This is just going to be a big brain dump of what’s been going on for the last… however long I end up covering. I’m not really sure if this is more for myself, to organize my thoughts, or for friends and family to catch up on what’s been going on. Either way, if you’re here, sit down and strap in, because I’m probably going to be rambling for a while.
First off, anyone who’s visited this site before will probably notice that everything is gone. I’d originally been using this site to post things related to programming, but since then, I settled on a studio name, registered a new domain, and copied everything relevant over there.
Since the end of summer last year, I’ve been working seven days a week. The short version is that I got fed up with training people to do the night shift and having them either realize that they aren’t actually signing up for paid naptime, and they never come back, or they decide that everything I taught them was irrelevant, and they were taking their paid naptime anyway. I told my boss how frustrated I was, and told him to just give me all the shifts; if I was going to do all the work, I might as well be the one getting paid for it. I was a little surprised that he agreed. It kills my ability to do much other than work and sleep, but I wasn’t really doing anything else anyway.
When we first moved to Kelowna, we had a not insignificant amount of debt. We moved with the intention of me taking a decently paying job that I had lined up for me, and it was supposed to get us ahead enough that we would be able to clear up the debt, go to school, and move on to something better. It turns out that working at a call center where your main job is to have people scream at you is incredibly stressful, and after a little more than a year, I had to leave.
When I first started here, I was working 4 out of every 8 days, and making much less per hour than I currently am. Then, we had to move, and spent a while living in a rather expensive place. As time went on, I got more hours, and raises, but the rocky start meant that the debt we brought to Kelowna grew rather than shrank. Only over the last few years has that reversed.
Last October, I applied, and was surprised to be approved for a loan to cover the remainder of that debt, at a much better interest rate. If I make only the minimum payments, it will be gone in three years; thanks to the extra hours I currently have, I hope that it will be gone much sooner.
As much as I really like the little tablet that I’d been using like a laptop for my programming, it really wasn’t up to the task. During the Black Friday sales, I went to Best Buy and checked out their laptops, hoping that I’d be able to apply for their financing and get a good system at a reasonable price. Turns out I could. I ended up spending more than I’d originally intended, but this is a good system, and it should last me quite a while.
Last year, I switched from Game Maker to Godot for the development environment I was using for game programming. I go into a bit of detail on why in a post on the Chronocide Games blog. The end result was that I essentially pushed myself back a year on learning, since with a new IDE comes a new language. However, I’m back up to the skill level I was at before, and hopefully I can make something that’s at least functional sometime soon.
In late December, I decided that I wanted to try streaming. For those unfamiliar with the term, it’s when you record yourself playing a game and broadcast it live of sites like Twitch or YouTube (I’m using Twitch). Because you’re live, streamers and viewers can interact, creating a unique viewing experience. Some streamers make it a part-time, or even full-time job. I have no interest in going full-time, but if I can get popular enough, it’s possible to make some extra money, and I’d be playing the games anyway.
I haven’t decided what I’ll be streaming yet; most streamers have one game that they focus on, or a small handful. While they can, and do, play other games, viewership is better if they stick to what they’re known for. I’ve played a few different games on stream already, but so far, haven’t really found my groove yet. I’m still waiting for some hardware that I ordered to arrive, so I can’t really set up to do anything properly yet anyway.
If it sounds like I’m putting a lot on my plate between working seven days a week, learning programming, trying to do something with what I’ve learned, and now streaming, on top of all the other little crap life throws at you, you’d be right. I don’t have enough time to do everything I’m trying to do, and things often get left behind or delayed. On top of that, I keep coming up with projects for myself that are beyond my current ability, meaning that any work I do on them just delays things even more.
But I’m tired of being stuck here. My goal has always been the same: Get myself financially stable, so that I can actually do something interesting, rather than being stuck behind a till for the rest of my life. I’m making progress, though, even if it’s slow.
Anyone interested in my programming can find Chronocide Games on the web, Facebook, or on Twitter, and my streaming can be found on Twitch, or Twitter.