Recently, I've been making factual posts -- talking a lot about what I'm doing and why I'm doing it from a design or implementation perspective. Today, I'm making a short post to talk about the other side of things: motivation and direction.

I've heard indie developers (also fellow graphics researchers) complain about lack of motivation. This is not a problem for me; I always want to make progress, and I'm almost pathologically optimistic about outcomes. That said, I often feel the crushing weight of the whole TCHOW experiment; of not having a job, of not having any backup (if I don't do things, they don't get done), and of not having any hard deadlines (except when my self-funding runs out in ~13 months).

I know that for some folks out there these all sound like really good things. But, let me tell you, they aren't. They simply add planning time to one's already overburdened schedule.

And that leads to the big problem for me: not motivation, but direction. I start each day with plenty of creative energy, but it's never clear where I should be expending it. Do I work on Rktcr? Rainbow? One of the many prototypes I've been meaning to build? Do I put my effort into code? Art? Sound?

I don't really know the answer to that. So I just try to do something (or several somethings) each day, so that every week Rktcr and Rainbow and TCHOW games in general move closer to being done.

Today, that little thing was some glimmers for the portals in Rktcr, because they are sometimes hard to spot otherwise. It's a little bit of eye-candy, and it addresses a rough spot for new players.