The end of the year draws ever nearer, and I figured it would be worth at least penning a quick update about progress so far…

1. Cycle 2000 Miles. (1/1)
2. Read 4 Books. (0/4)
3. Join and submit an entry in 2 Game Jams. (1/2)
4. Complete 6 video game related coding projects. (1/6)

As you can see, it’s not looking that great overall leading into the closing part of the year. I passed the 2000 mile mark on the mark towards the end of September which I’m pretty happy about, although my pace of progress really tailed off from August onwards and I should’ve really hit that earlier than I did. A goal is still a goal though, and I’m happy with myself for getting there.

On the book front, I’ve tried and failed a few times so far to get this started. I started ‘Running on Empty’, but only hit about the 50% mark before becomming destracted. I’ve also tried ‘Reality is Broken’ a couple of times but haven’t got past the first 2 chapters. I need to focus on this more, and the fall leading into winter might work better for me with the evenings spent in front of the fire.

I finished up Ludum Dare 48 back in the spring, but haven’t managed to yet pen and put together a retrospective post about that. As I write this Ludum Dare 49 is currently in play, but I didn’t sign up this time. I sniffed around the JS13K jam but ultimately didn’t get my ass into gear there either. Time is running out for this, but out of all the outstanding goals this is one that I am really keen to tick off.

For the coding projects, well I burned a lot of time on the Raycasting engine project that I used in Ludum Dare 48. Since the event I’ve taken the engine a lot further than I expected with support for animated textures, directional specific textures and played around with trying to fine tune the rendering for performance. Ultimately though, its the only project I’ve been working on. So again a long way to go.

Overall, I figure my focus has just been elsewhere somewhat. I’ve spent a lot of time with the Family and work absorbs a decent amount of my bandwidth. I just need to get better at focusing on my goals alongside the above and making sure my free time is spent progressing them rather than spent elsewhere. I’m going to try and post on at least a bi-weekly basis, that I hope will help keep my aims at the forefront of my mind.