I’ve been doing this dev journal for just over 6 months. At the start, I had a simple goal: make a post every day, documenting the progress on StupidRPG (my game project). For the most part that goal has been met. This is post #184, and while I’ve had to do a little bit of catch-up here and there, I have a post for every day since I started.
Keeping up with the journal has been difficult, but keeping up with SRPG has been harder. That said, I made some solid progress on the game in 2015, including some serious structural work and a lot of early-game content. It’s more or less at the point where I can focus fully on content creation (rather than engine work).
As expected, the biggest challenges have been overengineering (making complex, flexible systems for handling game logic where more simple, ‘hackish’ solutions would be quicker and arguably better) and procrastination (I’ll explain what that means some other time). Regarding game content, the challenge has been breaking things into bite-sized pieces that can be worked on piecemeal. I usually work on the game for an hour or two at a time, so it’s hard to tackle bigger elements. Most of the content is deeply intertwined (intentionally).
Aside from SRPG, 2015 was a busy/stressful year. I’ve recently been focusing on work/life balance, stress relief, and cultivating a state of mindfulness and balance. I’m feeling optimistic going into 2016.