And we’re back in the room! It barely feels like I’ve been away, and yet it also feels like months since I’ve written a post. Neither of those things are true. I had a week out, nothing more, so why is everything so upside down? How do write good? Let’s see if I can remember before the end.
Yesterday, I got to spend a whole hour on Horde, before submission and patch issues caught up with me, it was great. I got a bit more of the AI refactor done, and it’s starting to come together. Today I’m hoping to finalise that and finally do/start something I’ve needed to do for a long time. I need to sit down and write a fully realised design document. The 4 pages I have outlining the game isn’t cutting it anymore, I need to focus and get everything I want in the game onto paper. And then I need to take all that information and create a task database for it.
The reason? I’ve realised I’m floundering. I’m struggling to focus as I don’t know where I need to put my time. By creating a list of work I’m hoping to be able to structure myself, and maybe even run sprints. Those of you who know me from Tt, know how much I love those!
Background for non-techies: Not sure if this is techie or not, but that’s the name of this section, and agile is used in the tech industry primarily…
Sprints are a key part of any “agile” workflow. Agile is a way of working that focuses on working towards small increments in small timeframes, rather than trying to plan how you work on a project from top to bottom in one go. It focuses on iteration, and small achievements delivered as working packages at regular intervals so that progress is very visible. I’m pretty well versed in Scrum, a specific agile framework.
I won’t go much further here, but a sprint is a planned timeframe of work, usually between a week and a month. Ideally, if I have an idea of what work needs to be done, I can split that work into two week chunks.
I’m hoping that creating this structure will give me enough renewed focus, that I can start making bigger strides again. It feels like I’ve been taking baby steps for too long.
As for the rest of my week, well, SockMonkey have been keeping both myself and John very busy with post-submission work. There’s a patch and a pc/mac release to work on, and we’ve very much been all go. Plus, I’ve been spending a lot of time on the original project I was working on again, as that war machine is firing up once more. I’m not sure how much juggling I’m going to need to do by the end, but right now, I’m just about keeping afloat.
And to round things off, my holiday! Suzie and I went to New Quay Wales (not the Cornwall one!) for a lovely week of seaside niceness, we had a lovely little house with a wood burning stove, which we made full use of while drinking copious amounts of tea, generally keeping ourselves socially distant from the world, yet still managing to get out and about along the coastal paths and whatnot.
It was a wholly lovely time, though I must admit, I’m glad to be back where there is internet. See you all next time!
Matt out.
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