So, after weeks of what seem to be Life happily wreaking havoc upon my schedule, I am finally getting to a long hoped-for productive position with my practice, and lo and behold! I am just about to really get into drafting my final Masters Thesis, and not long after that my trip home.

To be fair I’ve been horribly stalled, and without much enthusiasm or motivation to drag myself out of the stalls, between the bouts of: sicknesses, food poisoning, a Visa run, and other things I care not to mention here - which have all beset me in recent weeks.

At first, I typically berated myself and considered my lack of productivity a byproduct of personality deficiencies, a familiar old cognitive behaviour pattern - I wasn’t maintaining motivation, I was choosing to procrastinate, I was never going to finish my project, I was not being productive enough, etc… Suddenly, though, I feel that in reality I have to slough off these misgivings and simply rise again into the saddle and continue with my work, however it moves forward! I may have been less productive than I would have liked in recent weeks (often for actual, valid reasons even), but I can choose to not let that get me down and perpetuate the cycle of inactivity and negative thoughts; I can choose to keep working and do my best to remain active and happily practising my craft.

I am reminded as well of the continual refrain I have in the back of my head, “Just do it!”, from an old co-worker who perhaps saw my muddling, overly pensive form of inactivity long ago and used the popular Nike ad campaign-cum-sage advice to motivate me.

In fact, I have found many times recently that, in truth, things seem worse when viewed with forlorn eyes before the start, and not nearly half so bad when seen at mid task. It is an annoyance, though, that it seems a harder trick to remember than to learn. One of many, truthfully. ;-)

Happily, my head feels clearer and my body feels more immune to the typical malignancies of life in BKK, which has given rise to better cognition and probably to this change in tactical attitude. Knowing that I have a flight home - a definite, one-way departure to my time in Thailand - also gives me more vigour.

So, even as I identified stop-gaps in my production process that I wanted to work on for my MA quite a while ago now, I’ve found myself amidst one of them. Indeed it has turned into a bit of a blind-spot, even as I was laying out and planning the project. Basically, I am beginning to be concerned with the amount of work necessary to complete The Human Trap. With seven levels and the design and animation for each, not to mention audio… well, it’s quite a bit to be getting on with. At first, I believed that working with my code-collaborator would ease things along, sharing some of the workload and helping to maintain inspiration. But since my buddy is too busy to help lately, I am faced with doing it alone. As usual, as well, there are often unaccounted for tasks that appear during any production that expand the work schedule.

Regardless, after reflecting on how to best move forward knowing that it’s a mighty challenge, I have decided to create a series of benchmark goals - focusing on completing exemplary levels, one at a time, to best take advantage of the time and resources I have. Do what I know is needed and easy to do now, and focus on completing one level at a time.

One of the goals for this project is to add some kick-ass work to my out-dated portfolio in preparation for finding full-time, long-term work in the Fall. The biggest goal still remains to create the full online experience and have it well exposed, etc. That goal has not changed, but I realise that I need to focus on smaller baby-steps to help get me there - especially if I am navigating these shoals solo. This is also necessary to minimise possible panic and freak-outs because of a “potentially” unmanageable workload - something that often set me back as well, thinking about things too much instead of just going about doing them.

So I’m still knee-deep in Dink and Nipples game development. I don’t have anything new to post content-wise, but I am desperately trying to get into graphics-mode soon. So there will be some new things to lookie-lookie at in the foreseeable future.

I’ve finished an initial draft of the GDD (game design document) for The Human Trap. Mostly it was just transcribing the mess and plethora of details from my notebook into OpenOffice. It became an obvious pressing need after a meeting with Toon to recap what had been settled on so far and realising that I had to have one reference where it was easy to see what had been decided. So, overall a natural progression into the GDD, which is nice. — I enjoy writing up proposals and documents, so it was nice to tap that off. If I get to polishing it up soon I will post it online here. My main emphasis at the moment is design so the documentation is being done where necessary. While working independently there is less need to polish the docs up since I am the one funding and doing the work.

The biggest milestone on my list of things to do is level design. The overall gist and sway of the story has been detailed; the major characters have been illustrated; the game-play and interactivity have been outlined… and now it’s the level specifics that have to be set down. The player has to lead Dink and Nipples through four different stages to reach the final level. The levels in each stage are already outlined, but the actual level construction and obstacle-puzzles need detailing. The more puzzle-logic levels were the first ones fully detailed - being the easiest to do on paper. The more side-scrolling, full landscape levels are turning out to be irksome.

I had intended to sketch out all the elements for these levels on paper before moving into production and prototyping, but I’ve hit a wall. How do you get from the overall idea for a level to the final level design, one where every rock and leaf has been placed? In traditional tile-based side-scrollers, you use a level-designer. (Basically, a little application where you place the graphics on a canvas.) Since the level design for The Human Trap is not tile-based - it’s one large, non-repeating graphic element - I can’t go that route. I have decided to forego laying out entire levels on paper for now and instead will start making a mess and mashing things up graphically first. I need to get some inspiration going to fill in those spaces I am not sure how to fill at present. I also know I will inevitably come back and draw it all out on paper when I have progressed far enough to get an idea of what each level will look like. It will also give me an idea of what, where and how the obstacle puzzles will present. Incidentally, here’s a nice thread on the indiegamers about ‘game planning vs doing’.

In a related stream, I’ve also been trolling around online looking for online game, casual game and flash game development forums and resources in an attempt to find an active game community in which to post. I’m partially looking for comments and feedback on what I’ve got so far for The Human Trap, but also just to see if I can contribute anything as well. Since I have a smaller group of design friends here in BKK than home in Canada I’m also feeling the yearn to talk about design work in general. Thankfully I’ve found a few good resources that I am going to explore. Here are some of them, general as well as specific, if anyone wants to see what the online casual games world is like:

Kongregate
Jayisgames
Game|Life
Indiegamer.com Forums

I’m also considering and doing initial fact-gathering about potential marketing options for The Human Trap. The two main objectives for this production are to get a kick-ass project under my belt, and to see where I can take the game online and online in possible revenue-making avenues. I need to allow for certain possible options in the future, BUT! for now I have to get down to work. ;-)

Well, I finally was able to get online for my distance learning MA last week. So, today (and for quite a few more weeks to come) I have rised at 3:45 AM so I can log on to a virtual classroom at 4 AM for three hours. The virtual classroom really is just a pumped up Java chat app with a virtual whiteboard. But it is nice to have an immediate chat log on the site afterwards. But jeez, it sure is early! Suprisingly, my mental agility has been less sleepy than I had supposed it might have been. It will be nice being back in Thailand, if only for the time zone change. ;-)

I am still quite behind others, catching up from the delayed start - so I am stressing over what I have to do, and the fact that I feel like I have not been brought up to date as quickly or completely as should be… but so far it has been nice that there are some stimulating ideas being covered. I usually assume that higher education ends up being, for the most part, boring and irrelevant, ‘hoops to be jumped through’ as well (unless you’re at MIT perhaps ;-), but gladly I am finding some good moments of interest so far. :-)

The ‘Reflective Practice’ I will be doing in my MA needs actual practice to reflect upon, and I intend to do that with my personal professional practice. Now, without a job I have all the time in the world to work on those two things. But when I am thrown back into the workforce it will be interesting to see how I balance it all - a job, professional practice, as well as the reflection upon the practice. I can see how the program was probably built to complement and fit along side designers’ professional work practice, since the MADP program is a part-time program after all.

I have to do a ‘Learning Contract’ up really soon, which basically explains what design practice I plan to reflect upon and the aims/capabilities I hope to cultivate from that. I’ve whittled my list of four possible avenues of what to pursue for my professional practice down to two. But I will probably choose to work on the libretto and score, musical and visual, for a new operetta.

The biggest practical goal of this project is to produce a full source of material (printed and/or digital) that would be used to perform the work. Basically, anyone could pick up the score and have all the material necessary to put on or stage the operetta. I’ve long wanted to be able to plop something down in front of someone and say, ‘Here, look. This is what I do. Here is the proof.’ From most of my previous artistic ventures, I have had very little presentable material or documentation after the fact. I also want to produce a substantial (or hefty ;-) creative piece of work - something that leads into the ephemeral world of performance (which is hard to document) but which also can stand alone as its own body of work.

I had planned to do this with Homo genius, but it ended up being a bit too big and unweildly for a first attempt - and rather naive as well on my part. Especially since it was one of a series of four full performances! So, a smaller performance of about 30-40 minutes should be much more manageable.

That brings me to the big goal for the reflective side of the practice: to actually finish a full score; to watch and reflect upon my design practice as I am doing it; and after the fact, to see where I am strongest and where and when I fell off the tracks; so as to help me with any issues that arise the next time I end up working on such a big project.

Anyway, I will post more about that as I progress on it. Which actually does need to be rather sooner than later. ;-)

Oh, and a small note. All posts relevant to my MA Design Practice program will be listed in the same Category for ease of viewing, and to help me in archiving it for future purposes. So, if you want to watch my progress through my MA Design program, just click on the “MA Design” link in the Categories menu on the right.

Cheers.