2024, here be plans

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0xDB
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2024, here be plans

Post by 0xDB »

I will take some time today to think about what I would like to do in 2024. I also want to look back at 2023 a bit... figure out where all the time went...
~ 0xDB ~
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0xDB
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Re: 2024, here be plans

Post by 0xDB »

...so what HAVE I even been doing all 2023?

I know what I've done most of December which was doing routine maintenance and then upgrades on the Amiga1200 I've acquired from ebay (photo story with lots of comments over on my google drive: Amiga1200 pics ) but what happened during the rest of the year?

I remember that I had a pretty solid development phase early 2023 where I started working on a shooter game but I think around March, energy dried out and the project was left far from being finished. I hope I'll pick it up again someday though, I think it has great potential, I just lacked focus and discipline to continue development (well... as usual, depression and adhd also had a part in that).

So from [April, November] I suppose I was mostly just vegetating along but I'll see if I can find any notes/logs which might tell me otherwise.

Oh, one thing is I started collecting Amiga games, already acquired over 30 original big box releases from back in its' heyday, I want to make a photo gallery of those too at some point.

Off to the notes and logs now...what else has been done?

One thing that apparently has not been done was quickly found in my January-2023 notes: I had intended to make mindmaps for different areas of study and practice (art, music, exercise), going to put that forward to the 2024 plans.

A neat little item I made early 2023 is a weekly mini-plan-log-sheet, it often helped me to remember the essentials for any given week and to keep track of short term goals and the very few appointments that I had over the year. It's transparent foil over a paper print, so it can be erased and re-used easily each week: pic of planner thing

other random bits of stuff which got done somehow in 2023:
  • at various dates, simple dust-covers for various pieces of old and new hardware
  • in January, an 8x8@1bpp sci-fi pixel font called Terminal Chonker
  • in February until about mid April, quite intense coding phase working on a shooter game
  • in July, built a desk space expansion to relocate old harware (C64, Amiga stuff) from my retro shrine to my main desk and made heavy use of cable management: old hardware pics
  • in August, cleaned and repaired my brother's Amiga500 (it bugged me that it was rotting away in the non-living-just-storage-area of the attic)
  • in September, mini update to 8x8@1bpp RPG asset pack (some sci-fi icons)
In between those very few things there was a lot of idle time (day in day out just passiveness, insomnia, headaches, low energy, overall poor mood, zero motivation and often too much coffee), two short but intense phases of grinding DiabloIV (at release and at the start of season one) and scattered across the year repeated attempts at establishing routines for regular reading on different topics, for educating myself about and figuring out how to cope with adhd and for physical exercise.

None of that stuck, need to try again in 2024, might work out this time because I switched meds which apart from a heavy withdrawal/change period in December, seem to have an overall positive effect on my activity level.

One more thing I remember is that I had a few periods of struggling with my 3D printer, I enjoyed designing cases for some (all retro hardware related) things but printing them was a hassle each and every time, lost count of how many times over the year I adjusted and recompiled the firmware, re-leveled the bed, cleaned or tried other nozzles and re-assembled various pieces on the printer, quite fed up with the thing.

Now to make plans and collect thoughts for 2024...
~ 0xDB ~
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Gered
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Re: 2024, here be plans

Post by Gered »

2023 for me, like 2020, 2021, and 2022, was mostly crap. But there was at least some light at the end of the tunnel. Started a new job in September and so far so good. It's been over three years since I could honestly say I was at a job that I liked overall and it seems as I look back at the past 3 years, that this "shitty job problem" has had a ridiculously huge negative impact on my mood, motivation and general outlook. I feel it's easier for me to see this now as the past 4 months have been night & day difference for me compared to the previous 3 years combined.

So that's a good start, dare I say, a really good start, as I head into 2024.

The only real plans that I want to make for 2024 are around game dev honestly, and these are going to be fairly loose at that.
  • Get back into doing some game dev, at all. Not going to push myself hard, not going to set a schedule or anything, as anything of that sort will make me anxious and then later on full of self-pity as I inevitably miss the mark here and there. But just doing anything at all would be a good start. This hasn't happened the past ~4 months because I felt like I was devoting a ton of energy into on-ramping at my new-ish job. But as I'm starting to feel a lot more comfortable there, I think I can start to weave in other things in my free time now and not feel like I'm exhausted all the time.
  • Start putting together a proof-of-concept for an adventurey / explorey game I sketched out some plans for about a month ago.
  • At some point in 2024, I want to work on an old-school ray-caster. I have a (very) rough idea what I want to do for this. Nothing super elaborate, but I've really just wanted to do a ray-caster for ages now and 2024 is going to be that year.
  • Resume working/planning on the tower-defense / twin-stick shooter game I've been wanting to do for years now.
  • Participate in at least one 4x4x4 in 2024.
So there's my quick 2024 game dev plans. Booyah.
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Sirocco
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Re: 2024, here be plans

Post by Sirocco »

My plans for 2024 are mostly a continuation of things that didn't get finished last year: *shrugs*

- Finish Revision 2024 demo (I just finished coding the final part an hour ago, so it's down to music and polish now).
- Submit demo in person and visit some friends along the way.
- Pick up some fresh(er) skills and move into different industries.
- Finish Far Afield Raylib port, and then the game.
- Slack like a mofo when I'm not working on any of the above.
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0xDB
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Re: 2024, here be plans

Post by 0xDB »

About three weeks into 2024 and I still do not have any specific plans, just a lose collection of thoughts and might-do project ideas but it's really just an on-going list of notes that I keep around and add-to/subtract-from throughout the daily life of being distracted by the ADHD mind. I transitioned to new medication in December because I felt the old stuff did not help anymore, still getting used to the new meds, plenty of random diffuse irrational agitation and anxiety along the way.

One thing I managed to cross off my list today was updating an inventory sheet of my books that I started a couple of years ago. Only for non-fiction-, fact-, text-, reference- books because I only have a handful of novels and rarely ever read any of those.
~ 0xDB ~
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