Wednesday, January 02, 2008

New Years Resolution

Happy New Year - hope everyone survived the festive season intact! I got a fair few roleplaying related presents - a Chainmail dice bag, Order of the Stick and Full Frontal Nerdity collections, and some metallic d20s. It's my 30th birthday on the 9th, and I can feel a crisis coming on - especially given I had very few 'grown-up' type presents! ;)

Well, my New Years Resolution is quite simple: to be more focussed.

I get too little time on the toolset as it is, and I've found that in the past few months, when I have had 30 mins - 1 hour to spare, I'd load it up, but then start tinkering with something on a whim, rather than foccussing on plot-relevant matters. This is a prime example - I wanted to make a Flask of Elemental Ruin that could capture elementals - only to be released under the players control later. But turns out the simple solution is not possible - and that wasted far too long. (Note if anyone cares to correct me, feel free - I know other options are available, but not having EffectSummon work here is a PITA). But this a a prime example of some idea I get to distract me from writing that next cutscene, or building that next area... (For those interested, I converted the idea into a Gem of Elemental Mastery - you collect elementals inside the gem and based on how many you have is the level of elemental resistance the gem grants).

So I'm going to try and plan my time better, and leave the little distractions until I've progress much further with the plot. See if that will last longer than my previous resolutions. Anyone else have resolutions to share?

6 comments:

Jclef said...

Nice man - I like those presents (so jealous!) Metallic d20s?! Saweeeet!

Let's see...resolutions. Actually, mine would be very similar to yours: Make the most of my time while working on the toolset!

That and quit drinking for good!

Nalencer said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Nalencer said...

I gotta stop building snowmen, soaking them in gasoline and setting fire to them. I know it's dangerous, but... it's just so damn FUN!

Amraphael said...

Great presents! The latest OotS-book was my present to myself. And I know exactly what you mean when one get into solving a problem that was supposed to be easily fixed - and the hours and days start to pass by. The latest one in a long row was my rest script before finding out that the way I wanted to do it was a dead end.
Happy new year and keep up the good work!

Lorft said...

Same here, generally I am OK with behind the scenes stuff - but player facing things I find myself tweaking far too much.

For example, recently I found myself spending about 10 build hours tweaking a cutscene that is about ten seconds in length - what a waste!

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