August 2026 Wrap Up
More learning than coding, I have a working game engine, studio logo is almost done, and getting excited to finish!
As I’m sitting here writing this wrap-up, I’m having a hard time knowing what to write, mostly because I don’t feel like I did a whole lot of tangible things. However, when I look at my time log for my learning challenge, I can see I put in a lot of time this month, it was just more learning and reading focused instead of actually writing code. I actually think that’s okay for where I am in development, because I kinda have to think more about what I want to do, since most of what’s left is more design-based. In that learning, I discovered that I’ve been doing my art wrong and have to redesign the art for my game.
Learning Log
| Headline | Time | | |
|--------------------------------+---------+-------+-------|
| *Total time* | *34:50* | | |
|--------------------------------+---------+-------+-------|
| GOAL: 6500 Hours | 34:50 | | |
| \_ Book Study | | 7:03 | |
| \_ The Pragmatic Programmer | | | 7:03 |
| \_ Emacs | | 8:21 | |
| \_ ABX Development | | 19:26 | |
| \_ Programming | | | 14:41 |
| \_ Art | | | 1:30 |
| \_ Business | | | 3:15 |I said I was going to start sharing this at the beginning of every blog, so here it is! 0.5% complete!
More Learning Than Coding
As you can see, I’ve put seven hours into reading The Pragmatic Programmer, and most of that was this month. I spent more time learning and researching than actually programming, which for where I am in my project, I think is actually okay. The reason I feel this is okay is because I’m at the point in my game where I have to make some critical decisions that will influence how I proceed with development. It was good to take a pause and learn and think instead of just acting and ending up with a mess, which is what happened when I tried to do this in C.
The only major highlight I have from The Pragmatic Programmer is that every time I save my file, a box pops up in Emacs that says “ETC?” which stands for “Easy to Change?”, a reminder for me to write code that will be easy to understand in the future, so that if or when I have to change it, I’m able to.
The Engine Is Complete… Mostly
So, the little bit I did code, I was able to complete most of my game engine. I have the ability to spawn things on screen, I have a gameplay loop, and I have all the logic built out to easily add more entities to the game. The few engine pieces I still have to do are the main menu, background tile loading, and sound. There may be more, but those are the major ones I need to work on. The rest is simply making the game playable and fun, aka the game design. I’m drawing/redrawing the art for it (I’ll talk more about that later), and the big thing I’m going to tackle soon is hierarchical seeded procedural generation. I’m excited to get that wired in because it’ll help each playthrough feel unique! That’s fun because I feel like this project is starting to develop some real identity, which is really fun just seeing it grow as I work on it.
A Month of Art
I feel like I’ve done a lot of art this month, and it’s been great. For those who don’t know, I have half of an art degree, I ended up dropping out of art college one year before I was supposed to graduate. So I love creating and drawing. I’ve always been a better digital artist than a physical one, so doing all this digital art has really been fulfilling!
I realized that I’ve been doing everything in my game at the wrong scale (learning as I go), so I have to go back through and redo my art for it. Luckily, I don’t have a ton of art to redo—I have more art to create than to redo. One of the things I had to redo is my strep bacteria.
I know this is simple, but I’m still really proud of it, and I think it’ll read great with what I’m trying to achieve on screen.
I also got time to finally work on my studio logo!
It’s finished now, and I’m really happy with how it turned out!
I Am Excited to Keep Going
I feel like I’m always saying this, but I’m really excited to keep working and learning. I joined a Discord channel of a small studio that’s making a game, which has helped encourage me to keep going and see what’s possible. The studio is called Ostrich Effect, and it’s Nic Barker and Anton Mikhailov’s studio that they created. It’s been really encouraging seeing experts work on their craft and to learn from them and how they approach gamedev. I also picked up Game Engine Architecture 4th Edition to learn more specifically about how to create custom game engines, so I’m excited to start going through that when I finish Pragmatic Programmer. I’m excited to see what I get done this month. Until next time:
The most important step a man can take is the next one.