I had a great idea this morning for a new non-game app, and was very tempted to dive straight in. Fortunately, the thinking part of my brain kicked in and recognized it as one my character flaws: starting something new and cool instead of making progress on existing work. I think lots of people suffer from the same problem. Since I still saw value in the idea, I budgeted an hour to make some notes, do some googling, and think through what might be useful — then successfully put it aside and went back to work. This evening when I was ready to start back on my game, I was only slightly tempted to divert attention to the idea — I think if I hadn’t take a little time this morning to capture my thoughts, it would have consumed all my development time tonight.
I thought I would be ready to start on display code tonight, but I had forgotten I had not yet implemented an important part of the game engine in my current project. I have most of what I need already implemented in little pieces spread across several smaller projects, so tonight I merged in classes and methods from them into my current project. I have it all reconciled, but still need to finish the code that ties the game events to the underlying model properly. I am caught up enough on my consulting work that I may take at least part of my normal work day on Friday to push forward.
After I have something finished enough for my wife and daughter to try out, I will post some screenshots and a few more details of what my game idea actually is, and will probably ask for some feedback.
Day T-66 Accomplishments (Thursday, February 4, 2010)
- Captured idea for an iPhone app with some notes and bookmarks *instead* of diverting my limited development time to it
- Merged code from several different prototypes into my current project
