Hi everyone, and welcome to 2021, 10 days late.
What a year that was. As I'm sure everyone experienced some form of bad last year, that's not what this post is meant to be, and I don't want this to spiral down. Instead, I'd like to take a minute to be grateful for the good that has happened over the last year, and hope that I can do better this year.
To start off last year, I began production of my first big indie game Periodic. Design started in December, but a lot of the actual work kicked off last year, and there was a lot that I learned and got done. Most notably using LitJSON to design a full language and save system. That's been a blast to learn, and being able to have a core system like that is going to make it much easier to develop games going forward. I've also spent a lot of time figuring out how I want to have the AI system work, as well as narrowing in on player movement. Level design was the one thing that was for sure kicking my butt, but I'm hoping that'll change for 2021.
Next, I managed to get 10GbE (10 gigabit ethernet) working in my house using a MikroTik switch and some other hardware. Server upgrade is definitely in order, and I have things coming down the pipeline get that going.
On the same topic, I had also upgraded my personal desktop to a Ryzen 3800x and 64GB of G.Skill Trident Z Neo RAM. 2021 is going to be the year that I build my first custom water-cooled PC, as long as I can get my hands on a new graphics card, so fingers crossed on that.
I'm also tossing in my most recent upgrade to my home office setup, which is a custom built desk and a new office chair. It's been a long time in the making, but having been working from home since the pandemic started last March, a new desk was definitely in order.
20 inches bigger than the old desk, I can actually stretch my arms out and have the monitors at a comfortable distance. I also managed to get a Herman Miller Aeron chair as the cheap "gaming" chair was destroying my back, and the foam on it basically disintegrated in about 2 weeks.
Other than that it was a pretty mellow year in terms of getting things done.
As for 2021..
I'm going to set forth some goals, as a reference for myself to hopefully get done this year:
- Build a custom water-cooled computer, with no All-In-One (AIO) cooler
- Complete as of May 2021
- Upgrade home server
- Complete as of May 2021
- 1 Blog post/month
- January: 2 Posts
- February: 2 Posts
- March: 1 Post
- April: 1 Post
- May: 1 Post
- June: 1 Post
- July: 1 Post
- August: 1 post
- September: 1 post
- October: 1 post
- Upgrade Ubiquiti gear with a UDM Pro and add in security cameras to my house
- Update 1/26/21- Ubiquiti is forcing an internet connection and single sign-on (SSO) for configuring devices. This one might be changing...
- "Alpha" test Periodic, maybe on mobile?
- Finally start an LLC and get an SSL Cert on the blog
- Read through the programming books I've had for several years
- Effective C++ Third Edition - June 2021
- Grokking Algorithms - August 2021
- Clean Code - August 2021
- Do something with the Raspberry Pi's I have laying around
- Participate in a Game Jam
- Experiment with modding an old Xbox 360
10 things seems very manageable, with alpha testing one Periodic probably being the most complicated of the bunch. The books I'm planning on finishing are the Effective C++ series by Scott Meyers, and Clean Code by Uncle Bob Martin. Fingers crossed all of these get done, but one is better than none!
Here's to a great 2021, and may it be better than your 2020. Do something productive, and have a great time doing it!
-TJ
