Adversity

Life is Hard, Let’s Make It Worse!

Posted on by magicrat_larry

My Twitter bio (@magicrat_larry) has a line in it – “If your life is easy, you are doing it wrong.”

I live that way.  I don’t go out and find trouble or anything, but the fact is if you are getting no resistance from anything you are not doing anything at all.  You can go through every day the exact same as, you did before, and have an easy life, but in the end, you will have done nothing at all.

I want to live everyday pushing it to the limits.  I want to go to sleep knowing that I could not have done more.  Life is not long, life is meant to be a quick ride.  What ride are you riding?  Are you riding the largest roller coaster in the world, or are you watch others ride it?

Jump on, Jump in, live life.  If you have a dream, make it happen.  If you want to do something, do it.  Don’t sit on the couch, or lay in bed resting.  Get it all done.  Games aren’t going to make themselves.

I’m Terrible At What I Do!

Posted on by magicrat_larry

I’m throwing it out there, I am terrible at what I do and love.  It takes guts to say it.  I’m finally doing it.  I am abysmal at making games.  Yup, if I had to make a game I would simply fail miserably.  Wow, that feels good just to type out.  A giant weight is lifted from my shoulders and now I can go back to making games.

Odd, why would I go back to making what I just said I was terrible at?  I must be nuts right?  Well, yeah!  The truth is I am bad at it.  I am excellent at 3D math, game vision, hyping an idea to the point of everyone being on board, I’m good at a lot of things.  I just cannot put an entire game together alone.  If I did not have others I would be the sum of me, which is terrible at the complete process of game development.

I have others, I found others and fill my voids, that strengthen my weaknesses.  Without them I would fail every time, and have.  Now say it with me if you have never finished a game, I am terrible at making games!  now go find a buddy that makes you a real game developer.  🙂

Defeat Your Nemesis, Crush Him!

Posted on by magicrat_larry

My biggest enemy, my nemesis, is the Big Picture.  My brain sees a large goal ahead of itself.  It loves to play far into the future and dream big.  This hinders the daily work.  This is my problem.

The best way to defeat your nemesis is to first understand who it is.  Take time to figure out your biggest problem, your nemesis and define it.  If it is defined then you can take steps to crush him.  Yes, I mean crush him.  You don’t want to play around with a nemesis, you want him defeated and gone right?  Don’t put him in a room with an elaborate contraption that will kill him in 3 hours and leave.  Crush him now!

Sorry, I got carried away there, What I do to keep myself motivated on the short term while my brain intently works on the long term plan is create very small goals to get me there.  Small goals lead you, like bread crumbs, to your larger goal, say like a finished game.

If I were to do what my brain wanted to, I would be trying to create an entire game, that is demoralizing quickly.  Instead we plan out small tasks.  these give me the opportunity for Victory over my nemesis daily, if not every few hours or minutes.  This keeps me energized, and excited.  So now I am not just leaving my nemesis to die in an elaborate contraption over time, I’m crushing him one small task at a time.  In the end my large goal will be complete, a nice game for all of you to enjoy.

Bugs Everywhere!

Posted on by magicrat_larry

I’ve been the giant Raid can today.  Smashing bugs left and right.  I did manage to add in some new content into the game demo though.  Ironically, it is a new bug.  You can see it in the featured image of this article.

Mostly though, I have been killing bugs in code.  That is what a ton of your time is filled with for a game developer.  You find, and fix bugs like a madman.  It is both frustrating and rewarding.  If you find a good one and it take some genius to fix then it is rewarding.  If you find millions of dumb stupid problems that are brainless then it is a slog.

Thankfully today has bee rewarding for the most part.

Game Developer SMASH!!!!

Posted on by magicrat_larry

Let me explain this in three phases and I am sure all you game developers will understand.

Phase 1:  The Plan

Today, my wife and daughter were leaving for about 4 hours and leaving me home to work on the game.  Awesome!!!  So the plan is to crank through the remaining physics task to get the car to not be completely jacked up by a collision with a human sized bug.  So Seems easy, I can crank that out and maybe have some time to play a game or two afterwards.  I’m excited.

Phase 2: Let’s Do This

I sit down after they leave and crack down on this physics thing.  Turns out, this is not easy, go figure.  I bust my butt on it for hours getting nowhere.  No matter what I do I cannot get a good outcome.  I have my car driving and the wheels literally flying off for no reason.  I get frustrated, the doomed feeling sets in.  I did nothing, I think to myself.  Then I hear it, my wife and kid are home, 4 hours are gone, nothing to show for it besides the pure joy of pounding on code that was pointless.  At this point my brain is jumping into the computer and killing all the bad things in violent, terrible, imaginative glory.

Phase 3: Just One More Go

I sit down, right after my wife and daughter go to bed.  I open the laptop, look at the code and see a variable being set in some obscure location in our jacked up proof of concept code.  I start playing with that variable.  It turns out that is the most important thing in my life, I just didn’t know it.  So now I am happy.  What a strange way to be happy huh?

Some Days Just Hurt

Posted on by magicrat_larry

Today seems like one of those days.  One of those days where things just don’t get done.  I tried, but got nowhere, kind of day.  I suppose I tend to have the other kind of day more than this, so that makes these days a bit harder to swallow.

I’m trying to get our physics for driving to balance.  It is not easy to understand.  The problem is I used other peoples math to get this all to “work” properly.  Turns out their math tended to be a rigged in mess.  So now I am attempting to clean that up.  As you can tell, I got nowhere.

The best part is, that these days always build up to a moment where you physically throw your hands in the air and smile with glee when you fix the problems.  That is the light at the end of the tunnel, and what we all do game development for.  I look forward to that moment where this days setup becomes the foundation for a massive victory moment.