tip over if he used those for balance at the wrong time.

I will provide daily updates to my progress through twitter at @renauddmarshall. Next week’s blog will potentially be delayed until Sunday so I can announce my success or failure and what I’ve learned. You can also see how much time I have left on this countdown timer

See you next week!

* Roguelike is a subgenre of role-playing video games, characterized by procedural level generation, turn-based gameplay, tile-based graphics, permanent death, and typically based on a high fantasy narrative setting. – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike

Partial Success

This is coming a little late today but I wanted to get the update on the goal out there.

I was a little short of my goal of putting an hour each day into coding and designing, but I did restore some of the desire with designing games. The underlying coding structure of Color Combat needed to be redesigned to allow for the game to expand without being too complex to manage and that has been accomplished. There isn’t a visible change in the game but that was one of the real hurdles to getting back into working on it.

A few of the other hurdles in life have also been passed. Language class is over and I achieved my goal score of 2+/2+ on the Defense Language Proficiency Test. I’ll be returning to my old work schedule that will give me more time overall to be home with the family and work on this game. The stress of life is decreasing some, and I intend to increase my productivity in response. The future is looking brighter again!

This was another shorter post to share the results of last week’s goal. I don’t have specific plans on next week’s post, but my birthday is coming up in a few days so something will probably come to me.

See you next week!

Challenge: Recapturing Motivation

Welcome back to my blog.

This will be a short one. An extended period of high stress has drained all of the drive I’ve had with programming lately. I’ve found myself filling that spare time with a lot of other distractions, like cleaning and more video games. It is time to get back to work and grow that motivation again. I will get that fire to complete games going again. I will not let this lull slow me to a complete halt.

In order to do this and be held accountable, my goal is to spend one hour each day working on Color Combat for the next week to have an update ready to show everyone. Look forward to next Saturday where I will share whether or not this goal helped rekindle that excitement.

Have a great week everyone and don’t let your troubles keep you down!

Color Combat Alpha

Hello everyone, it has been an exciting week!

Last time I introduced my original game idea to the world and started developing it. A few days ago I also decided that this game is going to be my first commercial game release. Whether this is a commercial success or a complete flop, I will get that experience that will start taking me beyond being a hobby game developer. The game is starting to develop a life of its own as well; what started as a fairly basic idea has quickly been growing into a detailed list of goals, mechanics, designs, and themes that I will need to make a reality through the year. So far I’ve been blessed with finding the people, answers, or assets that I need to take the next step with the game right as I realized that I needed it (or even an hour before I realized it in one case).

I am planning to have daily or near-daily mini-updates on what I’m working on through twitter @renauddmarshall. There will be an update blog/patch note post on the IndieDB game page for Color Combat every week or two, probably on Saturdays to line up with Reddit/Twitter screenshot Saturdays. I will also keep this weekly blog going; since the patch note post will be more of the technical side of things, this blog will cover the rest of the stuff going on in life. Soon a page similar to the IndieDB one will end up on Desura and there I can start setting up alpha and beta testers.

On another note, I am moving into my last week of language class which means I’ll have more time to work on game development and marketing soon. Next week I’ll talk some about my plans for handling the business side of development.

See you all next Saturday!

Another Day Another Failure

Yet another Saturday has arrived!

I have failed and learned a lot in the process. I plan to fail again soon and repeatedly. In fact, the goal is to continue to fail while attempting to recreate these classics or create original works by my own hands. Eventually the failures will lead to a worthwhile product or a realization that what I had intended is too far beyond what I am capable of at that point. Today I was supposed to say that I have a game ready to release but unfortunately I don’t. A few hours after last week’s blog post the entire family got pretty sick with a stomach flu of sorts. I’ll spare you the details, but I ended up getting way behind on school and work, and that didn’t leave much time for working on game programming. The good news is that even if I fail to get a game out this month, I will get one out next month. We aren’t failures in the traditional sense of the word because we fail; we become failures when we stop trying. I won’t let failure be a taboo word for me now or in the future. I will encourage others to fail and fail often, and get up to fail again! Future game designers and developers, please understand that creation is an iterative process; no one gets it perfect on the first try.

Along with that, I am putting my previous game design goal of working through 10 classic games on pause for a bit so I can work on an original cheesy idea that came to me recently: Color Combat (working title). A pixel is trying to spread color to the ever growing numbers of dark pixels. Can it succeed before it is overrun by the forces of darkness? Here is an album with screenshots of the game as I have it so far: Color Combat – Imgur

I will see you all next week!

Changing Mindset

Happy Saturday everyone!

I am starting to understand my aversion to life in the military. The human aspect is being lost, forgotten, or trampled as rules and measures to increase control become more numerous. I am also seeing this same issue as the norm in business, education, and government. As a nation we are trapping ourselves in a world where the rules are defined by those who have done wrong or by those who have been victimized. Instead of merely punishing the wrongdoers or increasing cultural awareness to provide more support where it is needed, we choose to fashion a rule that removes flexibility from a situation typically harming the greater majority in the process. The harm might not be immediate, but frequently the longer term effects of the “cure” don’t outweigh the sacrifice of freedom. Barry Schwartz gave two TED* talks dealing with the loss of practical wisdom like this. These rules seek to protect from catastrophe, but they also serve to remove human judgment regarding the specifics of the situation. The people that follow the rules slowly lose that essential human trait, while the ones that seek to harm others are not being deterred by these same rules.

The mini-rant will end there, but one day I might explore this more in depth. I feel that this needs to be talked about more than it is these days. Please feel free to share your thoughts on this. I would love to have this be a conversation starter.

I will catch you all next week with a game release and another blog post!

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*TED is a nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks (18 minutes or less). TED began in 1984 as a conference where Technology, Entertainment and Design converged, and today covers almost all topics — from science to business to global issues — in more than 100 languages.

First Steps

Happy Saturday everyone!

This week I’m bursting with a father’s pride. Our son has been taking his first steps on his own. It has been amazing to watch him grow and learn. He has been really getting good with some baby sign language and is able to communicate fairly effectively in his own way now. He loves being read to and even flipping through his books on his own. I am so glad that I can see his growth like this. He’s definitely got his own little personality (that reminds me more and more of his mother, haha), and I can’t wait to see what he will learn and start doing next.

I’ve been fairly busy myself learning new things. I’ve wanted to learn about procedural content generation a lot lately, and this past week I have been working on a project that will help me get started on really understanding how to make game systems with it. I have also been working on developing my coding style to be cleaner, more descriptive, and more portable, which will help me grow a code base to work from as I continue making more games. Slowly but surely my coding and designing skills are getting closer to where I need them to be to make the games that are constantly floating in my mind.

For anyone looking for video tutorials on GameMaker: Studio, there are a number of really good ones out there. If you want a tutorial that gets into the nuts and bolts of every function of the software without being game specific, Let’s Learn GameMaker: Studio is pretty much the only one out there, but his videos are outstanding and detailed. If you want some tutorials that walk you through specific basic games then Shaun Spalding, HeartBeast, rm2kdev, SlasherXGAMES, and RealTutsGML are the best ones to check out currently. There are a number of new channels that have started within the last 4-5 months about this same topic but they don’t have much content yet.

That is it for this week’s update. I hope you all have had a great start to 2015 so far and see you next Saturday!