Something I learned today: Over-architecting is a form of premature optimization.

"Uh, what exactly do you mean by that?"

If you've got a fixed use case to build something, you don't need to make a generalized implementation. Just build the dirty implementation with hard coded variables and values fi…

I've titled this post "Resisting Temptation" because it seems to be something I really need to remind myself to do more often. When you're building a prototype, as I should be trying to do, you don't want to spend a lot of time on stuff that doesn't matter. Right? ...right?! It makes no sense to bu…

I'm excited enough to post an early screenshot of my prototype. I just got dynamic directional lighting to work! I have a sun which arcs across the sky and acts as a directional light source with color being dependent on its position in the sky. The sky color is also a function of the sun position …

It's been a busy month. I've bolded the topic heads so you can skip around.

Intel Buzz Workshop
The Intel sponsored seminar at Digipen was kind of a waste of time. The fact that it's sponsored by Intel should tell you a bit about the tone of the seminar (technical sales pitch and evangelism). The fir…

For the first half of July, I was on vacation in northern europe visiting family and friends. As expected, that put a big speed bump into progress. That's okay though, I don't really have a hard due date to hit (yet).

It's always tough to pick up work where I left off after getting back from vacatio…

This week is a bit unusual. I'm taking a planned vacation on Friday and will be gone for two weeks. All I see is costly expenses and that's causing me to grit my teeth a bit, but I'm trying not to be too concerned about it. Life is too short to not take a moment to relax and enjoy it, right?

So, I f…

?Tuesday:
It's Tuesday night, I'm sipping a beer and barely feeling it. Let's do this!

My artist (Dan) and I started building the initial prototype for our game this week. The first thing we did is put together a user interface storyboard which explains how the magic casting system works in real time…

These are my reflections on the second week of my new indie studio. I wrote them at the end of each day of the week while things were fresh on my mind. It's a bit unedited and long, so bear with me.

Links to previous weeks: [Week 0] [Week 1]

Monday:
I spent the early half of the day trying to figure o…

The first week is over. The work days certainly feel a lot longer and much more busy. I thought I'd spend this journal entry detailing a few of the first week issues that I experienced and how I worked through them.

On Sunday afternoon, the day before the first day, I spent most of the day building …

Well, I'm taking the dive and going full on into starting my own game dev studio as an indie developer. I'm paying entirely out of pocket and have zero business income. It's got me a bit nervous.

I hired my first 3D artist/animator last week. He was asking for $36k/year, I counter offered a much hig…