Coding At Five in the Morning

(Reposted from www.macguffingames.com.)

Since my last update, progress was slow for a while.  Life took a hectic turn in general, but the real killer was the time shift at the end of daylight savings.  Previously, I could get up at 5am and know I had until at least 6am - maybe 7am - to work.  The time shift simultaneously had the kids waking up earlier and me being more tired when they did.  That took a good couple weeks to sort out, but happily things are now starting to work better.  By which I mean, I'm getting work done.

These mornings look like this:

This usually has me off and at work between 9 and 9:30am.

There are also the odd evenings where I work, but this arrangement allows me to mostly reserve that time for everything else - spending time with my wife, household responsibilities, and whatever else comes along.  It's a big relief not being forced to decide between those things and game development on a regular basis.

During these sessions, I've been working on two projects - Project Quigley, and a small game I'm making for Peter for Christmas.  Peter is a big fan of double decker busses, and I'm making him a simple Unity game where a tap will move the bus, and it loads and unloads passengers.  Since that is coming along well, I'll soon be switching the majority of my attention back to Quigley.  I'll have more to say about the bus game soon - there's a chance it will get proper art and sound and go up in the App Store.

Quigley is at a point where I'm putting out the short vision doc I have for it out to some designer friends and soliciting feedback.  Simultaneously, I'm starting work on some low-level level features I'll need for the game.  First up is the 2d map, which we'll be coating in Angband tiles.