Engines 0.2: I Hate Distractions

Ok, so we have our GDW teams all set and our game idea worked out. We have everything we need to get started on making a game. We have so little time and all I want to do is sit there for hours every day working on it. But I can't. I have classes and assignments which don't pertain to GDW and this saddens me a little. It breaks my focus and makes me much less efficient. It also takes time to complete assignments. Precious time I could be putting into working on the game.

Lectures aren't a bad thing. You can learn so much just by listening. I just find that I am much less productive during the school year than during the summer. There were few people in the lab in the summer, giving me a nice, dark, quiet place to work. And there was no reason to leave, so I could stay as long as need be. Walking from class to class, then having to get settled all over again, searching for somewhere ideal to work, and taking time to do assignments slows down our game production.

Another problem is the way my brain works. I keep a list of the things I need to do in a .txt file in my head. Unfortunately, I have to constantly keep it open so that I can see it. This takes away RAM from my daily tasks. The longer the list, the less RAM there is for me to put to use actually doing the work (my mind does not do very well with multi-threading so I have to pretty much just do one task at a time). If I have to focus my attention on 5 different assignments, keep track of when they are all due and what I should be working on, while still remembering to complete ......the Game Engines homework questions, I lose my train of thought (just like I did back there, while writing this sentence).

It would be so nice to methodically take each task and use my entire CPU power to complete it, then delete it from my mental list and move on to the next task. Unfortunately, this is a luxury we do not have. The closest we can get to this is spending all Saturdays and Sundays in front of a computer, working undisturbed.

Our games could be so much better if we just sat and worked on them all day every day. Sadly, we still have much to learn so we have to send most of our time learning how to better make games instead of actually making them.