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The 5 AM Challenge – Early Morning Game Development

Introduction

Ok, so this project is not just about what I’m doing to learn Game Development – There are plenty of people out there on the internet and YouTube who can do a better job at that than me.

A core part of this project is to test the ideas and strategies touted by the productivity Gurus of this world. Can they help me become the type of person that can stick to learning game development this year,- and even help me reach my goal in a more efficient way? 

One idea that pervades the successful/productivity stereotype is waking up early in the morning. I mean really early. Like between 3 -6 am.  

Why Bother Waking Up Early?

Famous celebrities and CEOs apparently get up at ungodly hours to keep ahead of the game. Apple’s Tim Cook wakes up at 3.45 am, Avon Chief Andrea Jung is up By 5 am and Mark Wahlberg is up a 3 am and in the Gym within the hour, all before a day of filming. 

Now whether you believe that these wake-up times are really true, or perhaps you doubt that ‘normal’ people can function (let alone be productive) at those hours, there is something appealing about the early-riser/successful stereotype. I remember watching Rocky as a kid and feeling inspired to wake up at 5 am, drink raw eggs, and then go out for a run.  (I really did! It was awful, I won’t elaborate further). 

Whole books have been centered around this whole idea: The ‘Miracle Morning and Robin Sharma’s 5-am Club to name but two.  It’s a really popular and attractive idea that can be sold as a strategy to help you achieve more!  But does it really work?

Can It Help Me Be More Productive and Relaxed?

I really like the idea of having some solid time to get those important tasks done before everyone in the house wakes up. Especially as a parent! Once my 20-month daughter is up, it’s difficult to get anything done. Usually, we play her favorite game of “let’s move the kitchen chairs and climb on them, and daddy will get me down and move them back” 200 times a day. 

This means I end up working in the evenings. Which isn’t great because I’m usually unable to focus at this time. I am often quite tired and feel guilty for not spending that time with my wife.  I will likely still be tired in the mornings but at least I can spend the evenings relaxing ( I hope..)

Challenge Time – Ok Let’s Test This!

So here are the rules of the challenge. 

  • For the rest of this week, I am going to wake up between 4.30 am and 5.30 am
  • I will have 30 mins to get showered have a coffee and go for a quick walk. 
  • Then I will then work until 8 am. 
  • Bedtime will be between 8 pm and 9 pm. 
  • This should give me 2 – 3 hours each day. 

The first few days I expect to be hell and probably quite unproductive. But I will still try to outline what I expect to get done in these times. 

I will experiment in dividing my time like in this way: 

  • 1 hour of Game Development Study. 
  • 1 hour of Game Dev in Year YouTube Channel.
  • 1 hour flexible. 

I hoping that after the initial tiredness wears off, front-loading my day will help me focus on moving forward and help me feel more relaxed later in the day. 

Oh dear.. what have I signed myself up to….🤦‍♂️

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Devlog #1 – GameDev in a Year Has Begun- (3/365)

Game controller on desk with laptop and monitor.
Author: Darrell Bean

This is going to be the first in a super-chilled series of Devlog posts updating readers on progress and setting my intentions for the following week. Super chilled that is unless I’m super-stressed from the project…ha. If your new to the project then read this post first.

Summary (7 min read)

This post will go over what I achieved this week and what ideas I have for improving my game development journey. In the end, I announce next week’s game development challenge. The resources I mention are:

This Weeks Wins: Video, First Unity Tutorial, and a Blog Post.

The first video is live on the YouTube channel, Check it out here.

The audio quality isn’t the best, so I apologize for that – it was 6-am in the morning and our 20-month old daughter was asleep in the next room 🤫. I expect it’s going to be like that a lot this year – I will have to use whatever time is available to me.

Also, this morning I filmed and went through my first Unity tutorial. ☺️
Initially, I started on the Unity Foundations tutorial on the Learn Unity website. But quickly realized it was too complex for me. I wasn’t interested in manipulating parts of an already built mini-game. I wanted to learn the UI and build something very basic- from scratch. That way I would know what all the moving parts were.

So after a quick google and I found this Tutorial from Brackeys. It’s no wonder this guy 1.41M subs. That video alone has nearly 6 million views at the time of writing. The tutorial was perfect. I got to move a block around the screen, and change a few basic settings. Exactly what I needed. People who make tutorials take note. Trying to fit everything in one video scares off people like me. When I see a 1-hr+ tutorial video I immediately get overwhelmed.- Thanks Brackeys. 👍

Realisation. Be Aware of Any Potential Optimisations Early.

At this early stage, I’ve realized it’s important for me to be aware of any possible optimizations for my workflow and study. It’s better I do it now before bad habits set in. Here is a couple I have highlighted.

1: Shortcuts and Hotkeys. – ( Two Resources)

Investing in learning the shortcuts and hotkeys now will save a ton of time when navigating complex tools like Unity. Think of extra milliseconds of time wasted when using a mouse. Okay, so a few milliseconds here and there is nothing right? Well, imagine how much that will accumulate over the year of this project. That’s a lot of time.
Here are two great resources I used to learn the shortcuts: UsetheKeyboard.com and the official Unity documentation.

2: Organisation – (Better Workflow Habits)

Alright, so I’m not the most organized person in the world. Given the scale of the project that doesn’t bode well. I’m not only learning game development but I’m also uploading videos to Youtube, posting to this blog, and being a Dad/Husband. I may not have a job right now but I still don’t have enough hours in the day. Staying organized is a must.

The mistakes I have made in the past are trying to be organized at two less-than-optimal times. Either after a lot of entropy has has built up. Which results in me to spending ages organising weeks or even sometimes months of acculimalted mess – and usually just giving up and sticking my head back in the sand. Or, I waste time setting up elaborate systems before something has even gotten underway. These often end up being useless and/or unnecessarily complex.

So when do I think is the best time to develop an organization system? Well now! In the early stages before complexity sets in. Yes, I had something basic in place before the project started, but I’m adapting it as I go. These early stages will probably see the most changes. But as time goes and as I adjust to the project, it should become more optimized.

I am using Notion to handle all my planning and tracking of what topics I am learning and what videos/blogs I need to work on. It has an amazing feature where you can turn your task databases into a calendar view. Really helpful for planning ahead.

Also, I’m trying to build basic workflow habits, like immediately transferring my footage onto my external hard drive, naming it, and importing it into the Final cut Pro X (my video editing software). That way it’s all ready to go when I have some time to edit.

Again just like the shortcuts/hotkeys a bit of investment now will save a ton of time in the future. One tip is to keep a notepad handy and jot down any repetitive tasks. Then at the end of every session, I think about how I can eliminate or speed these up for next time. Personally, I try to keep in mind James Clear’s ‘Laws of Behaviour Change’ from the book Atomic Habits. How can I ‘Make it Easy’ and how can I Make It Obvious? Sometimes it’s as simple as creating a folder for your screen recordings to stop them from building up on your desktop (#NoteToSelf)

Next Week (w/c – Mon 5th July)

My basic method on this project is to focus on the week and maximize it. Annual thinking will trick me into believing I have plenty of time. SoI will be setting out the challenges in this section.

If you are new to game development then maybe you can also give this challenge a shot and earn some (fictitious) XP….wait isn’t all XP fictitious? Well, you know what I mean.

Current Focus: Learning Unity Basics

Currently, my main focus is learning the tools – in my case that’s Unity. After that, I can worry about getting better at building games.

This Weeks Challenge :

  • Complete 5 Brackey’s Tutorials In 7 days. – from ‘How to Make a Video Game Playlist’ (+100xp for each Tutorial)

Thanks For now,

D.

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Challenge: Can I Make a Web-based Game In One Week?

*** UPDATE***


After just one week I made a small one-level web-based game, using javascript, CSS and HTML. It’s not super sophisticated but it proved that it can be done with very little web programming experience and knowledge.

This challenge has been so fun and I recommend anyone to try and make a web-based fame. I hope you have fun playing the imaginatively titled Desert Man.

*** CHECK OUT THE FINISHED GAME HERE!!! ***

So I am not an experienced coder, web developer, or games developer. For the last couple of months, I have dabbled in a bit of coding, picking up bits of HTML, CSS, and Javascript – mostly through YouTube tutorials.

I started doing it because it was fun! I had hoped that one day it would lead to me making a simple game of my own.

So with very little experience, I wanted to see if can make a web-based game in just one week?

Photo by Hello Lightbulb on Unsplash

Background – Why I am Doing This Challenge

Before I jump into the details I want to address the 2 important reasons why I have set this challenge. (feel free to skip over this if you just want to know the challenge details. )

1: Taking my own advice.

At the beginning of February, I wrote a post entitled: When You Feel Like Giving Up, Challenge Yourself!

In it, I suggest that one way of overcoming a plateau in our projects is to set ourselves a challenge and announce it publicly. This helped me overcome a problem I had with uploading blog posts and making YouTube content.

It’s all too easy to give advice to others and never take our own medicine -I am no different!
The internet is full of people giving unsolicited advice, offering up solutions to all of our life’s problems – big and small. After all most of us use the internet as a question-answering machine.

So it’s time to put my own advice to the test.

2: The Illusion of Progress

Like I said at the beginning of the post, I have been dabbling in web coding in the hope that I could make some kind of game. Every couple of days I would pick up my laptop, work through a few tutorials and try to learn something new. Somedays I would just play around build random components of a website or game using TextEdit and a browser.

It was really fun. And It felt like I was making progress.

But that’s the problem!
How do I know If I was actually making progress? Was I any closer to building even a basic game of my own?

At first this kind of fun, explorative learning was necessary. I had no idea where to start or what I had to do. So I was trying to poke around and learn enough about the subject to see if making a game was even feasible.

During that time I picked up some valuable information:

  • I learned what languages webpages were coded in – HTML, CSS, and Javascript.
  • Some useful tools- VSCode and its Extensions.
  • Online Learning Resources – Youtube channel, W3 schools, and Codecademy.

With every tutorial completed, I felt like I was getting better and better. But it’s all too easy to get stuck in this explorative stage because it’s easy and familiar. Worst of all, it gives us the illusion that we are making progress. If we are not careful, the fun and excitement will wear off and we could be left wondering what we actually achieved.

One Solution – Set a Challenge Testing your progress

Much like a video game, your progress is measured by how much closer you are to achieving your objective. For me, that somewhat loose objective was to make a game.

So the only way I can evaluate my progress is to see whether I can actually build a game. If not, then this challenge should reveal my weak areas. I can then focus on those areas and try again.

This is why tests and exams are so important. As much as we may hate them, if done correctly, they can provide us with valuable feedback to direct our learning. If we didn’t have a feedback mechanism then we could end wasting a lot of time learning things that get us no closer to completing our objective.

The Challenge: Build a Web Game in a Week

  • To design and build a basic web game using HTML, CSS, and Javascript.
  • It must take user input and have a win objective.
  • It must require some user skill/difficulty in order to be fun.
  • Timeframe – Friday 22nd – Thursday 28th. ( 7 days)

If you are interested in following along I will post some updates on here and on my YouTube Channel.

Thanks.

D.