Wednesday is the working hard day, though I am feeling kind of unmotivated today. Well in general been feeling a bit unproductive. Though that is why I made the schedule, so that even if feel like that and go slow I am still making forward progress everyday. Because as long as you keep making progress each day you can get a ton done. So in that way the schedule is working because even though I am not very productive today I am still getting some stuff done.

Anyway I am posting now since I will probably be up late working on the game(likely doing a little, taking a short break, then doing a little more and so on).

So I basically have the goal for Tuesday done, though I feel like day 5 of the game is a bit light. That isn’t necessarily a problem as if I set up all the locations and got a good framework, I can add in more interactions later. Also if nothing too much is happening at a given location is probably better to keep things moving than to get bogged down.

So for example, day 5 has a lot of free time so you have a choice of places where to go and one of the places is a popular ramen shop. Currently as I have it written, not much really happens there, you just visit and have some ramen. It goes with the atmosphere of the game, of going on a vacation. You go to japan got to try some ramen after all. Still the scene doesn’t have much impact by itself.

Anyway that is what I mean when I say day 5 is a bit light, it lacks some impact. Also this is because when I first created the game, I made an in game schedule for places you would visit and stuff and a lot of it was stuff I just put down as a whim as places people would be interested in visiting. I might need to go back at some point and edit that later to combine days or move events around for it to flow more smoothly.

Though it isn’t all bad. The game is sort of a slice of life game and lets the player explore around a lot. So the essence of the game is to feel like you are there doing what you want on vacation, so not everything needs a big impact either. Maybe it is okay if nothing much happens, because you only go there if the player wants to go there and it was their choice.

So today is Monday, time to review how things went last week. All the goals were met but I feel like I could of pushed myself a little harder to get even more done. So I am going to do that this week. So for this week my goal is going to complete day 5 and 6 and be able to play through the entire game up until the end of day 6. Soft daily goals will be the following:

Tuesday: Finish day 5, which is split up into three locations you can visit depending on a choice you make earlier in the game. Organized and outline the main location in day 6. I am going to set my goal to have at least 20 passages for the main location.
Wednesday: Finish the main part of day 6.
Thrusday: Add in side stuff on day 6. I am thinking of adding romance stuff in here. The end of the game will change based on your romance, but so far the game has just hinted at it mostly so might heat things up a little here.
Friday: Finish everything up that is needed to release the game up to the end of day 6. If there is time can get to morning of day 7 as well.

I also did some reorganizing on the site. I removed the drop down menu under games since it was getting way too long, at the moment you can just click it to go to the list of games. I might reorganize the dropdown menu later and add it back then. I added a bunch of games to the game list that wasn’t on there before. Most of which are games on tfgame site, though I noticed some are not(mostly very small games I think).

Also since Monday is planning day, I am going to plan out what games I am going to work on in the future. This week I am aiming to release Kawaii up to the start of Day 7. Next week, I think I am going to try to finish and release Siege of Fallhammer. It is a game I was working on a while ago that was almost finished but I never finished it. I was staggering at the end, because the code was being a bit of a pain in the butt. I think I can tackle that in a week if I really focus on it, so you might just be getting a second game right after I release the first version of Kawaii, and that game should actually be complete.

After that, I am going to spend a week on Into the Dungeon, then a week on Magical Girl contest and have an update for both of those games. They both suffered from the same problem. They got too big and twine broke(became an absolute laggy mess). I tried to fix them but it was a huge pain. Well I am working on this new sechdule to try to get more work done so it is a good chance to really test it out by tackling these huge pain in the but messes. I am basically going to have to go into twine and edit split out all the passages into multiple files and then reorganize all the passages, then try to remember all the paths because I have not worked on them for a long time.

Anyway, while it is likely going to be a pain in the butt, once I fix the games and have them reorganized then it will be a lot easier to update them in the future. Then after that I will work on Kawaii again. Then after the next update for that game, I will work on Old Soul.

So if things go as plan I will have an update sechdule like this:

March 5th: Kawaii first release
March 12th: Siege of Fallhammer first release(and complete)
March 19th: Into the dungeon update
April 2nd: Magical girl contest update
April 9th: Kawaii update
April 16th: Old Soul update

I am not going to add any new games to the main schedule until I finish all those games in my backlog. Though I might still work on random stuff on Saturdays, or in free time during the week after completely daily goals. I do want to try to complete all the unfinished html games listed on my website though. I feel once I have them all complete I will be in a good place. Sadly, I don’t work with rags anymore so will probably leave all of them as they are.

Edit: I fixed the scheduled, I thought the days seemed off. I had a goal set for Monday, but today is Monday! I just combined Monday and Tuesday’s goal and made it due Tuesday, it doesn’t change overall goal for the week.

Today was game reward day, though I didn’t actually play much. Went to a birthday party, and did a little bit more writing. I did play a little bit though. Currently I am trying to beat Banner of the Maid, it is a game I got away ago but never finished. Tomorrow I will be working on my schedule for next week and I think I am going to be pushing myself a little harder.

So I was planning on doing more work on the game but I ended up writing random stuff. Saturday is the free writing day though, so it is okay. I ended up writing a completely random thing for a zombie novel. Not sure why but I been in the mood recently for that sort of story.

So I am still working on the game and it is a bit early in the day so I can still get more done. However, I have reached the point where I can say I met all the goals I set. I feel like some things can be fleshed out a bit more, which is what I am going to work on now though they are complete to the point where I would feel okay with moving on to the next area for the time being.

I am still thinking if next week I should include a more specific goal like having x number of scenes, passages, choices or whatever. Then again, it can be hard to tell ahead of time how many scenes it will take to do what I want. Anyway, I think overall the schedule is working, since I was stuck on day 4 for a really long time and in a week I finished it up and got half of the next day done and at this rate maybe I can release the first version of the game next week.

So making good progress on my goal for the week. I think I should have everything done tomorrow on time for the deadline. Though I think I might spend some time on Saturday going back over a few things.

I have Wednesday goal mostly complete, and I feel like having these subgoals are helping me stay focused. Though I also feel like I could make the goals even more specific as well. I definitely been feeling kind of unmotivated today and most of yesterday but still making forward progress. Which was the purpose of this new schedule in the first place, to help me work when feeling unmotivated. I do feel like part of the reason I feel unmotivated though, is because I don’t feel like I pushed myself hard enough. I still think stuff like ‘Oh I can reach that goal so I don’t have to rush right this moment can finish that later.’

I feel like if I made it a really difficulty goal where I am not sure I can even make it, I would work a lot harder. Well I can always up the difficulty next week too, that is why I have a full day for planning things out and adjusting goals. For the moment I am happy to be making forward progress though. Especially in a part of the game that was really bogging me down up until now too.

So I completed my goals for Tuesday. I feel like there could be a bit more to do at the convention, but I do want to focus on making forward progress and not expanding things out into a million branches. Because if I get too distracted on branching paths all over, then it will take forever to get anyway. I do plan on going back and adding more stuff throughout most of the game though as there are some areas in early parts as well that could be expanded a bit.

Schedule

Okay, since I been doing really well in posting every single day, I thought it is time to kick things up a notch! I am going to make a weekly schedule for what I am going to do every week and what I will post with every day. I am hoping this not only improves my writing and game making but also improves me as a person. So here goes!

Monday: Planning Day

From now on, I will make Monday my planning/evaluation day. Each monday I will evalute where I am, and where I want to go, set goals for that week and also fix things in my schedule if they are not working or need adjustments. I will then post my plan for that week so everyone knows what I am going to be doing. Also if I have any website related stuff to work on, I will work it in to Monday.

Tuesday: Getting into it

So planning and organizing all my work Monday, means Tuesday is the day to really get into the work. I know I need to really focus here because I suffer from procrastination often. So Tuesday is the most important day to get started on the right foot. On Tuesday I will make a post on what I am currently working on to try to hold me accountable. If I don’t work then I will have nothing to post and it will be a bit embarrassing.

Wednesday: Working Hard

Okay, so Wednesday is another pure working day and hopefully I can just keep a good pace going. I will make another post on what I been doing that day, so if I am slacking I wont have anything to post again, so it will be super embarrassing two days in a row!

Thursday: Crunch Day

Okay, so I am going to make my weekly deadlines on Friday which means the do or die time is Thrusday! Keep in mind, I want to make this a life long schedule to help with my life, so I want to be able to do these things every day, every week, going on forever. Having a busy week is no excuse for not working on games anymore! I will allow myself to change the workload on Mondays, so if I do have a super busy week or something coming up I can make a more moderate goal but once a goal is set I want to strive to reach it no matter what. Thrusday is the day to be motivated and say to myself, “You can do it, go!”

Friday: The Deadline

Lets be honest here, Friday might actually turn out to be crunch day for me since I am kind of a procrastinator. Though this is the day the deadline will be set for. I will strive to finish the work no matter what and then I will post the final outcome for the week! Today is the day for accountability, did I make it or not?

Saturday: Catching up or free work day

So the Deadline has come and gone on Friday and I either succeed or failed. Hopefully if I did fail I was just being overly ambitious and not slacking. Either way if I fail then on Saturday I will work on whatever I missed. Also if I technically reach the goal but did it a bit sloppy, then this is the day I can go back and edit and revise some stuff. If successful then I will do off schedule work. This could just be creative writing stuff for fun, or working on random games outside my main project. I do like to make random stuff some times and it distracts me a lot from my main projects. So having a day where I can just do whatever is good for me. This isn’t a slack day, as I should still be working on something. It is just what I work on can be anything, and I will post what I am up to or about any side projects I am working on. During the week if I do come up with sudden sparks that give me great ideas I am going to commit to writing them and leaving them until Saturday. So instead of resisting the urge to do random projects, I am organizing it by putting it off to here.

Sunday: Reward Day!

Okay I have several sticks in there in the form of making embarrassing posts about not doing stuff, if I fail to stick to my schedule, so of course I need a carrot too. Sunday is my reward day. If I accomplish all my goals then Sunday will be guilt free gaming day. To be honest I will probably slip in some gaming time throughout the week but only after finishing my work each day! However, on Sunday if I spend the entire day playing games then there is no guilt. I am free to waste the day however I want as it is a reward! I will then post about whatever games I happen to be playing at the time as well. I actually have 100’s of games on steam and dozens of games in my backlog of things I want to play/finish. So I definitely can game all day long every week if I allow myself, but that is only if I accomplish my goals for the week! If I don’t meet the Friday deadline then no guilt free gaming day, even if I catch up on Saturday. If I don’t meet the deadline even after the Saturday extension, then I will be working all Sunday to do it. If I do make the deadline late and finish it Saturday, then I get to play games all Sunday but I have evaluate what went wrong and how to improve things going forward and then post that on the website. And only after that will I be free to do other stuff.

So there you go, that is my new plan! It makes things a lot more organized than what I am used to, since I am kind of a chaotic person but I don’t feel it is an unreasonable level of organization. The key will be on Mondays, on picking goals that will work out. Anyway, since today is Monday, lets get into my weekly schedule for this week, the week of February 22nd, 2021.

I am currently working on Kawaii, the game where you turn into a girl and go on vacation to explore girly and cute things! So last week I wanted to finish Day 4 of the game and I mostly did that. If it was under this current system it would likely be a failure but my goal wasn’t entirely clear. So I am going to fix it this week. So as it stands, you go to a cosplaying convention and you are free to explore around and do whatever and a lot of that is done but there is some areas that are a bit lacking. So here are my weekly goals:

1. The random stuff you can do at the convention needs to be polished up and some the coding done. The writing is mostly finished but you can’t really play through the entire day. So I need to get all that working.
2. The highlight of the convention is a costume contest at the end. I don’t have that part finished. Plus while working I came up with some extra stuff to tack on after the convention back at home. That isn’t really part of the main day, but I am grouping it as part of Day 4 for organizations since it is still on the same day. Both of those things need to be finished.
3. There is a few really small branches on day 3 I didn’t finish. So I need to finish that.
4. Day 5 is split up into two parts. The first half of the day is a preset location one of your friends wanted to go to so you are visiting it. The second part is a location that you got to pick. So I am going to need to organize and set up the first half of the day.
5. Then I need to finish the first half of Day 5.

Since this is a brand new schedule and I am not used to it I was considering making 5 a bonus objective. Though thinking about it, I can’t give myself that sort of leeway from the start! I feel like trying to completely finish the first half of Day 5 is biting off a bit much, but I know I can do it if I don’t slack earlier in the work, so I am going to go for it! To help me go forward and stay on task I am going to set a soft goal for each day. I don’t have to meet these goals but if I don’t it is just making more work for myself later.

Tuesday: Have goal 1 and 2 100% complete.
Wednesday: Have goal 3 and 4 100% complete.
Thursday: Be able to play the game from start up to the end of the first half of day 5.
Friday: 100% complete goal 5 and hopefully complete everything.

There we go. That actually took like 2-3 hours write up, though I hope it is worth it. I am also going to try posting earlier in the day. Probably not this early, but I want to get more work done earlier in the day if I can. I am definitely a night person, though I am not sure working late into the night is the most productive time to be doing the work. Also working earlier helps me fight off the procrastination mindset.

Lastly, I am going to reconfirm what my goal is. I made the site because I want to be able to make games full time, not just one game but lots of games. I feel like I actually have made a lot of games, but it is in a sort of haphazard manner. I don’t consistently release new updates every week or anything and that limits me from reaching my full potential. At my full potential I would like to be able to produce a game like Into the dungeon(and have it 100% complete) within a few months. Imagine if I could release 3 100% complete, Into the dungeon sized games each year. I know I can do that level of work at my peak but sustaining peak performance everyday of the year over the long term is hard for me. That is why I am developing this new schedule to help me get there.