Almost a year ago I had an idea for a small game. I wrote about it in my old blog. But then this whole Canada thing happened and I never got around to starting it. Besides I was pretty sick of programming altogether and at times even thought I had lost the ability to do it at all. Seriously, I could not remember the simplest things, like „how do I write an enum definition?“ (comma, not semicolon … ) etc. But it is like riding a bicycle, you don’t really lose it, it comes back quickly once you get started.

Since I am now flying a linux driven vessel (ubuntu still rulez!), I have many new things to learn as well. It works better than I thought, though. After jotting down notes on paper and in my TiddlyWiki design document for a day, I finally started to write code on Wednesday, had a first playable prototype for single missions that same day, sound support on Thursday and now already have a playable game which is quite addictive.

There are still umpty things to do, of course: refine game balancing/player progression, add special items, make more and better graphics (at the moment this things looks pretty much handdrawn in five minutes, which is due to the fact that it is), add a schwampf engine for the mission descriptions, add a load/save functionality, port the whole thing to Windows etc. pp. Actually the real work starts now. So it will be a while before a downloadable version will appear on my website. But that is not the point. The point is: I am still able to pull it off. The funny thing about this is, that those of you who know me probably never doubted this, but I did. That was the heritage of my last job: I had lost all confidence in my programming abilities.

Speaking of jobs: I have one again, at least for the month of November. Starting on Monday I will do some translation work for my former employer. This means a 40 h workweek and pretty pathetic payment compared to what I earned as a developer, but it beats unemployment and I will have a chance to work with my colleagues again, which is great.

The downside of this is that November is also the NaNoWriMo, and I try to participate again. Which means that I have to write 1667 words today (and tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and … you get the idea) and that I should not spent my time procrastinating in my blog. And probably not programming (or worth: playing) my new game. And I have not even decided yet what my novel is supposed to be about.