In Praise of Peace

Finding time to work on your project can be frustrating at times. Today, I fully intended to do another map or two for In Praise of Peace, but then I... didn't.

So, instead of working on the game (although I will probably playtest a boss I recently tweaked a bit again before bed), I am writing this short blog.

Basically, my advice to you developers out there is this: make yourselves a pseudo-schedule. Don't make a set-in-stone schedule, as something always will go wrong and screw the timeline up. Do set limits, however, on how long you can work on something. There are two very important reasons for this:

1) You need to move on. Working and tweaking the same map or animation for three days is only going to drag out game dev time considerably. I am positive that at least half of decent RM* games are cancelled because the creator loses steam over the small things. Just do something relatively well, and come back when you're far deeper into the project and have a more objective mind.

2) You need to get it done. Dilly-dallying and procrastination are the death of projects. Keep a steady, manageable pace.

My general schedule during the week consists of two days involving two or more solid hours working on a game, two days involving one-two solid hours of work, and at least two days where I usually make a blog post instead of working. The final, seventh day tends to be a wash or intense work. I do my most work on weekends, but I force myself to do a map or fifteen minutes of testing almost every day so that I am always in the right frame of mind.

I also doodle the characters and think of interesting interactions during class and whatnot. I will talk about about Craze's Index Cards(tm) in a later blog.

Make your game, and finish it too!