Doox

I remember when my school collegue, Vincent Diamante, once mentioned that “To make the result beautiful , the process of it should be beautiful, too.” I don’t recall where he actually quoted it. As game creators we need to focus on the joy of making something rather than the hype of the result. We need to focus on the process of making something and actual quality of it rather than thinking about how it would be received by people. That’s why we should be totally truthful to ourself when it comes to making something we believe.

I want to live my life enjoying and feeling proud of every moment by putting honest efforts on my work rather than thinking about how to be successful out of it. The crazy hypes spoil the whole experience. Isn’t it enough by itself to create something you truely believe in? I mean really!

But , whether it is from the desire toward fame and fortune or not,  worst of all is not doing anything. There’s no excuse on being lazy, man!

Games are usually made by more than one person. Eventhough there are games that are from one-man-band, games are perfected when they are played by users and polished throughout their feedback and it should be done every step of the game development from the prototype until the shipping. All these are quite obvious. But what I want to say is there are processes that must be carefully designed/guided by an author who has a clear idea of the work. Apparently the person doesn’t have to do everything alone but should be able to decide which idea to pick to achieve the main goal of the work. Generally a person who has broad knowledge over different disciplines of game development is able to recognize the overlapped area of seperate categories to boost up the development process and naturally select ideas that stick to the core concept to keep it coherent. But most importantly, the author’s role is tremenously important in terms of maintaining the key idea of the game and doesn’t digress to the ideas that may weaken the uniqueness of the work. So to speak, the lowest common denominator effect.

I believe in colletive effort on a work of art but also I understand how it becomes exponentially complicated to stick to the innovative ideas when so many other non-work-related aspects of the game development have to be met to finish a game. Also I believe just increasing the number of people doesn’t guarantee to speed up the process or increase the quality of the work.

Basically, even without any speculation, games are considered to be for fun or at least has an aspect of entertainment in it. I want to use this appeal as an entertainment media to mainly invite users into the work in a more approachable way. There are not many games that go beyond the mere purpose of entertainment and acheive delivering a message, of the creator’s choice of subject matter, which is naturally emitting throughout the ‘fun’ play of the media. We, as game creators, should deeply ask ourselves one of the most important question.

“If the message you want to deliver out of your work of art could be delivered quite enough or even better through other type of medum such as movie, why would you choose game or interactive media?” I think apparently the answer should be interactivity. As creators of games, we need to find how to deliver our message through the interactivity itself. The interaction happening in the game should be carefully designed to reach the goal of your key ideas. The activity done in game should mean something by itself instead of being used to unlock certain kind of award which is usually cut scenes or more progression in narrative. In this kind of structure, the place where the key messages should be delivered is shifted from the actual interactive experience to a linear experience.

Fishualization improved a lot in ways to detect fish movement and calibrating the settings. Now it has built-in tool to grab the color and use that to detect range of colors.  At the Tech day it only took 10 minutes to set the color. In previous years, it took more than an hour to set the color. I wished to have more time on content side but , as always, engineering took most of the time. I should try to put balance between engineering and art for later projects.

Fishualization 2008 means more to me in terms of devoting certain amount of time everyday for my personal project.
I promised to myself to put about 1 hour every morning. The reason to choose morning time is that I get exhausted at night time after work. One hour in the morning is actually more effecient than 2 hours of night time. I think it was successful plan and it actually gave me a habit to have time for self-improvement. Doing something everyday is actually very important. I am going to spend morning time reading books. It will be mostly engineering book that needs lots of focus.

I enrolled 24 Fitness at Ocean Park. Also bought 10 times of personal training. Just devoting right amount time and make it a habit to go to gym is the most important thing. Is it really possible to change my body in 12 weeks? Well, I’ll see.

I decided to write about my random thoughts. I don’t care if it might sound stupid or unrealistic. Writing things always considering what people might think about my thougts stops me from thinking freely or writing freely. Anyways, who’s going to read my blog?

* How many hours of work is really possible?
- I think a good 2 hours of work is the maximum.

* About 8 hours of coding and some more coding at home?
- Should I try to focus on more artisic works?
- Is doing artisitic work really using different part of brain?

* Reading books might be the best way to make a good use of after-work-time in terms of self-improvement.
- Need to balance between learning new things and creating something from the knowledge you have.
- Also, should the new knowledge need to be work related?
Learning C#, LUA, COLLADA format reading more C++ related books like Modern C++ Design, Templete meta programming would be helpful.
- Or should I digress more?
Like learning completely different languages like Python, Perl, Smalltalk?

* Doing something good for my health must be a good investment.
- Gym, jogging, yoga, or just take a rest… sleeping…

* What are the periodicals I need to pay attention to?
- Newspaper, websites, Polictics , Stock, Real Estate, Business side of technologies.

* Simulating what I dream about.

* There are lots of area I need to cover. I cannot sacrifice one thing out of others. I need to visit a little bit of everything and also put some more time on time consuming work using weekend or other free time.
- Defragementing my life!!! Try to use little piece of time at work or anywhere!!! ==> Using Palm is excellent idea. Checking schedules, daily tasks, reading books, listening lecture mp3s and so on.

* What are the categories of my life?

* Limited time increases the quality of focus and effeciecy.

* Setting my personal milestones.
What’s the end result? What’s the award or risk?

* Decide to do something you’ve never tried. At least one thing a day and keep a journal about it. Get ideas from books “Things you should do in your 30’s.”
* Decide to choose a different way in making decision.
* Decide to share things.

* What are the things, even the tiny ones, you do everyday?
* Can you recognize those things you’re accustomed to?
* What are the things you think everyday?
* What are the tiny ideas, desires
that start you doing something negative or positive?
Startup triggers. Places that make the atmosphere to focus.
* Do you know when to move on?
* Do you set deadline on things you should do?
* Do you look at yourself in a 3rd person’s view?