Something a little different this week: today’s diary is by request from one of our readers (and early website beta tester). I’m going to take a few minutes to describe my work environment (with pictures!), for anyone who’s interested.
I don’t have a proper office room, so I’ve had to carve out a corner of the bedroom dedicated to my workspace. As it’s nicely tucked away from prying eyes, I can decorate it as I see fit, without worrying if it’s aesthetically pleasing or fits in with the rest of the flat. Mind you, I haven’t gone overboard; I don’t really consider myself very creative or stylish, so I’ve gone with a simple look. Anyways, enough chit chat, here are some pictures.
So, that’s my little corner of development, where most of the magic in that room occurs. As you can see above, I’ve got a 24’ and 21’ monitor hooked up to my main PC (a dual core I purchased last summer). Most of my work is done on that machine, with the secondary monitor usually there to display my current chat windows, Perforce, and any coding references I may need.
You’ll also notice a laptop to the far right of the desk. That’s my 2 month old Dell laptop, a nice little machine I use when I get bored of sitting in the bedroom. I’ve got all my dev apps (and Perforce) replicated on it, so I can do all my work on it if I choose to. Although these days I mainly write blog posts and articles on it, and use it for lazying about on Saturday morning in bed getting a bit of work done. My main reason for its purchase is to be able to do work on the road, and to demo prototypes of my game.
Hmm, this post needs more than one picture. Here’s a closer shot of some of the inspirational quotes above my desk (including a picture of my beautiful puppy).
Finally, this is the comic I’ve got posted on the right of my desk. I like to remind myself that power to make all my dreams come true lies in my hands.
Work Done Last Week
Last week was an important week in several ways. I finally solved a major bug that has been hampering my work for several months now. I can’t describe the wave of relief that washed over me when I finally figured out the solution (which of course, like most frustrating bugs, was a simple one-line code fix). Solving this bug has paved the way for me to focus on other important tasks. I still have one more long-standing irritating bug to be resolved, but this past week gives me confidence that it’s simply a matter of time before this one also succumbs.
Solving this bug was directly due to the work I put into a solid debugging environment over the last little while; it’s a good feeling when things pay off.
I unfortunately did not get time to begin the integration of Box2D, but that will come soon.
Also, I did a bit of experimentation with the website theme. I’m not happy with it, but it brings me one step closer to “officially” launching this site.
Work Planned This Week
I will spend a significant part of the week integrating Box2D. I will also spend a little time poking around at the aforementioned bug. Finally, I will broach the subject of gameplay prototyping.
Up to now, I have spent a lot of time working on the technology, with only various small incursions into gameplay experimentation. The state of the tech needed to reach a certain level before I fully plunged into gameplay. Even now, I have yet to reach the stage (technology-wise) where I feel I should invest all my time in gameplay, but I will start to increase the amount of work focused on this area. Having clear goals to focus on helps drive me and maintain my concentration on the project. It also validates the development of the technology. There is no point in creating cool tech if it’s not gonna be applied.
Related posts:
Leave a Reply