Life

A few weeks ago a fellow game developer asked me how on earth I can be so productive, having a kid, wife, house, cars, daytime job, etc. I actually did not reflect much on it and I don't feel like I'm some productivity guru. On the other hand I do have picked up some good(?) habits along the way, and I guess making 25 releases of a game in a 50 weeks is somewhat productive. So these are my tips on productivity, they are of course biased towards on making indie computer games in general and programming in particular.

Stay Motivated

Making a PC game is not a 100m dash. At least not if your goal is to release it as shareware and have some people buy it. Making a PC game is more like a marathon, or maybe an ultra marathon. Be prepared for about a year in development time, and the hard part is actually to stay motivated and not jump to another seemingly more exiting project.

For me, key to staying motivated is iterative game development. For years I also kept on developing games, but not making any public releases. Needless to say none of the projects where remotely finished.

You need to find a way to cultivate your burning desire so that you don't spend it all the first month.

Get a Good Laptop

Good tools are a must to stay motivated and there are great productivity enhancing tools out there. I experienced a productivity boost when I got myself a good laptop. It's a high end one, with a full keyboard (including the numpad), good gpu and such. Using it I can stay productive during tv-commercials, 10-minute breaks, when traveling etc.

Leverage Your Compiler

My main tool is my compiler, and I tend to use it as much as possible. Over the years I have developed a style of coding that is intended to produce compiler or linker errors, instead of hard to find runtime errors. I tend to compile and compile for every line I write and having a bunch of compiler errors to fix is an automatic to do list. When I make a code change I want the compiler or linker to tell me where the code is broken, and not have some strange bug show up in some super-generic object oriented piece of over engineered game code.

I also tend to reject script languages for the fact that I don't want another source of bugs. If I need some code, I can simply make it in C++, use the compiler to my advantage and that's it.

Micro Task

To keep productive you need to have a backlog of tasks, and they need to be small. You simply cannot have huge tasks when you get 10 or 20 minutes of coding every now and then. Having a pool of small, micro tasks, that you can just pick up and finish one off is a great productivity enhancer. Also all big tasks can definitely be broken down into many smaller ones.

You should of course use a tool to track and manage your task.

Don't Finish Tasks

You should of course finish tasks, but I have found that the timing when finishing them can increase your productivity.

I have noticed myself is that I have a hard time to start fresh on a new task. It seems as taking those first steps is the hardest part. You can probably get passed this by just using discipline. But I have found that if I don't finish a task completely, (leaving the code broken with some compiler/linker errors) I tend to have a much easier time of picking up the pace. Then I make sure that I start a new task, which now is much easier since I'm already into development mode, before stopping and leaving the code broken for the next time I find a few minutes for development.

Use Source Control

You need to have all files, and I mean all, under some version control. Even if you are the only developer. This also goes for artists creating content and don't forget the original versions of the game assets. Having an optimized, resized texture in source control is actually less important than having the original, huge, layered psd original file under control.

Have a Normal Life

Finally you really need to have an ordinary life, with family, friends, exercise, healthy good food and non development related stuff. You really really need this to not burn out on your first project. I have seen great developers burning out on game projects, leaving their passion for games behind, starting a whole new career.

Making games is at times painful, dreary work, at the same time it can be wonderful, creative, passionate and exiting.

Would be cool to know if you have any similar experiences, or do you have some other productivity tip to share?

For some reason I've been downloading and buying a lot of pc games from steam the last few weekends. They just have the greatest weekend deals on games I've been dying to play and downloading from steam is just so frickin' sweet! Though I do thing that steam is a bit bloated as an application...

This weekend I got the Rockstar Collection (deal is valid until monday...) including these games: Grand Theft Auto 3, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Manhunt, Max Payne, Max Payne 2, Midnight Club 2, Grand Theft Auto, Grand Theft Auto 2, Wild Metal. My first game downloads are San Andreas, Max Payne II and Midnight Club 2 (I actually know nothing about this game )

I remember playing GTA 3 quite a lot back in the days so I'm looking forward to both Vice City and San Andreas. The price was $43 (including vat)!!!

Last week I got the ID Super Pack including these games: Quake III Arena, Wolfenstein 3D, Ultimate DOOM, Final DOOM, DOOM II, QUAKE, QUAKE II, QUAKE II Mission Pack: The Reckoning, QUAKE II Mission Pack: Ground Zero, QUAKE III: Team Arena, HeXen, HeXen: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel, Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders, Spear of Destiny, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, QUAKE Mission Pack 2: Dissolution of Eternity, QUAKE Mission Pack 1: Scourge of Armagon, DOOM 3, HeXen II, DOOM 3 Resurrection of Evil, Master Levels for Doom II and Commander Keen.

That's a lot of good games! I was especially longing for Quake, Quake III and Doom III. I never really got into Quake II... but I'll probably give it another try! I also wanted to try out the Commander Keen series, mostly to look back at the first ID Games. For all this I paid $43 (including vat).

Some other recent game downloads from steam are DeusEx (I completely missed this classic game) and hacker game Uplink and Darwinia by indie game developer Introversion Software.

One might wonder a bit how steam can sell games so cheap... good for consumers I guess and the games with deals on them are often not the newest releases so the original developers/publishers probably have already got their fair share. Harder to know about the indie games on steam though... But I guess they have massive volumes of sales and digital download sure p0wns retail.

I guess I have pc game downloads to last me a liftime now, especially in the pace I'm playing But I did finish HL2 ep2 just the other day, just took me about a year!

I'll try to get some more time playing games, autumn is coming so the lawn should at least stop growing soon.

I have realized that I need to play more games. Also I don't have the time to really sit down and play so I got thinking that maybe a portable gaming device would be cool. Then I can utilize many smaller snippets of time instead of devoting long hours.

The last time I owned a portable was my old Game & Watch Donkey Kong JR. That was a great game and the only portable I have ever owned. Even my mum considered herself a gamer in those days. My sister and she even started playing the game upside down to get more of a challenge. Alas my hot tempered sister threw the game in the wall in frustration , and that was it for the poor fellow...

Anyway I have not paid any attention to the portable scene in a few years but I guess it it pretty much down to getting a Nintendo DS or a Sony PSP. Price is about the same, the PSP is more techy but the DS has the touch screen advantage and is compatible with Gameboy Advance games.

Right now I'm leaning towards the DS... but I really don't know. If you got any experiences or suggestions I'd really like to know...

I have spent a few evenings with super paper mario again, I have already finished it once but this game is so great I gladly play it again. Once again I marvel at the detailed level and polished gameplay!

Other than that I enyoy having vacation and only occationally sit down at my computer, but I´m planning to work more in August.

Time flies, summer is here and we've had a couple of really nice days. Since Tina has started working again my new boss keeps me very busy (no not a new boss in T.W.T.P.B. but my one y.o. son William). It's really sweet spending warm lazy summer days with my fav guy, bathing, taking walks, playing in the back yard.

As you probably have seen I have managed to get some long awaited site updates online, unfortunately T.W.T.P.B. has been somewhat on the back burner the last week. I'm really hoping to get a new level out there on friday though. Though it seems as no one has yet to beat the last level

T.W.T.P.B. has become quite a hard little puppy to beat, and we have still four more levels to go! Though maybe they will not all be hard(er). I'm tinking of making level 7 more of a bonus level, but we'll see how things develop.

As of late I have been toying with the idea of entering T.W.T.P.B. to the IGF Main Competition. But I don't know... also it costs $95... what do you think?

As some of you know I have been feeling somewhat down as of late. Been having a general feeling of negativity and bad vibes.

This has definitely been a very strange week for me. Since William (my one year old son) has been sick me and my wife had a few nights with very little sleep, like 5-6h in 62 hours.