March 4, 2021

Goals

Tags: Goals

Remember last year’s goals? No? Neither do I, never happened.

Ok, ok, yes I did write down some goals for 2020. However, apart from the first (on maintaining strength) I did not get close to any of them. The running was given up as soon as the lockdown ended as I couldn’t do weights and run without both suffering. I finished 0 game prototypes, as I got stuck turning the first one I did into a full game. Much of that work will be reusable, but still too slow. I managed 7 blog posts instead of 12. Unless fixing up the house and playing games counts there have not been many other activities, but I don’t think that is a problem. Despite, or perhaps because of this failure it has been a fairly pleasant year. The Covid pandemic has not really changed day-to-day life here in West Australia. I have just chilled.

I debated whether I should bother with goals for 2021, but decided a little direction (but not too much) couldn’t hurt…

  • Maintain strength and aerobic fitness At the end of last year I massed and then did a strength block. I am now at least equal to my strongest ever and have set new personal bests in several lifts. I am very happy about that, but progress is getting increasingly hard. The last massing cycle left me tired and sleeping badly in addition to near constant soreness. Right now I do not have the mental motivation to do it all again (maybe that will come back in a few months). Instead my goal will be to not go backwards. Also I’ll start running again, just to keep my heart pumping. The old 5km in 25min will be good enough.
  • Finish and release one game, then start the next The current game may not have a proper name yet (I’m using the working title AbstractHexBattle), and is taking way longer than expected at 11 months this week. But the end is near. I had to change a few things to solve some UI problems at the start of the year, but now there are just 3 big tasks (AI, game progression, menu cleanup) left before I can polish towards a release. Should be soon’ish. Then I plan to reuse much of the code and experience from this game to work on my next, codenamed Concealed Intent 2D (geddit?).
  • 12 blog articles (including Jarrah Technology) Yeah, I’ll write a few.