The Reality of Tracking Game Dev Time

All game data has been updated to use a better format. The overall data structure is designed to have data directly on the class on one sheet (game id, name, description, stats) and a separate sheet for associated data (mission rewards, recipe components). This structure added a bit more complexity to how I am loading game data on initialization, but it drastically reduced the overhead of maintaining the data. Overall, this was a big step for me and I feel much more confident in scaling this approach up. The automatic sheet export plugin that I made is also a huge time saver. Remove the clicks, save the frames!

I started to put together the UI for crafting, and ran into a lot of challenges. Here is where I ended for this week:

The first challenge was getting the Control nodes to size and play nicely with the components. Where I landed was using nested control points with anchors to constrain each of the dimensions until I outlined each page of the book. Then I could set the components to “Full” and expect that they would scale correctly. The next step to work on is creating the sub components and layout. Finally, I can load data from my game database and populate the info based on selected components. The map is clear in my mind, but I still feel sluggish when I sit down to implement it. It usually takes me a few tries to get the right look and feel. The first UI is always the hardest because I have the extra work of setting up the game theme and styling the components. Once all that is in place, the development of future UI components will become much quicker.

I am focusing my efforts on finishing this one UI menu. Anything I get beyond this would be a bonus. One thing I’ve learned from this week after tracking my time is that I have a limit of energy and time that I can invest in this project while balancing my other commitments. Since the overworld and mission systems are all working, the crafting system is the next most important item for me to continue my path toward releasing this prototype on itch. I’m still on pace for finishing 2 games this quarter, but I will need to get this one out the door roughly by mid February.

I’ve unsuccessfully tried to implement a time tracking system in the past, but I’m giving it a go again to see if things can be different. I have found that optimizing my tracking systems for minimal complexity reduces the friction required to enter data. Instead of trying to have categories for everything I could track, I start with creating as big of buckets as I can and only track what is strictly necessary. In my current time tracking system, I’m just keeping it to “Sunday Brunch Studios” and “Magic the Gathering”, which is where most of my activity is spent nowadays. Instead of trying to document every minute of the day, I am just focused on the one activity I need to make progress on (currently a goal 20 hours a week) and the activity that I know is getting in the way of making progress (no goal in mind, but I needed visibility on it). So for this last week I had 12/20 hours on the studio, including time spent in class, and 5 hours of Commander. Over the next few weeks I will be focused on experimenting with what works for me to achieve the 20 hours and once I find something that works I will stick to that until I find that the time is dropping below what I expect it to be.