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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

#151

Post by fileeditview »

boplicity wrote: post #144
fileeditview wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Good to hear! That is reassuring.

Most parents don't really understand what we are dealing with since their kids sleep much longer (2,3 hours more). This was even more extreme when he was little. When we told people that he wasn't sleeping at daytime they had this strange look as in "that is not possible".

However he learned walking and talking pretty early so he used his extra time it seems ;)

While it is a challenge I always remind myself how lucky I am to have two healthy kids. Sounds like a trope but it really is true.

Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time

#152

Post by learc83 »

mediaman wrote: post #99
learc83 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re salaried, there’s no such thing as company time, so that’s not a meaningful distinction.

If you are doing it in a company office, using company property, during hours the company expects you to be working, do not expect to use "well, I'm salaried, so it doesn't matter" as a legal defense and win.

Company property is a completely different issue. Whether you do it during business hours or not is irrelevant.

If you’re salaried, you’re always on company time, so whether the company owns it or not is up to the laws of the state and the agreements you signed when hired.

Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time

#153

Post by penjelly »

stevofolife wrote: post #93
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...

Generally true. The next step of optimization would be automating parts of your job so you can reduce 8 hours of work to like 6 hours of work. Now you have more time for yourself.

except in practice this never works. you cant automate all tasks, even as a programmer a lot of time is spent architecting or debugging, even requirements gathering in some cases. Those details aside, if you automated hours of your job away youd then be asked to do more work (or if you own the place youd probably want to improve your product more anyway) instead of just sitting around working on your own projects during business hours, which some businesses would fire you for or at least theyd claim your work as their intellectual property.

Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time

#154

Post by threatripper »

the_only_law wrote: post #36
capableweb wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd push hard at work for 9 hours a day, eat, then push hard on the side project for 8-9 hours a day, sleep, wake up, and just keep going. One day a week maybe I'd just sleep. No wonder you feel like hell, where is time for people, leisure, exercising and all the other activities that will help you move faster by feeling better? The true optimization for becoming a more efficient person is to do less of the thing y…

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…

10 hours work 2 hours commute 8 hours sleep 2 hours food and maintenance leaves 2 hours to do all the rest.

Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time

#155

Post by penjelly »

cableshaft wrote: post #147
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.

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 proj…

youre not alone. Unless i actively maintain my apartment itll deteriorate over the week (i even meal prep weekends to alleviate some) i do agree with others though. More time spent disengaging from the work your doing may actually net you a positive in the productivity dept

Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time

#156

Post by skhr0680 »

penjelly wrote: post #153
stevofolife wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally true. The next step of optimization would be automating parts of your job so you can reduce 8 hours of work to like 6 hours of work. Now you have more time for yourself.

except in practice this never works. you cant automate all tasks, even as a programmer a lot of time is spent architecting or debugging, even requirements gathering in some cases. Those details aside, if you automated hours of your job away youd then be asked to do more work (or if you own the place youd probably want to improve your product more anyway) instead of just sitting around working on your own projects dur…

Even if you don’t go as far as working on side projects at work, automating even 30min-1hr worth of manual tasks can leave you less exhausted when you get home.

Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time

#157

Post by penjelly »

corpdronejuly wrote: post #138
Auracle wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I specifically started doing photography so I could do game development in the off-season. It turns out it’s hard to completely drop projects in the spring/summer and pick them up in the winter. I’d love to keep pecking at them over the photography season but I have a hell of a hard time getting anything done when I can only dedicate an hour or so an evening to it.

I feel like the value for you there is to incrementally add a little bit and keep your project fresh in your mind.

this is what i believe. even 10 minutes daily for me can work wonders. it puts me in that headspace even if i don't get any hobby work done.

Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time

#158

Post by afterburner »

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…

You worked 18 hours a day? Yes that is obviously hell.

Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time

#159

Post by dicroce »

nonbirithm wrote: post #102

I've recently realized that I haven't felt comfortable with doing anything for its own sake. This revealed itself as I was working on a game engine reimplementation. For two years I was personally satisfied with myself by being able to return to a hobby and actively enjoy my time programming, and I thought I had managed to find something I was comfortable with doing just for myself. It turned out that I was deceiving…

Well, you shouldn't deceive yourself about your goals. I don't think a goal that involves other people is inherently bad. Nothing wrong with wanting to impact the world IMHO.

Unless you create a game that has infinite replayability and you find playing it fun you're right that game development is ultimately FOR someone else. But there is nothing wrong with that.

Ultimately you have to find a project whose goal is worth the effort. Honestly part of why I got out of game development was because I wanted some more reasonable projects.

Re: Finishing my first game while working full-time

#160

Post by piker »

jjcm wrote: post #145

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…

> Then our lead dev died.

That's terrible. Was the death a direct or indirect result of working on the project?

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