Back to school! Both of the kids! 6 hours of no one asking for treats, can we go outside, screaming at his brother over which inane YouTube video to watch.

And time to seriously crank out some progress on my game. This summer I’ve felt like anytime I so much as breathe in the general direction of my computer, 10 things pop up that demand my attention.

And now we are ONE month from heading out to San Jose and Oculus Connect 5 and then GDEX, the day after I get back. Need to finish the demo, polish it; have the neighbors kids come over and playtest it while the dads & I guzzle beers and then tighten up all the mistakes the kids will invariably find.

Then pack.

Part of what I’m working on is the level that will have 2 main quests and maybe some mini-quests on the side. Deliver 4 piece of mail for a dude in a castle who wants a party and help a sad girl get an ice cream cone from the mean machine that spits them halfway across the level.

Keep your fingers crossed that I can get it done in time.

“figures.

only just added it (knockback force) and I get knocked into the stratosphere
and kiddo needs me
story of my (dev) life – just as progress might be made… interuption
forget everything I’m doing
come back later only to see fragements of what I was doing
try and piece it back toghether”

Straight dialogue copied from a conversation on the Playmaker Slack channel.

Since the ending of summer camp, I’ve been with both kiddos full time until the 21st of August. So instead of non-stop running around for summer camp, speech therapy, swim lessons, social camp and some weird need for my wife to visit with ever other 2nd cousin each weekend, I am now dealing with 2 boys (5 & 7) with too much energy, too little to do and an abundance of ‘irritate the $#~!+ outta daddy’ syndrome. It doesn’t help that the youngest has been repeatedly getting up at 6AM and thusly cutting into what little dev time I have.

Add to this pressure – Oculus sent an invite to Oculus Connect 5, pay for the conference, 2 nights hotel and a dev dinner. I just have to get there basically. Which means I NEED to have a tip-top demo that I can show off to the best in the VR biz and then fly home – turn around a day later – and drive to Columbus to show my game at GDEX again.

Which means every time I step near a computer, kids wake up from the deepest sleep, cats suddenly need to be petted like they are getting put to sleep in 5 minutes, every drinking and gaming buddy I’ve ever spent 5 minutes with seems to feel like its the most vital thing in the world to catch up.

Arg.

In the meantime – I AM kinda, sorta plugging away at things – feel like the boss level isn’t going in the direction I want, and the wife isn’t the biggest fan of ‘fights’ in games – so I’m working on a racing challenge:

Get an ice cream cone back to a sad little girl before it melts.

Here is an initial test of the idea:

In addition to that – I’m thinking about adding achievements to the game, in the form of hidden objects: