8 Days on #1GAM left, am I clucking insane?

So there are only 8 days left in the first Month #1GAM challenge and I joined 12 days late.

So I basically committed to doing my first game in a year long challenge in only 19 days?!?!  Am I mother clucking insane?!

The current state of the game is barely playable right now.

 I guess I say "barely" because I have high standards.  Technically speaking the only things missing are the following:


1: Player can not die
2: There is no 'end of level' process.
3: No end of game / highscore record keeping / load next level sequencing
4: I have no real 'levels' to speak of yet.
5: The only sound I have made is the sound track.

I purposefully wasn't doing item number 1 because its easier to test if I'm not constantly dead.

I did benefit greatly from the holiday weekend here in the US. Technically a 3-day weekend but I took an extra half day off on Friday to help pad it out just a bit more.

Part of my challenge that helps qualify me as insane is this is only my 4th game I've ever programmed.

Literally 90% of the things I am implementing in this game I have never done before, I have no idea how to do it, I am totally making it up as I go along!!

Literally sheer force of will is the only thing that gets me through on a daily basis in this project. I literally refuse to be distracted or give up.

I had a reasonable headache last night and instead of just throwing the project out the window for the night I did  Illustrator artwork on my Zombie character.

The screen shot at the beginning of the post shows the character in his earliest stage.

The shot below shows him currently:

And I pretty much think he looks like crap.  I can do better.  I can do waaaay better.

The problem is I have 8 days left.

8 days.

EIGHT DAYS.

Basically at this point it has to be good enough, unless by some miracle I finish with time left I can go back and revisit him.

He has to be done - that's it. That's the rules folks.  Get it done.  Get it done.  GET IT DONE.

I'm getting it done but this is painful shit.  I'm a perfectionist. Stuff I think is sub-par does not sit well with me at all.

But honestly I have to be productive. I have to get stuff done. I need this. I need to learn how to ship products.

I took an life drawing class in Phoenix when I worked at a community college there, and the teacher taught us gesture drawing as one of the first lessons.

I am one of those guys that starts with the smallest details and does everything down to laser precision for every single pixel or line.

Gesture drawings.. get this .. she timed us. We had to be done in 10 SECONDS!  ???

Yeah so .. I got better at them.  I actually like it now but I still take longer than 10 seconds.

I helped me learn to do iterative work. To work as part of a process instead of the first thing I put down has to be the final draft.

And I need to learn that works in programming also.

So here I am : the perfectionist in painful learning/growing process having to let go and just get stuff done.

8 days? What the hell am I doing here blogging...

 - punchy out

Yes that is me , punching myself in the face , just to make a cool album cover spoof.