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Finishing my first game while working full-time

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Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time

#141

Post by cardosof »

throwaway2331 wrote: post #113
the_only_law wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been my line of thought for a while. You spend a minimum of 8 hours working, and ideally you get 6-8 hours of sleep. Let’s say you have a couple more daily responsibilities that take 2-4 (could be commute, cleaning, some other maintenance). There’s almost no time to do anything, and some of the hours you have left may be at non-prime times of the day. > The true optimization for becoming a more efficient per…

One simple trick to exit the labor class; investment banking MDs hate him; "how can one man achieve so much?": Work less, but keep clocking the same amount of hours. A lot easier to do with WFH, but still achievable if you're in an office cubicle. Impossible to do if you work a trade/labor-intensive job.

Just wanted to mention that this is getting harder and harder - companies will just let you use their approved hardwared, full of monitoring software to keep you in line. And it will get much worse, as in Mana by Marshall Brain

Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time

#142

Post by _benj »

core-utility wrote: post #41
ca6d8815 wrote: post #12

Good tips... but in reality if you're working full-time (especially in a software related role), you may find yourself depleted before you get to the keyboard. It took us 5 years to finish our game (everyone started from 0 knowledge on how to make games, so it was a rocky road), and for the last 1.5-2 years my life was absolute hell. I'd push hard at work for 9 hours a day, eat, then push hard on the side project for…

This book Finish by Jon Acuff is a great book on practicing finishing. He also has Start for the very opposite. https://www.amazon.com/Finish-Give-Yourself-Gift-Done/dp/052...

Just picked up the book and seems to be taking about me in specific!

Thanks for sharing it :)

Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time

#143

Post by mayapugai »

Congratulations! It's always refreshing to see someone use simple, readily available tools to level-up.

I don't know how many people will relate to this, but while I've known that scheduling time will help me get things done, I keep avoiding actually getting around to it. It's as though I am afraid to face my own impending success.

You've motivated me to try and get things done though - thank you and congrats once again!.

Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time

#144

Post by boplicity »

fileeditview wrote: post #125
mattlondon wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree with this. I am woken by my kid at 6am, then it is 100% go-go-go with work or family until about 7pm when the kid goes to bed, then it is starting to cook and prepare dinner and do housework etc. There might be 2 hours or so between dinner and bed to spend time with my wife before we collapse into bed at 10pm or so - talk, watch a movie, play scrabble or whatever. I don't want to ignore her and just do…

Funny how much that sounds like my life :) It took me some time to work out that with 2 kids now I just don't have the time for side projects anymore. It is impossible. My oldest is also a person that needs very little sleep. He stopped regular daily naps when he was about 6 months old. In the beginning of daycare (2 yo) he was the only kid in daycare that didn't sleep during the day. He also never goes to sleep befo…

Our youngest was the same way! Things will get better! At least, in terms of sleep. She actually sleeps in now. Even better, on the weekends, when both kids wake up before us, they just play together for an hour, instead of waking us up. It was truly a strange feeling, when that started happening.

Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time

#145

Post by jjcm »

The most important message here is "take care of yourself" near the bottom. I want to share a story about how I did a moonlight effort the wrong way.

I treated it like a second job. When my day job was finished, I started my second job working on a game with a team of coworkers and friends. We were working crazy hours, but we were crushing it. Before long we got the attention of Amazon who wanted to acquire our game as part of their Fire phone launch. Our game focused heavily on motion controls which was perfect for the direction they were taking the phone (they were really pushing the envelope with motion + cameras + other sensor fusion things). We worked even harder. Before long we had a meeting with Jeff Blackburn. He showed it off to Bezos and got signoff to acquire us. We worked even harder. Contracts were signed and due diligence started.

Then our lead dev died.

Amazon backed out as we had no way of completing the game on time. We had poured everything into this game with the intention that the payoff would be worth it. We never prioritized enjoyment of what we were doing or our own health. Our mistake was we hadn't left room for failure.

Whatever you do, ensure you have gas left in the tank for when things go wrong. Things will always go wrong in ways you'll never be able to plan for. If you stretch yourself to the limit, when a bump in the road hits you you'll break and everything/everyone around you will suffer.

I now have a far, far healthier approach to moonlighting. I try and work a little bit every day on something. It doesn't need to be 5 hours of work - 20 minutes is enough. I've been working on something for the last 3 years or so and while it doesn't have the velocity that that game did, it makes me happy while I work on it. If it fails, it's OK because I find joy in doing it. Success isn't a requirement.

Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time

#146

Post by kotrunga »

levmiseri wrote: post #73
kotrunga wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your game looks like a lot of fun, and the concept is really cool. Would you mind telling us more about your process and the technical aspects?

There is one last major piece to be done for the game (now I’m no longer working alone on it) after which I want to write something a bit more detailed about the journey. But on the high-level — my full-time job is interaction design. Throughout my career I used JavaScript a lot for building interactive design prototypes and it’s the only language I know, so when I had the idea for Yare.io (heavily inspired by MIT’s…

Thanks for sharing!

Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time

#147

Post by cableshaft »

philh wrote: post #103
Zababa wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard this called before the "4 hour life", you have 4 hours every day for yourself: https://medium.com/@pskallas/4-hour-life-glossary-4740bca641...

This doesn't acknowledge weekends, which if you have the same 8 hours sleep and 4 hours "not for yourself", add more than 50% to the time you supposedly have "for yourself". (4×5 + 12×2 vs 4×7.) Which doesn't necessarily change the point, but I'm not sure what if anything the point is supposed to be, and it seems an important omission.

Don't usually have much extra time on the weekends. Weekends are for making up for a week of the house getting dirty, relatives and friends wanting to meet, extra long walks for the dogs that only got short walks during the week, errands that got put off, some catchup sleep, actually relaxing a bit since there wasn't much during the week, etc.

I might have 2-3 hours each day (of energy and motivation) to work on projects but not 8. Of course I never have 4 hours during the week either, I'm lucky to get 1 in usually.

Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time

#148

Post by feoren »

throwaway2331 wrote: post #113
the_only_law wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been my line of thought for a while. You spend a minimum of 8 hours working, and ideally you get 6-8 hours of sleep. Let’s say you have a couple more daily responsibilities that take 2-4 (could be commute, cleaning, some other maintenance). There’s almost no time to do anything, and some of the hours you have left may be at non-prime times of the day. > The true optimization for becoming a more efficient per…

One simple trick to exit the labor class; investment banking MDs hate him; "how can one man achieve so much?": Work less, but keep clocking the same amount of hours. A lot easier to do with WFH, but still achievable if you're in an office cubicle. Impossible to do if you work a trade/labor-intensive job.

That is literally illegal, at least at my job.

Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time

#149

Post by TeMPOraL »

Zababa wrote: post #117
philh wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't acknowledge weekends, which if you have the same 8 hours sleep and 4 hours "not for yourself", add more than 50% to the time you supposedly have "for yourself". (4×5 + 12×2 vs 4×7.) Which doesn't necessarily change the point, but I'm not sure what if anything the point is supposed to be, and it seems an important omission.

I assume that for most people the "not for yourself" time is bigger on the weekends, it is for me and the people around me.

Indeed. In my case, ever since I became a parent, I consider weekends a total write-off.

Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time

#150

Post by secondstring »

neokya wrote: post #114
dicroce wrote: post #32

Here are my side project tips: 1) As the article states, work on your side project first in the morning before your work. You will be too tired after work. Yes, this means your not really giving 100% at work. Hopefully your good enough at your job that this is OK. 2) Create little task lists, with short little tasks... Then knock those tasks out one by one. If you find yourself procrastinating about some task do anot…

Creating small task lists seem to be the way to go. Does anyone know what app the author is using to create nested tasks for 'lightweight sprint'?

Notion

https://notion.so/

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