This was the least productive week in a long while, but today was a very productive day.
I changed my work routine a bit and it works quite well. I basically split all my current tasks into very small tasks, small enough to give them a completion time of 15 – 60 minutes. Then, I set a timer every time I start a new task to get a slight feeling of urgency and start competing with the clock. All but 3 tasks that I had written down were completed, and only 2 of them ran passed the timer.
The first half of the week was very sparse as in terms of work, most of the work was only re-factoring code, handful of optimizations, cleaning up redundant assets and making sure naming conventions where consistent. But, the later half of it, I replaced the ugly top buttons with something simpler and easier to use.
Instead of having 4 separate modes, there are only two. The actual UI for selecting which item to create, is part of the navigation nodes in the 3d environment, so that the shift of focus is very minimal. Also updated the camera logic so that you can pan and navigate around the map while in the programming/navigation mode.
This particular feature has taken me just over 5 weeks. I really need to move onto the next one, but I really want to be satisfied with what I see before I dive into the other half of this.
On the other hand, I have been reading a lot about business development, entrepreneurs, small businesses and even offering to do some freelance work a few hours a week. Like I have mentioned before, the business end of it is not the most complicated part. All of this is manageable and it does not take any superhuman wizard to make it work.
Like with all subjects of study, the base of it is very simple.
To start your own business, you need something to sell, someone to buy it and a way to get paid. The complexities arrive when the business becomes large, with dozens of employees, shareholders and other parties that need to be correctly handled.
Just like with any creative field, peoples approach are mostly derivative and any changes to common practices are minutiae.
I’m going to be spending some time trying to create a small stream of revenue while I am making this game. Through freelance work, small contracts or selling various assets on the Unity Asset Store. The only thing I thought of selling at the Unity Asset store was a game prototypes collection that people could use as templates. Templates that are simple and clean with good practices to follow. So that you have something that works for saving, loading your progress and managing scenes when jumping between levels. Have a simple set of common problems solved, so that people can just plug in their assets and have something running. These prototypes would be made mostly out of boxes or other simple shapes, with a simple working UI(with solutions for various 3rd party options, …. maybe). Persistence of game progress and transitions between scenes with other utilities so that you could call them the most simple complete games you can find.
- 2D side scroller.
- Isometric game.
- First person shooter.
- 3rd person over the sholder.
- StreetFighting clone.
- Flappy Duck clone.
- With some various guidelines and hints for all those new game programmers to peruse through.
This will commence as soon as I have the later part of this current feature I am working on, in a working state. Which I am hoping will be by the end of next week. …
Lots more work to be done.
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