You know you've had a good coding session when....

I sat re-reading "Masters of Doom" last night to get some inspiration to get to some coding.

I then sat down and started copying a game I play on my smartphone into Blitz3D. 3 hours later I had a fully working game with all the features of the smartphone version plus a few additional features.

Now I just have to add menus, sounds effects, music, game over screen, high score table, etc... And I'm done. I love it when you write an entire game engine in one night.

Only problem was I was trying to sleep and could only see more game designs and code in my head, gah! I was dreaming of code. I even dreamt my boss was sending my to Calafornia to install Doom on a big network of computers. I'm not the only one here who dreams of games and Blitz am I?

I'm pretty certain that

"Writing an entire game engine in one night." would fall under "Yo0u know you've had a BAD coding session." lol.

Because if that was me, I'd be swimming in code that i'd be unable to follow next week lol.

That said, there's always a sense of achievement, so well done.

Back when I used b3D I did used to dream of what the Car Engine would become too.

Yeah, i dreamt of cannons when i was getting right into doing the code for the laser cannon. It was like a full blown war and i was there. BUT, as the dream went on, as it usually does, you became more and more restricted to what you could do. Eventually, the more aware you become, the more realistic the dream becomes and before you know it your sitting at your seat, typing in code... :o(

A bit like the dream about the jetpack i had. It stopped working when i realised i ACTUALLY HAD A JETPACK! Majorly disappointing...

I do actually comment all my code as I type so I don't tend to lose track of what does what later on. I know that's not normal but it's good habit I've gotten into.

I've written down a few ideas at work just now to make the game look better tonight and add a few visual effects.

I general code in this order:

basic game design
main game loop code - the engine
extend game design
add new features
make it look better
add front and back end of game, menus, scoring, etc...
add some sound effects
add some music
make it look even better
write a small readme file for it
release it.

Isn't the above what normally takes 90% of the time, and is what saps the enthusiasm?

Still, always cool to get a chunk of stuff done in one big effective session. :o)

Well done! you should have the rest of it all sown up by tomorrow! We'll be waiting ;)

um, yes, sown up by tomorrow. My main thing now is stopping feature creep, where you keep wanting to add new features. I'll lock the features down tonight and hopefully release something over the weekend. Just hope the enthusiasm stays. I've written concepts for two new games int eh last two hours, so right now I'm full of development energy! ;-P

Masters of Doom is great, it inspires me everytime I read it ;)

yes, I re-read it in three days. I need more books like that.

We should list it under the toolbox list.

I enjoy your site/blog andy. Just subscribed to the feed.

cool, thanks. I'll be posting a new entry tonight.

Your pants are wet and it feels like your sitting on a bag of dates! :P

:x

ah, the old "I really need to pee but want to finish writing this function......OMG!!! my pants!!!"

you know you have a good coding session when you start it at 6pm and meaning to stop before bed then you complete the function working perfectly as intended and crawl into bed at 8am two days later.

ROFLMAO@EdzUp. So true!

LMAO, thanx I just spat all over my Macbook screen! haha.

i had a recurring (once every odd month or so) dream about doom years ago
coincidentally i was thinking about it during a break at work today
it used to be the same level (a custom one that exsisted only in my head) but some times id get another level (or further into the original?)

Whilst working in Slough, the gaffer played Duke Nukem for 8 hours solid... he couldnt sleep properly for days afterwards because everytime he shut his eyes, he ended up replaying the game! :D

i think anyone whos ever owned a game boy has dreamt tetris ;)

i had a fps version of match 3 a few nights ago
not as good as my ocean liner parallel dimention fps dream from last month though :)