My 2013 in review

Another years has gone by. I wrote my new year’s resolutions for 2013 almost a year ago, but it still feels like yesterday. The last days of 2013 seem the perfect time to review the year and check if I collected accomplishments or lame excuses.

Without further ado, down to the goals:

Improve my skills as an indie game developer. I already joined OneGameAMonth and will try to release 12 games in 2013. A pharaonic task, but the fun is proportional. It is not about working until faint, but learning how to avoid code bloat and feature creep (two of my most significant problems as a developer).

Depending on the point of view, this was completely or partially accomplished. I did not release 12 games in 2013, I did 6 instead. 1GAM was amazing and I’ve learned a lot from it. The “12 games” thing was just a guide, not a goal per se.

As I explained here, my gamedev year was awesome. I can say I improved as an indie game developer, a LOT.

Exercise! I stopped running with my friends (in 2011, I ran a 10km marathon, that felt great!). I want to start jogging at least. I also want to get back on track on my push-ups training. I will buy a dumbbell too.

Partially accomplished. I got on track on my push-ups and the jogging, but I didn’t follow a strict and regular routine.

I trained for a marathon, signed up for it and was ready to run. However I’m too dump to pay attention to the payment due date, so my registration was invalidated Damn! It was a fun and short 5km marathon that I will have to postpone to 2014.

I didn’t buy the dumbbell.

Regularly write tutorials about game development at As3GameGears. Since I started the blog, I just post about tools. It’s time to improve the content and write about game related stuff.

Again, depending on the point of view, I completely or partially accomplished this one. I did wrote several gamedev tutorials, but for the Game Development section of the Tuts+ network, not As3GameGears.

On the other hand, I kick started a new series named game dissection. It’s not a tutorial, but it’s a start.

Write a book about game development.

Not accomplished. Judging by my work in March and April, I thought I would accomplish this one. I wrote two chapters, then I totally dropped the work.

My university classes consumed a significant amount of time, so I was not able to write chapters. I was planning to write and use the texts in my gamedev classes, but that didn’t happen either. Too bad.

Contribute to an open source project.

Accomplished! I worked on Flixel Community, fixing bugs and planning new features. By the end of November we released version 2.56, the very first Flixel release under the community label.

We attracted more developers to the project, that was amazing! I will continue my efforts to make Flixel Community a great game engine.

Found a Jr tech company at UFFS.

Not quite there yet. I mentored students regarding the tech company, which was founded and named FronteiraTec. In the founding process, however, we skipped all legal and governamental steps, so the company exists, but in a “virtual”.

In that situation, the company is not able to sign any contract or sell anything, but it didn’t prevent the students from planning and working. They worked on several projects, covering subjects as games, mobile apps and hardware. They even made an arcade machine.

The only missing piece of this puzzle is the legal papers and the official registration in the government records.

Research. It’s been two years since I stopped working on my master’s dissertation. I want to start working on it again, researching and publishing papers.

Not accomplished. I didn’t have the time (nor the will) to keep this up. I co-authored a paper about procedural generation of canyons, though. The paper is in the works, but it will be published in 2014.

Find inner patience. Sometimes I get really upset by small things and it is not helping. I will try to keep myself calm and constant during 2013. It will make me a better husband, professor and person.

I don’t know how to classify this one. I made some great improvements, but I didn’t reach the point where I wanted to be.

Finding inner patience is harder than I thought. It requires a lot of energy to take a deep breath and ignore the things that upset you. The jogging helped keep things cool, so I think I’m on track for this goal in 2014.

Release at least one side project. I have lots of ideas, but I never manage to work on it and release something.

Not accomplished. I joined my friends on a project, we had some meetings, but we were not able to launch anything. I had some ideas too, but I was short on time to make them come true.

Ok, that was the review!

Looking back and checking all those accomplishments, I can say 2013 was an outstanding year! Goals keep me motivated, even if I’m not able to accomplish them all. I managed to accomplish much more than I expected, which was great!

A new year is just around the corner. It’s time to write some new goals again 😀