Another Sabbatical, what a year.

Here comes some ramble; So, this year I had so much planned. I accomplished some things but not most of them. There is one thing I really need to focus my attention on; Geruterra. I've got a couple side projects I will keep working on now but my primary focus of effort will be on Geruterra.

I've spent the past month trying to figure out what this game looks like, I even bought the Tamagotchi game boy games for research. I could emulate them but owning them (especially the third one) is better. I also plan to set aside some money to buy an example of each generation of tamagotchi over the years as well as an Uni.

I have of course spent some of this time playing some games. It seems like I mostly avoid games through the year and then some time around autumn just bury myself in them. I analyze them and pick them apart to figure out how they work and why some systems are the way they are. I try to enjoy them but some games fail to really draw me in and this too I analyze.

It is strange, even scary how much effort I put into the analysis and development of toys.

There is yet one more game I want to tackle in this off-time period, Armored Core 6. This is a game I didn't think I would ever get when Dark Souls became successful. I am truly happy to see this series did not die as it is definitely one of my favorites. Once I have finished my time with that I will be returning to active work rather than passive research.

I am actively avoiding industry news, actually all news in general if I can help it. Knowing these things has done me no good in my life and often there is a negative focus in the news as a rule since that drives engagement and engagement is money for these folks. I have enough negative crap in my head as it is.

One downside of these sabbaticals is they most often end in depression, possibly because I need progress and challenge constantly in order to feel like my time is spent with any meaning. After this I don't think I will be taking any more time off until I have something playable out there. An alpha or playable prototype at least. This I suspect will take me until December at the least so I think I should be busy until then. The only way I might stop working for a while is illness or finally moving.

I've got everything set up for development now, some work remains to be done on devops but I think that will evolve as the project grows and I doubt it will ever be in a complete state so to speak. The only thing left to do is write up some design documentation for the first set of systems rather than just the broad overview I am currently working from.

With that done I will be back to work September 1, I assume. I should have finished my messing around with Armored Core by then. This whole time I have been feeling the pull back to the office growing stronger by the day and resisting it is only making me more and more depressed.

We've had a lot of close calls over this last couple years, each one taking me away from working on projects sometimes long enough for me to convince myself that those projects were a bad idea. This time I have not felt the need to jump from the project and I am using bits of all those old projects that have fallen to build the framework of this one, so I suppose I didn't waste my time after all.

In the coming month I plan to return to daily posts and spend some of my spare time working on my side projects. I find that I often can't figure out anything to do with my time off as sometimes I just would rather keep programming or drawing but I have set a time in my brain to stop for the day. I don't think I should be stopping if I want to keep going. I should probably not work on the main project as I am likely to start doing more harm than good in that time but if it's for a side project I don't have to worry as much.

At any rate; For the next week and some days I will be working in the dev books, writing out a clear plan for the systems I need to build over the next few months so I don't hit a point where I just wake up one day not knowing what to do next. Sure the plan will change during the execution but I will have a framework to work from and that's all a plan has to be.

I'll also set myself a daily schedule with actual breaks this time rather than telling myself I will take a break in 15 minutes only for the rest of the day to pass without so much as a small break.

I'll see you back in the lab.