The Roundabout Ramblings of a Random Writer

But at the same time, I’ve lost most of my lingering motivation for this project. It’s interesting how obsession, given some break time, can pitter out to nothing. Still I got some good programming practice, studied some old math and put it to use!

I am proud of that.

And I don’t want to stop these cycles. For the ‘break period’ I’m going to spend time and meditate on my thoughts. I want to find another new project that I’m brimming with energy for. I want to find something I’m excited to delve into. And I have an idea to help categorize projects so I can pick them up again.

I have some regrets, I won’t deny my very human reaction to sunk cost fallacy. And yet, I’m excited to poke something new and flex some new muscles.

What will we take on next? I’m excited to try and I want to be okay with failing.

How does one combat it? Do you work to make what you do less boring? Or do you just power through boredom? Is there a third option I’m not considering?

I feel it’s a little bit of everything. Just trying to find clever ways to make what you do fun. Sometimes powering through even if you don’t feel like working for the day. And maybe sometimes you come up with something outside that binary. Who knows.

I feel like I’ve been fighting boredom my whole life. It’s not a foe that’ll ever push me to lose my life, I think, but it’s like this looming reminder that I’ll never achieve anything of value because I can’t push myself. Because to work is boring. Or so my brain assumes.

That assumption comes into play every day, before I start work. That what I’m doing is going to be boring. That I can do it, but I’m going to be bored to tears. That I shouldn’t because ‘why bother? You know you could do it. Isn’t that enough?’

I wonder sometimes, why those thoughts bug me. Why it isn’t ‘enough.’ Why I want to see things come into reality rather than just leaving them in my mind. I don’t know.

I’ve never really received much praise or notoriety for what I make and I don’t know if that’s something I even care for. I’ve had flights of fancy in my mind where something takes off, and I believe planning as if your game will be that way is for the best--that is, plan for a game that’ll scale to all you want it to be, rather than accepting ‘good enough’ solutions for the moment. But I don’t honestly believe I’ll create something amazing on my own.

And I’m not motivated by huge sums of money. I’m pretty content with how much I have now really, thought I know I’m more or less scraping by as an IT. I’ve always seen money as a means to an end, but don’t really see how it translates to the end I want. I don’t have enough to pay other people for things, so I may as well just hold onto it, seeing as I don’t want for much.

I don’t even see much reward from myself. I see it as boring. I like the problems because they keep me busy and there’s a clear goal in the end that I’m getting to. But they never seem to keep my excited for long. I want that obsession back.

What an odd thing to say. Where I wasn’t sleeping well or eating right, but I want it back.

Huh.

Refactoring code today, by the way. Before:

After:

The difference is an interesting one to think on. I’ve created a lot of things. Most of them small. Most I’ve just forgotten about after the fact. I just did them, then moved onto the next thing, because by the time I was done with one thing, I was tired of it and just wanted it to be done.

So should I create with the purpose of just learning? It’s hard to say. A lot of the time, when I start, it’s because I care and really want the project to be good and change lives. But as I go on I start to lose steam and stop remembering why I wanted to work on the project in the first place.

I usually have something I want to work on though. And it shifts, like any other thing. When I’m motivated, I work harder.

So... should I swap between things all the time with no focus on completing things, but to just go where my whims take me and gather experience? Or should I learn to focus my determination and complete works?

I feel both have something to learn in them. The choice is hard. Perhaps it isn’t a choice though, but just something to be aware of. Hmm...

A pomodoro is supposed to be spent as undistracted as possible. Ideally, not at all. But I allow myself to chat inbetween thoughts. My thoughts are distracted too easily to give that merit.

I think that’s my biggest fear. That if I don’t talk with my friends when they need me, I won’t be able to help them. But... I know when to tell a conversation needs my attention. And that isn’t ‘every time.’

I need to sit and ask myself:  does this bear responding to right now?

I may or may not have talked before of the fact that I’m using a set of states to represent the way my Movable unit can move. I’m leaning toward probably.

I implemented it in the least elegant way possible. Switches. Ew.

My plan is to refactor this using the state pattern, but it’s just... this is the first time I’ve learned a design pattern outside of school. I’m pretty sure I can implement it, but it’s weird.

This time there’s no safety net and no one to tell me I’ve screwed up. I’ve always relied on others to tell me that but now, here, no one’s going to take the time out of their day to look at my code unless I cut out a piece for them to look at.

That bugs me. I know it’s the way of the world, but the fact that no one is looking. No one actively seeks to care. And not out of spite. But out of enormity.

The size of the world bugs me. It’s huge. So massive, I can’t really comprehend it. There are so many people and I’m just one voice in many.

And I know I’m not nearly at the end of this project, but I’m starting to get to the point where I solve more issues than I create. I’m finishing a bug and it doesn’t pop back up.

I’m going to need to refactor, sure, but I know that after that is the terrifying ‘time between.’ Where I have to choose the next thing. I think I have a next thing. But choosing to start it is hard.

It’s a natural break point when you finish a subsystem. Create a piece of art that you’re satisfied with. Finish a chapter. “I’ll just take a quick break.” Which turns into eternity.

I’ve run into it enough times. I’m afraid of it in its own way. I’m afraid of the comfy ending.

“I did well enough. I can stop here. Just for now.”

I don’t want to want to end. That wasn’t a typo (this time). I don’t want to want to end.

But I don’t think lying to myself about it is good. I don’t want to continue. I can feel the obsession creeping back up, which is good. But I know that if I gave myself an opportunity I would stop.

I don’t like that about myself. But I don’t want to lie to myself either. I want to end and tell myself I accomplished something.

But it’s not enough. I, the conscious me, agrees with that hungry part of me that wants to create. It’s fine and even important to rest. Fine and very important to think outside of your project. But it’s a sin to yourself to stop.

I don’t want to stop. I won’t stop. I will keep going.

I’m going to list out two subsystems I can work on after this so I have an easier choice than etherium, but I will choose something and continue, uninterrupted until the end of the cycle.

And then, we’ll see if I can manage a third.

So for those unfamiliar, a race condition occurs when data can be manipulated at unexpected times. I won’t go beyond that because that takes effort, but suffice to say that it makes things hard to predict sometimes.

In this case, Unity defines two things that more or less run on separate coroutines, but can affect each other:  Update and FixedUpdate. Again, won’t go into details. I promise they have uses. Pinky promise.

For reasons, I update a value in FixedUpdate rather than Update... but there’s a few instances where, in Update, I use that value. Whoops.

In any case, I untangled this by incrementing the value when any external source calls it. Not ideal, but it’s something to start with... and leave until I need to find ways to squeeze more efficiency out.

I knew this would happen, one way or another, but I think admitting it is useful. Hell, I’ve probably done so already and forgotten.

But yeah, I don’t feel as obsessed as before, though that’s part of what I want to try to solve with these cycles:  I want to find out what makes me motivated so I have more tools on hand than “work really hard even though I’m unmotivated.”

I want to understand why sometimes something intrigues me, but a month later loses my interest.

But onto today.

Besides off-time being research time for attention management, I spent today looking through an old physics concept I haven’t touched since about four years:  normal forces.

I need to make my unit climb and walk down slopes at the same pace because that’s what feels right. That is the experience I want players to have, rather than a realistic physics experience.

However... that means cancelling out realistic physics forces, like the force of friction and the force of gravity, as deflected by inclines. Which means math.

So! I spent 2 hours restudying the force of gravity on inclines, normal force and friction and I think I have a theoretical solution. Time will tell, I suppose.

Today, I learned that my heirarchy of objects makes no sense. How? Well I was doing a much-needed efficiency calculation (because I was running into a situation where the game would lag... oops!) when I found something was amiss...

From the perspective of another object, my unit was ‘staying still’ from the point it was spawned. Queer.

Turns out that the way I was doing the efficiency calculation was failing to unify the object in any way... that basically, we were calling the same saved values over and over again because there was no way to actually increment values in time with each other, which really wouldn’t do.

So, I changed an object from being a Monobehaviour to being a normal object that expects to have a bidirectional relationship with the Movable and, now, information passes between my two most hard-working objects, Lookahead and MovableCollisionAnalyzer, can talk with a unifying point connecting them... the Movable!!