[v1.24] – 2022-08-09
Added
- Made a shit ton of progress on Ex Nihilo, changelog is over here
- NEW BLOG -> blog.randy.gg
- Added new table-driven code generation pattern into my brain
Removed
- Now only eating 1 meal a day (dinner) and loading that up. Focus is now like a laser beam all throughout the day – midday lunchtime crash has been removed.
- No longer live streaming – takes up way too much mental energy, even without looking at chat and being completely silent. The difference is night and day for me.
Changed
- My attitude towards work. I realised I don’t work enough and that I need to knock it up a whole ass order of magnitude if I want to realise my goals.
- No longer using 4coder, switched back over to VS (more dets in /programming segment)
Fixed
- “i cAn ONly dO 3 hOUrs oF dEEp wOrK eACh DaY!!!” was just a pure coping mechanism of mine. Putting more hours in each day means more work gets done. period.
G’DAY!
I’m gonna stop apologising each week for not being exactly on time, these will be ready when they’re ready lol. I got a little too wrapped up in programming last week, which is by no means a bad thing.
Anyway, LET’S GET CRACKIN.
/res
- Absolutely brilliant podcast episode with John Carmack
- This AMAZING podcast ep with Alex Hormozi (a man that earns 100mil / year)
- Currently reading a game design book, I’ll let you know if it’s worth it once I’ve finished.
Sorry for the lack of resources over the last few weeks – I actually completely forgot to share the stuff I’ve been consuming until someone in the Discord pointed it out to me (thx for the reminder homie).
/blog
Pack it in bois; I’ve finally found the perfect workflow for writing and publishing blog posts.
I won’t go into too many implementation details (proceeds to explain the entire stack), but it just uses blot.im with a Git repository. I have a single folder in my Obsidian vault that is my entire blog with all the posts and pages in the .md format. When I’m ready to update the blog after writing, I hit a single hotkey and that folder gets pushed up to a git repository which Blot then uses to generate the entire static site.
It’s fucking amazing and I now have absolutely 0 excuses to not write.
There are also comments on each post, so if you’ve got something to say or add after reading a post, that’s the place to put it.
The main reason I love this workflow so much is that all my writing is done within Obsidian, which is an app I already use every single day for note-taking. Having a decent link-based system is amazing for long-term gains.
Here’s a good entry point if you’re new to it and are interested.
This new blog is something that’ll compound exponentially across time (future-proofed with the .md format & wiki-links), alongside (and even intertwined with) my existing private Obsidian vault.
I’m excited to starting pumping out posts again. I’ll continue putting my most important ones in the changelog each week, but here’s the .rss feed if you prefer using a reader (I personally use Inoreader since it’s a good free one).
Sidenote: This is also how I consume my YouTube content nowadays. I just directly subscribe to the channels that I really want to watch which acts as my own “personal algorithm” – instead of just consuming whatever the bottomless YouTube pit rams down my throat (this is also how I finally managed to kill the shit outta my YT addiction).
/programming
On the programming side of things, I’ve internalised yet another really useful pattern of Ryan’s. He goes into depth with the explanation of it here and it makes use of a great code generation tool he wrote for C called MetaDesk. Highly recommend looking into it if you’re programming in C.
Personally, I’m in the middle of switching my Pixel types & Attributes over the table pattern in MetaDesk so I can continue with a wall I hit due to maintaining too many enums manually.
In other programming-related news – I’ve just switched back to using Visual Studio as my code editor instead of 4coder.
I just got fed up with a few quirks and bugs in 4coder, without any desire to go into the platform layer and fix them because I know I’ll be changing editors in the future anyway.
Also, I was tired of switching out to a different debugging program (usually VS itself) when I wanted to step through code. This switch meant that I had to strip away a bit of that basic text editor pride of “I can just debug it in my head” or “I don’t need a good autocomplete” which in reality was just fucking idiotic. Highly integrated tools like VS exist for a reason, even if they don’t boot in 0.0000001ms and look ugly.
It’s not quite as minimal and sleek as 4coder, but that’s the price I’m paying for a pretty great efficiency boost.
To embody the Visual Studio spirit, I will now exclusively be using light mode.
/work
I have been an absolute fucking machine this past week, oh my god.
At the high level, it was just about giving myself permission to work a lot more, which I talked about in my recent blog post.
At another level, it has been my stability and consistency with my routine. I’m in a stable environment and I haven’t been moving around at all. That’ll change come this Thursday, but oh well.
Another main contributing factor has been my crystal clear direction in life. I have taken everything in my life that doesn’t serve “how do I make good games” and thrown it in the trash. 99% of the media that I consume is now oriented around this question, and there are absolutely 0 endless social feeds in my life now.
All my podcasts, videos, and books that I consume, are now related to game dev (game design specifically). Full immersion.
Yet another big change has been my diet. I’m only eating one meal a day at dinner time and this has provided me with a laser-like focus throughout the day while I’m in a fasted state. I’m just barreling along like a freight train without any real energy dips.
ANOTHER massive idea contribution been the simple idea of making my next game dev task as easy as humanly possible – providing a nice hook / entry point back into the work is very useful. Before I finish up my task for the session, I’ll intentionally stop right before the finish line and give myself an easy and clear pick-up point for the next session. This idea was thanks to Terry, who also happens to be the main catalyst for me getting the BMAC group together. Thank u t-dog.
All of these variables have added up to me feeling like this last week has been the most productive I’ve been in a long, long time.
If I had to boil the reason down to one thing though…
/BMAC
The Big Monkey Apex Cult is in full swing.
Thanks to everyone who applied; I’m always looking for new members, but this first intake is done and dusted.
My main criteria for this group is – you have to be full-time, working realistically towards shipping a game, and highly highly highly dedicated.
There were a lot of really dedicated people who weren’t quite full-time or were working more on the engine tech side of things or on broader programming applications. I didn’t want y’all who didn’t quite meet the criteria to feel like you were missing out though, so I’ve created a secondary group which also doubles as a bit of an incubator for the main server.
It’ll still be a closed invite-only group, with the same goals / layout as the main one, just for a wider group of folks. It’s still programming focused and leaning more towards the game dev side of things though – we’ll be sending out invites soon.
If you didn’t apply last week, we’ll continue taking applications for this secondary server over here.
Again, thanks to everyone who took an interest, there’s something really special about seeing so many people dedicated to improving their craft.
We’ve built out a really great group of peeps. The sheer amount of value coming out from us gathering together and talking about how best to move forward with game dev is absolutely astronomical.
/life
I’m honestly kind of in shock at how productive and focused I’ve been this week – and it’s not even the kind of “starting a new project motivation boost” that I’ve felt so many times in the past.
It feels deeper than that. It feels like I might genuinely be able to get my working hours up to an unfathomable amount each week.
You’ve heard of The 4-hour Work Week, but now get ready for The 100-hour Work Week.
The one variable out of my control at the moment is my enviornment/routine, but once I fly off to my next country in a couple of weeks and get settled in… Boy oh boy, will I be off to the races or what.
I can feel a new personal major version update coming soon. Exciting times.
I haven’t redeemed my monthly shameless plug token in a while – so if you’d like to support myself and these changelogs, the best way of doing so is by buying me a coffee, which is a more polite and roundabout way of saying by sending me some money.
You can do so over here.
Everything I create is 100% free (these changelogs, my source code, my future games / tech demos) and they always will be, regardless of whether or not you donate.
Partly because I don’t want to lock my work behind a pay-wall only for those who can afford it. But mainly because I’m just grateful that there are people like you out there who are interested in my journey.
I know these changelogs aren’t my old mass entertainment green-screened devlogs you probably first started following me through – but they are what allow me to focus 99% of my efforts into what truly matters most to me in this world – which is figuring out how to design and create really solid games.
I’m just glad that I’m able to do that while continuing to update you via this simple medium.
Donations go a long way in helping me continue to do this whole – ass in chair, head down, solely focused on the craft – type of work sustainably, but they’re by no means necessary on your part.
I’ll survive, no matter what.
Thanks for tuning into this week’s monolithic CL. Wishing you all the best for the week ahead.
Go grab it by the balls.
– randy