My wife suggested that I should write about my normal working day. I thought why not, could be interesting to some!
So, I wake up in the morning around 8-9 am, depending how long our kids are sleeping. This in summer time when they are not in the daycare. It's around hour or two earlier otherwise. Needless to say that is great, I get to sleep very well! So that's a huge plus being indie developer.
Alright, so, we wake up, the whole family. Me, my wife, my boy and my girl. And the dog, let's not forget the dog. She usually waits when I get up and so does she! Cute thing.
Once we are up we head to kitchen for some breakfast, well kids do. I settle for a large cup of damn good coffee. We eat and drink our coffees, it's one of my favorite moments of the day!
Once my cup is empty I'm starting to actually wake up which is good. After that I'll take the dog out.
It's around 10 am now, everything is set and my day can begin. I fetch myself a big glass of cold water, it's good to drink a lot. I noticed having some headaches before I started drinking more water, so, drink water people. It will do you good!
I sit down to my computer chair. This one:
Yeah... I will toss it and get a new one. I will at some point, it's killing my back anyways.
Alright, I begin my daily "check-round" which includes my emails, Twitter, Facebook. Google, Steam page, and my Steam statistic page to see how many copies I've sold. If Silence of the Sleep is not on sale then it's usually 0. Sometimes I get lucky and it has sold a few copies! Sounds a bit depressing but worry not, it sells okay when it's on sale so I can pay the rent!
Depending if anything is up I'll try my best to reply to emails and to community. This takes some time and focus too! So it's not like I wake up and start working, there are lots to do before that.
Once I have completed my so called "check-round" I can finally start developing.
Okay, being one-man-band I need to figure what to do. Will it be graphics, writing, audio design, music, coding or marketing? At times it feels overwhelming and I can't focus on anything. I try to pull my head together to get something done, but no matter what I do it's not quite "there". That easily leads to frustration and can really ruin the day. In these situations I just gotta keep my head cool and take the rest of the day off. If only it was that easy...!
Phew! Gladly that does not happen every day!
So when it doesn't I usually boot up the Fusion 2.5 (the software I code my game with), open The Human Gallery and see how it feels. Maybe it's missing audio, so I could compose, or maybe the background feels a bit barren so I could start painting props. Maybe I have scenario in mind and I'll start designing it further.
It's never quite the same. For example today, I did some monster design and code for it, tried to see how it would look in game. But I've been staring at it for too long so it's starting to look a bit distracting. I hate that feeling, is it any good...? "NO! That's horrible!" "Nah, that's actually pretty cool!" You know, one thing can look in so many different ways if you stare it for too long. So I thought I'll take a break from it and try to continue composing a theme song for a certain character. That worked out beautifully! I love the song! It's really my favorite part of the development: Composing.
Alright... what could I do next?
Tried lots of different stuff but nothing felt smooth. Trying to think if I could market the game, but I really don't want to show some of the stuff just yet. Argh! It's only around 1 pm, I need to do something!
Now that a small frustration is starting to grow it's worth mentioning that it does not help if the kids are at home as they can be quite noisy, trust me! That's easily one of the best ways to take away the focus. Usually I try listening to some music while working, but that's not ideal neither. Better than the noise though! :)
But hey! It's quiet now, so I fool around a bit, trying to do a bit this and that but nothing really comes together. So I thought I'll start writing a blog, so here I am typing my thoughts.
It's around 1 pm, usually around these times I'll take a coffee break, and if my wife is at home she asks if I want to eat something. I might or might not eat, but the coffee is good! I love eating, but I usually keep to it and then the food tastes even better. Not sure if it's healthy though, but works for me.
After the coffee break I get back to working, the usual stuff. Depending how smoothly everything goes I might work till the evening, or quit a bit early.
This is pretty much my normal day. I like what I'm doing, but it is by no means easy. It's the mental side that is the most difficult. You have no guarantee that the game will success, no guarantee of the income. You just need to blindly trust that what you're doing is worth, that the prize will be there in the end. But when you develop your game for... 1½ - 2 years, well, it is quite a long wait.
And even still I would not want to do anything else!
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