I skipped last week's progress report because, as I said I would, much of that week was spent playing Deus Ex 3. How fun is that game? Well, perhaps this will answer your question:



During that week, I was able to once again retire my backup CRT monitor when I received my new LCD, a Viewsonic VX2268wm. Like the CRT, the LCD before that (the one that died unexpectedly) was also standard aspect monitor, so I'm returning to wide aspect at long last. Suddenly, all that code that seemed to evoke claustrophobia only takes up half the screen, creating an illusion of extremely efficient code. (Perhaps that's not an illusion: while I may never have released a finished game, I am quite well practiced in BYOND coding.)

That was the week before last. Last week, not much progress was made. Not only was I house sitting, but I'm once again battling against my highly ingrained habit to procrastinate. I blame my anxiety as being a probable cause of that. You'd think being anxious would cause you to do more. However, when you're too nervous, there's not much more you can do than self-medicate, which I accomplish by slacking off.

As of my meeting with my psychiatrist yesterday, I'm on a new happy drug today. It's called Buspirone and, contrary to the Wellbutrin I was prescribed by a general practitioner before, this stuff actually addresses generalized anxiety. Though I was told that it would take a few weeks to kick in, I already feel a little better. (Perhaps that's a placebo effect?)

So, about my game I'm working on. Actually, I'm currently working on a work of fiction. However, the problem being overcome is the same: I'm a total refinement whore. In my story, I get caught up in tweaking and re-tweaking passages of text before the story is complete. The same happens when I try to create a game. Maybe I'm too nervous to accept what I create is fine?

Unlike my games, my stories are usually completed. Why is that? Perhaps it's because writing paragraphs is something I can do quickly enough that I don't lose interest even when I'm heavily mired down in refining them. Games are a bit more painstaking. Rewriting a passage of text can be done in within a few hours, while rewriting a game can take days. In fact, the last major change I made to the game is completely invisible from how it plays, a massive retooling of how the game stores the universe, and it took over a week of constant coding to complete.