works of wanderlust

Tag: convention

  • game con-spiration

    I’ve been a lazy game developer lately. 

    A couple months ago I was proudly telling people how much progress I was making on Pleck’s Mart. Heck I was logging at least—at least—a couple hours every day adding to the code base and debugging the game and making art and then sitting at the cafe writing story for the damn thing.

    I also wrote a couple months back about how I made some silly choices around leaning into a dead-end part time job that was supposed to round the rough edges off my days but instead wrapped me up into grocery store drama and derailed a bunch of personal motivation in my off-hours, plentiful tho they were.

    In short tho, I haven’t been coding for about two months now.

    Sadly. Realistically. Frustratingly. 

    There is a mental wall in the way, if I’m being honest, because (a) I was just coming up on a challenging bit of code, (b) a new version of the engine came out in the intervening months, and (c) it’s kinda sorta summer and (d) I should be spit-polishing my resume and not making video games.

    But then I went to Game Con this weekend.

    A couple things happened, very passively to be honest, but they happened at Game Con nonetheless.

    First, I got to wander around and talk—actually chat with and talk to—other indie game developers. That’s big. There’s a hundred reasons to go to a convention linked to your hobby, but seriously on or close to the top of that list of reasons should be the simple fact that hanging out with likeminded individuals is inspiring for another long list of reasons. There is a community. There are organizations boosting these efforts… locally. People have trod this path before us and are coming up the path behind us, and that means something.

    Second, I got to finally have a chat with Chris. We’ve been friends for over twenty years now, hung out countless times, vacationed together, stood atop a mountain peak in the sun, and rung in the new years nearly every year of that twenty. He is a legit developer. I mean, he professionally codes for a living, has a business, does community building, and that list goes on. And I sheepishly gave him access to my github repo. We finally got to chat, hanging out in the halls of Game Con, playing some board games and poking at the demo booths, and he wants to help with Pleck’s Mart. What’s our next step, he asked.

    So, it’s monday morning after the gamer inspiration weekend and I’m looking down the day at a question of not if I go down into the basement today to write some code… but when.

    What is the next step?

    As ever, it’s one problem, one line, one version at a time. And if nothing else, looking for that lost momentum.

  • weekend wrap eight

    The last three days have been punctuated by epic thundershowers meaning not only does the lawn now desperately need to be mowed thanks to the rain, but also that it was a good weekend for a time-consuming indoor actitivity.

    This weekend was filled with:

    Games. Anita scored a pair of tickets to the annual Game Con convention over at the expo center, three-day VIP passes, and she apparently had no interest in attending. One ticket to her husband, obviously, but I took the second and spent a huge chunk of the weekend, including Friday, there.

    Friday I got to the con just before lunch, did some of miniatures painting, wandered around, watched a couple demos, and then met up with Chris on his break, who was volunteering there all weekend, and we played some board games in the middle hall.

    I skedattled out of there around five, and chilled with the dog through another thunderstorm as the evening pressed on.

    Saturday I got up and got back to the con to meet Aaron. We did some wandering and product sampling, checked out a lot of the vendor booths and then watched some of the mainstage shows while we ate mediocre poutine. He took off around 2 and I stuck around a little longer to paint another free Warhammer miniature.

    Back home later that afternoon we made dinner and I retreated to the basement to read.

    Sunday morning was a beautiful sunny day and so we logged a nice ten klick run in the river valley.

    Sunday was also a dual event in our house, Karin’s birthday and also Father’s day, so the poor kid was juggling gifts and cards and being in a good mood.

    I had bought Karin a 2 player “duel” variatiaion of another board game we like. Finding good two player games is our new challenge as the parents of a kid just about to launch into university, and we played a couple rounds trying to figure out the rules… then the strategy.

    We walked the dog over to the cafe for something else to do later that afternoon, and then as the evening pressed on we went for a slow but tasty dinner at the nearby sushi place to celebrate the double celebration day.

    And then, just because it had been a busy couple of days, I hunkered down for the rest of the drizzly night to finish off another book in my queue so that I could move onto other things… not that it’s a race or anything.