{"id":588,"date":"2015-03-22T15:37:58","date_gmt":"2015-03-22T19:37:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bootdiskrevolution.com\/?p=588"},"modified":"2015-08-23T14:27:39","modified_gmt":"2015-08-23T18:27:39","slug":"indie-dev-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bootdiskrevolution.com\/NEW_BLOG\/indie-dev-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Indie Dev Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

Quick note: this week I got the second-last level of Bleed 2 to alpha!! Yeah, it happened really fast. I had a lot of work done on it beforehand.\u00a0\u00a0 :D<\/p>\n

Now, on to the topic:<\/p>\n

I’ve been to a couple PAXes<\/a> and they each had multiple panels — with multiple panelists! — all about a “day in the life of an indie dev.” To me, this suggests that the average person has a rather romanticized idea of what indie development is like. I’m sure that it varies (and maybe I just need to go to more swanky indie dev parties) but I thought I’d take a moment and describe what the experience is like for me, just in case you had any fanciful notions about it.<\/p>\n

The simple truth is there’s not that much to it. Every day I wake up, eat breakfast, sit down at my workstation here and get to it.<\/p>\n

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Fun fact: the Xbox 360 is from my days making XBLIGs. As of late it has sadly been demoted to merely a monitor stand.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n

I’d guess that I spent 50% of my time writing code, 25% making art, 15% playtesting, and the other 10% doing miscellaneous stuff like writing blog posts or checking emails (which I often forget to do anyways, oops!) Sometimes someone sends me a troubleshooting question, or occasionally wants to do an interview or whatever, but it’s mostly just sitting here, doing work.<\/p>\n

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Dual monitors make everything better.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You can see the hardware isn’t that much either — dual monitors make work a lot easier, but other than that it’s just a mouse and keyboard. I’ve also got a high-tech notebook (with state-of-the-art lined pages!) where I brainstorm ideas and plan things out, like difficult coding tasks or ideas for boss visuals. It’s been two years, so at this point it’s nearly filled with Bleed 2.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I actually own some other equipment, like a cheap tablet and a MIDI keyboard, but I rarely (if ever) use them. Pretty much all you need is right there in that pic, except for…<\/p>\n

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The spoilery whiteboard of legend! Gotta remember to redeem my Club Nintendo coins. That stuff’s important, man.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The whiteboard! I mainly keep a list of short-term goals and a count of my work hours on here. These help maintain sense of direction and motivation — it’s really satisfying filling in the hours, or wiping off an item as it’s completed. I aim to work a minimum of 35 hours a week, and I do my best to give myself Sundays off (other than blog posting) so I don’t totally burn out.<\/p>\n

(The x’s are to indicate I did an hour of guitar practice that day — I hope to get my skills to a point where I can add real instruments to the Bleed 2 soundtrack… but we’ll see about that.)<\/p>\n

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Some of my spreadsheets! I bet you’re thrilled right now.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I also keep a whole bunch of spreadsheets to manage myself and my project. For instance, I’ve got one for my progress on bosses, one for the hours I work each week, one for tracking the amount of money I’m spending (something that’s probably generally important, but I suspect even more so when you work for yourself) etc, etc, etc.<\/p>\n

And… yeah. That’s really about it! Of course there are emotional highs and lows — you run into problems, you get something cool working, etc — but the vast, VAST majority of it is simply showing up and maintaining your work ethic (which can be a lot harder than it sounds) so you can get to the ultimate moment where you have a completed game that you can share with the world.<\/p>\n

The glamorous life of indie game development: exposed!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Quick note: this week I got the second-last level of Bleed 2 to alpha!! Yeah, it happened really fast. I had a lot of work done on it beforehand.\u00a0\u00a0 :D Now, on to the topic: I’ve been to a couple PAXes and they each had multiple panels — with multiple panelists! — all about a […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bleed-2"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootdiskrevolution.com\/NEW_BLOG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootdiskrevolution.com\/NEW_BLOG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootdiskrevolution.com\/NEW_BLOG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootdiskrevolution.com\/NEW_BLOG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootdiskrevolution.com\/NEW_BLOG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=588"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootdiskrevolution.com\/NEW_BLOG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":599,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootdiskrevolution.com\/NEW_BLOG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588\/revisions\/599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootdiskrevolution.com\/NEW_BLOG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootdiskrevolution.com\/NEW_BLOG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootdiskrevolution.com\/NEW_BLOG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}