GameDev Breakdown
GameDev Breakdown
Organization and Productivity
Since the start of the new year I've focused on coordinating content for our listeners that would improve their craft in a more direct and measurable way. We've hit on some popular topics since that time. Thinking like an entrepreneur, promoting your indie game, and accessibility all seemed to resonate with listeners in a much more real way than our previous reactionary gaming news talk and our other AM radio douchebaggery. And that feels good.
To push that momentum even further, we're wandering out into Indie Land to see what problems we can bring back to the lab and, well, break down. What keeps catching my eye lately is indies (and pros) talking about the wide variety of real life problems that stand in the way of putting in project time. And, oh, I get it. John and I are both dads working full-time with separate side hustles and we both still desperately want to gain traction with our first cooperative indie game. We harp on overuse of the phrase "real soon" in this week's show, but believe me, we have to use it a lot too.
That doesn't mean we don't have the answers! We've had to conquer some absolutely wild personal scenarios to achieve what we have professionally and as weekend warrior creators, and I gathered no small amount of wisdom from people infinitely more qualified than us. Our goal this week is to get you past "real soon," and send you back to the battle renewed.
Resources
Organize your project
* Comment your code like a champ - This Medium post does a great job of examining different schools of thought on the topic and shows great examples for inspiration.
* Use source control - Just do it. Get Git. They have great tutorials and it's also free to use their great book.
* Document your check-ins effectively - If it seems like a small detail to worry about, really think over this post.
* Number your releases like the pros - If you never thought or cared about this before, I get it, but be ready for that moment you'll need to enter a seemingly intelligent version number for the benefit of your players in the app stores. Semantic Versioning is a great system for it.
