Time to review November before it gets too far away.
Goals
- Write 3 Blog Posts Per Week and Publish 2 – Only 4 written in November. My main focus in November was not so much on writing but on my next goal.
- 1 Game Designed, Created, and Released Per Quarter – This was the primary focus in November. I spent a good deal of time stabilizing the multiplayer server code for the game then on creating a build of it out on Heroku so that the web and eventually Android clients can play multiplayer on it. I was able to release the game out on Itch.io in November, and at the time of this review, it is also on the Google Play store for Android (although that was done in December).
- 1 Book Read Every 2 Months on Game Design – Still reading through the online version of Game Programming Patterns. Haven’t made a lot of progress through it because I have several other books that I am reading through. I usually have 3-5 books that I read through at once and usually only 1 of those is game related.
- 1 Article Read Or 1 Video Watched About Game Design/Creation Per Week – Again I watched a few more Extra Credits videos that came out in November and I have been reading the API reference for the Monkey-X FantomX engine. Refocusing on this a bit in December. However, I did go to a local game dev meetup in my area and followed along a bit with a Unity tutorial that was being taught. I also met some awesome guys who are making games in my area. I would strongly encourage everyone to do this. One of the guys told me a bout a game he was working on where you play through sound. It was pretty cool, you can check it out on GameJolt
- Get 100 People Reading Evolving Developer Per Month – Honestly have no idea how I did in November. I just switched analytics from Clicky which was fine and fairly lightweight, to Google analytics so I lost any history I had and Clicky’s free account only gave you like 30 days history anyway. But now I will have a little more insight and history as I go forward.
What Went Right
Game #2 was finally released to where people can play it. It is stable and multiplayer works through Heroku. I was able to write some good tutorial steps that I will turn into chapters of a book on making and releasing your first game using Monkey-X. And I met some awesome people in my area by going to a local meetup.
What Is Not Perfect Yet
I think this has mostly been a theme for the year, writing volume not at intended level. Looks even lower than average because I forgot to do the October review until December. Also I need to start documenting the things I watch and read so I can better track my progress. Finally, I need to work on solving more people’s problems because that is how to increase traffic.
Corrective Measures
I have gotten my sleep schedule back to pretty regular and have been doing more writing and programming as a result. Working on building a habit of writing down immediately when I watch or read something relevant to game creation. For helping more people, I need to start looking for problems to solve. This means reading blogs, forums and QA sites to find problems to solve and write about.