June was actually pretty good.

Goals

1. Write 3 Blog Posts Per Week and Publish 2 – After getting a list of post ideas written down, it was much easier to get post written ahead of time. Additionally I started the habit of writing down ideas as I get them to keep building the list. Still not up to 3 per week but 2 has gotten much more consistent.
2. 1 Game Designed, Created, and Released Per Quarter – Game #2 for 2016, which is tentatively titled Drone Tournament, is nearing a working multiplayer state. A basic single player version is done (needs polish) and the gameplay seems kinda fun. I am going to finish the coding for the multiplayer version as I work on the design for game #3.
3. 1 Book Read Every 2 Months on Game Design – Selected Clean Code as the next book. It has already been useful in laying out the code for the current game. Making good progress in reading it and should finish it by the end of July.
4. 1 Article Read Or 1 Video Watched About Game Design/Creation Per Week – June article reading and video watching was primarily focused on generic programming improvement. I don’t remember actually watching any videos focused on game creation and design but I did watch some games that were new to me be played on Twitch and got some ideas from the design of the games.
5. Get 100 People Reading Evolving Developer Per Month – Well at least 20 other people have now heard about Evolving Developer. Consistently getting traffic is still not happening (that I know of) but I did hear some interesting advice that it might take 2 years of blogging consistently to gain traction.

What Went Right

1. Writing was more consistent and had some good ideas for posts.
2. Picked up some good programming habits to keep my code clean and make my games better.
3. Found Book #2 for the year.
4. Game #2 is fun and multiplayer is coming along.
5. I got my blog in front of several people.
6. I started some good disciplines to help me be successful.
7. Got an idea for a new game.

What Is Not Perfect Yet

1. Multiplayer for Game #2 is not done and the game is not as polished as it should be.
2. Writing volume is still well below what I would like it to be.
3. Need to find an game artist and sound artist or find somewhere to purchase these assets.

Corrective Measures

Get a little more consistent with my daily habits for writing and programming. Find game development forums and such where artists and sound engineers might frequent and listen in. Find some asset stores where I can get graphics and sound inexpensively for my games.

Question to ask yourself

“How much value do you create for others?”

Time for another month end review. This one just happens to be in the middle of the next month.

Goals

1. Write 3 Blog Posts Per Week and Publish 2 – Publishing for March was mostly on schedule, writing still has not gotten up to 3 per week and the buffer is empty. In fact this post is about a week and a half late with 3 publish days passing with nothing written. All in all a bit of a failure. Still progress over last year though.
2. 1 Game Designed, Created, and Released Per Quarter – I spent a good bit of my time during the last week and a half rewriting the Meteor-Angular 2 code to Meteor-Angular 1. The app now builds and runs on Android without a blank screen. The other part of the time was spent figuring out how to deploy it to a Digital Ocean server. This has been done successfully as well using mupx which turned a possible headache into a much smoother process. I still need to work on deploying the game to the Play store
3. 1 Book Read Every 2 Months on Game Design – I might have read 3 or 4 chapters of the The Art of Game Design. It was all excellent reading and the book continues to provide excellent ideas. Looks like this may be 1 of 2 books for the year.
4. 1 Article Read Or 1 Video Watched About Game Design/Creation Per Week – Absolute fail here. Maybe watched 1 video and read 1 article for the month of March. No notes taken and no real memory of what they were about.
5. Get 100 People Reading Evolving Developer Per Month – Again, no progress made. However I did spend time researching various methods of marketing and promoting a blog. This was sort of done instead of researching game design for March. Ideally the ideas that are used to market a blog or website will translate into marketing a game.

What Went Right

I have a game, however bad, ready to deploy to the Play store and deployed to a Digital Ocean server. This was the ultimate goal for the first quarter this year. This process has given me material for several blog posts. Also I learned a bit about marketing and promoting a blog. Now all I need to do is put it into effect.

What Is Not Perfect Yet

A lot of the time I plan to use to write, code, and read is on Saturdays and Sundays. In March, 3/5 of those weekends was spent traveling in a way that prevented me from doing any of these things. I need to plan some time during the week for these activities. My new mantra is “Pay Yourself First.” I spent too much of the time I did have trying to figure out a bug in bleeding edge tech when I should have just used a stable framework from the beginning. The final form of the game is not really a game. It really needs better writing.

Corrective Measures

Start every day with at least 30 minutes to an hour devoted to writing, coding on the game of the quarter, or reading. Probably do these in a rotation. Pick a stable technology for game number 2. I may hire somebody to write a story I can drop into the framework for Game 1 to make it more interesting.

Lots of Failure, But Still Progress

It is March already and that means it is time to review how I did on my goals last month.

Goals

1. Write 3 Blog Posts Per Week And Publish 2 – Again publishing has been mostly on schedule. A couple of posts were a day late, but I have a queue of 1 ahead of schedule right now so, progress. Yeah!
2. 1 Game Designed, Created, and Released Per Quarter – Much better idea of how it is going than I did a month ago. Game design, though poor, is done. Game creation got a lot of work done on it. I have been reading tutorials, watching tutorials, and searching error strings on Typescript and Angular 2. It is an experimental technology, but it is an experimental release. A good learning experience overall. Figuring out how to release it to the Google Play store is going to be interesting. Much more programming went on in February than January and still more will need to go on in March. It is surprisingly complicated for a simple game.
3. 1 Book Read Every 2 Months On Game Design – Very slow going this month. As I ramped up working on my own game, reading about design and such fell off. Also, I spent a fair amount of my reading/learning time on personal development instead of game design as I attempt to become more consistent on getting things done.
4. 1 Article Read Or 1 Video Watched About Game Design/Creation Per Week – You can read about most of it in this post that I wrote summarizing what I found and this post about Game Balance. It was not 1 a week. It was more like batched for the month in the first week or 2. I did get at least 1 per week done however. Now I just need to find some articles for March.
5. Get 100 People Reading Evolving Developer Per Month – Absolutely nothing done with regards to this goal this month besides keeping the blog updated. This is an area that I need to study. I may even write a post about it this month and try an experiment or 2.

What Went Right

I was able to make a lot of progress on the code for Game #1 of 2016. Learned a lot about the new technologies of Typescript and Angular 2 and how they work. Learned a lot about game design. Got 2 post published every week and am 1 ahead of schedule even with a traveling weekend. Most importantly, I discovered some philosophical and mental ideas for how to be even more consistent and productive.

What Is Not Perfect Yet

At this point I should be play testing my game, not still building it. I still do not have a strategy or plan of any kind for getting people to read the blog.

Corrective Measures

Create a SMART (Specific Measurable Actionable Realistic Timebound) goal list for the creation and release of Game #1 of 2016. Study how to attract a community of readers and how to create value for them. Perhaps even find a course.

March Marketing Madness Begins!

Life and jet lag have made getting this written difficult, and I even ended up writing the first draft of this on my phone.

In an attempt to maintain momentum on my yearly goals and to keep them fresh in my mind, I will be doing monthly reviews of my progress. I have not settled on a format so next months may be a little (or a lot) different. Also, originally I had thought that I would do it as the last post for the month, but since I am trying to write ahead somewhat, it will be the first post of the month sort of how the first post of the year is a previous year review and a new goal setting post.

This is the review for January.

Goals

1. Write 3 Blog Posts Per Week And Publish 2 – The publishing has been mostly on schedule even though the writing hasn’t quite been. A couple posts short, and I did not quite have the buffer I wanted for the year’s first disruptive event but still going strong.
2. 1 Game Designed, Created, and Released Per Quarter – Not sure how this is going yet. I have not finished the first paper prototype yet because it is a lot of writing. I feel like it should be a little further along so it may need to get a higher priority on time. I am however constantly getting good ideas from the book I am reading on game design.
3. 1 Book Read Every 2 Months On Game Design – I could not have picked a better book nor a worse book. It is so rich with great ideas and suggestions but also so long it may count for 2 books all on its own. On page 120 something of 520 or so pages and already 5 days into month 2.
4. 1 Article Read Or 1 Video Watched About Game Design/Creation Per Week – Mostly overlooked this month among all the other goals and things in my personal life, although I did at least watch 1 good video and read 1 good post. This definitely needs more attention and I should probably schedule it into my week better.
5. Get 100 People Reading Evolving Developer – No known progress other than creating more content for this future audience to read which is important. I did sort of identify gamasutra as potential audience center so possibly getting some articles posted there or commenting on articles that are posted there may enable some audience build up.

What Went Right

All posts where published on time (except this one). Learned a lot about game design from reading and watching a talk and was able to apply it immediately on the game I am currently working on.

What Is Not Perfect Yet

I did not get as much reading done in the book on game design as I would like. There is 0 posts in the buffer at this moment. Did not finish the paper prototype of the game. Did not watch a video/ read an article every week.

Corrective Measures

In order to get to where I would like, I am going to set aside a specific time each day for writing, for reading, and for working on the game. Even if this means getting up earlier every morning so that I can stick to my goals for the year.

February 2016 Here I Come!