Yeah baby; The War Of Art is on, son!
Has it really been a month since I posted? That's some heavy procrastination, but this morning I actually started on the main code of Lanturn. I didn't get very far except to have a graphic sprite, page flipping, main loop timing, and rough arrow-based controls for moving the player around the screen. However, as if inspired by serendipity, I turned over on my air mattress after awakening and checked my LG 420G for the time (I don't have any clocks in the bedroom) ... 6:00am.
Holy shit! In case you're wondering about context, I had assured Chris and others that I would wake myself up at that exact time and thus get some solid work on my projects fit in before trekking off to ye olde day job. However, I kept my alarm at 6:30 because I didn't think I'd be able to do it. Yesterday, for example, I got up around 8:30 and barely dragged myself to the bus stop. Resistance broke me over its knee and the excuses piled up like shit in a clogged toilet ... daylight savings messed up my internal timer, I was up until midnight after seeing Pocket Panda at Chop Suey in Seattle (awesome band), etc. etc.
Even after the initial burst of motivation I had to eat, feed the cats, clean their litter box due to a napalm bomb they (Buu likely) left rebelliously unburied, shower, etc. and by the time I sat down it was 6:30. I noodled around with this or that, burned an audio CD (the only way to get MP3's onto your Xbox 360's hard drive -- total B.S.), figured out how to calculate the optimal array size for graphic sprites, and finally started to roll on the program structure itself. Prior to that and during my morning activities, my brain shot off in a hundred directions and ideas poured in like chicken noodle soup for the soul of resistance. All of these things were pulling me away from the main task at hand and it took real effort and a very basic physical stance (e.g. sitting down and opening GW-BASIC) to stay and fight.
The more I do this, the more I see the same truths re-exposed and wonder when they'll penetrate my thick skull. At the beginning of the game creation process it's totally fine to brainstorm all to high hell but once you start, the results really must revolve around the most simplistic mechanics possible or starting it goes nowhere. To bring up Lanturn as my current example, I had all kinds of mostly arbitrary ideas based around the effect of lighting and creepiness, but now it has come down to what Chris accurately labeled "red-light, green-light". In fact, I'm just gonna go with that and try to make it fun. Effects, like a fire title, must be secondary because they are only the frosting and not the cake and the cake must not be a lie.
Another thing that's helpful is sticking to my limited guns and completely disregarding any concept of code reuse. The ideal is fantastic, but the reality is that the first steamy pile is not worth re-using except as a prototype model. Space Escape is serving me well as a base for copy and paste, but a lot of it needs tweaking and better organization. There's always a better way and locking yourself into a single piece of code before you've locked yourself into the habit of creation is self-defeating.
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