It's been a very long time since my last post. It's been about the same amount of time since I've done any game dev. I find it a little depressing, but this hiatus has been necessary. I'll start out with an overview of my life for the last few months.

In November of 2015 I took a new job. It's my first gig as a “real” developer where my code will actually have an effect on someone else’s life. From November through early February I crammed in about 6 months worth of training, and since then have started doing the actual work.

The new job has been great. A downside is that I live 40 minutes away on a good day, but most days are not; thank you construction. This has left me with even less time to work on Zero Hour stuff.

Did I mention my wife and I are expecting our third child in May? There's that too. We are both anxious and excited, but that too leaves less time still.

“We get it… You're busy…” I know… I'm sorry…

Before starting the new job though, I was able to have a state engine pretty much developed and working on my asteroids clone. I've been debating on starting a new game, but I'm thinking I'll go back and finish this one off first. It would be nice to have a finished game under my belt.

I've also been playing a lot of games too. It's fun, but I also have been using it to see different mechanics, hypothesize how they are done, and think about interesting tweaks. That's been fun.

Allow me a minute to get all “long and winding road” about it. When I look back at my life and how I hit this major milestone in my life, it's a bit crazy. I'll start with my catalyst(s); my children.

I spent a decent part of my immediate time going with the flow at my first job. I probably had hung around there a little too long, but I didn't really have any drive to do anything different until after my children came into my life.

I looked at what I was doing. I knew I was settling. I thought about future conversations I would have with them. I didn't want to be a hypocrite telling my kids not to settle when I had already resigned to a job that I didn't want forever. I wanted to be a developer.

So I jumped in with Adam and Shane. I committed time to it. Then I got a new job in QA in Madison. After settling there, I started developing games more. I was solving awesome problems and proud. It gave me enough confidence to try for developer job, and I got it.

This lead me to another realization. “What is next?” I still don't know that answer. I'm still just getting started at my job. I want to be good at that first, and learn as much as I can. My ultimate goal would to be able to be an indie game developer and be able to sustain my family and enjoy life. That's another big leap.

I do have confidence that I will be able to get there. What I found is that these things are achievable. Yes, it's a big leap, but a big part of design is dividing up the whole process into tiny parts. You can then put all of those parts together for the complete package.

Design is iterative, but so is life.