I decided to take some time to think and reflect about the last month a bit, since I've been wanting to write more and I never find anything interesting enough to be throw in public. Some quick highlights from the top of my head: work, gamescom latam, devopsdays, gamedev, social media usage and walking.
Work is fine, nothing that I'd like to specifically say, and this isn't a complaint, I'm happy everything is good!
# Gamescom Latam
This year we had the first Gamescom Latam (previously BIG Festival - Best Independent Games [previously BIG Festival - Brazilian Indie Games Festival ]) I can't say much about the previous ones before the "rebrand"/merge with gamescom, I've heard a lot of things for many years about BIG but I was never there before. But I really enjoyed Gamescom. On BIG 2023 my game was chosen and I could have been there exposing to others, but I wasn't able to and had to pass.
Now that I went as general public, I'm a bit glad I did passed the opportunity before. It's really cool to see developers showcasing their work, passionately justifying some bug before it even happen while you play and anxiously seeing whether you'll be able to pass a puzzle, but I can't even imagine how tiring it should be to stay for hours on a stand showcasing your demo the whole day for multiple people, at each day getting your dark circles darker and hopefully being seen by a publisher and getting a good deal.
These kind of events are really a nice way to showcase your work to different people, from other developers and most importantly, gamers who might like it, wishlist and buy later. I can't tell how much the award thing is useful or not and how much it helps smaller developers, but anyhow it might be really cool to be participating.
I got a passport ticket, so I had access to all days. I'm not much of a "people person" and the first day there (after press) was the best since I was able to get in earlier and there weren't many people yet besides developers setting up their stands. I was more interested in knowing local games that I never heard off and was definitely surprised with that. Sometimes I think I forget the fact that Brazil is a continental country and the Twitter bubble isn't the real world. In fact, the coolest projects I discovered there I never saw on Twitter before. Not only that as I was also able to meet in person people I knew only from internet before. That was really amazing. Lots of fun out of the expo itself as well, such as the Godot Meeting and Gamescom Latão.
# DevOpsDays
I gave a talk at a local DevOpsDays some days after the gamescom, it was surprisingly well received. I spoke about the joy of learning, disguised as "how to become a DevSecOps" and telling some stories of my childhood when I started tinkering with Ragnarok Online servers, setting things up and doing the "infrastructure" for it. The DevSecOps on my presentation meant basically PHP, AVG basic mitigations and rsync/FTP. And for some reason my weird presentation worked well. I really wanted it was recorded, though.
# Gamedev
My game [Siege 'n Sow] is having an identity crisis, since it wasn't getting where it wanted. Because of that, I went a lot of steps back to prototype and iterate some of the core of what the game should be before moving on. The project isn't abandoned, nor canceled. Check out the Discord Server for my games if you want to see what happens next.
While in this hiatus rethinking what I want for my "main" project, my game Torecower got a 40% off on Steam (the highest it has ever been) during the Tower Defense Festival and it really gave a bump on the sales. Not enough to pay the bills, but at least my internet. It also got me motivated to do some improvements on top of some reported bugs I had regarding the weekly leaderboard. If you have a Windows, Linux (including steam deck) or MacOS machine, I'd definitely recommend checking out the game :)
# Social media usage
One might say I'm pretty intense with things, maybe some of that is due the fact I've been in front of computers since the age of 8. But I was getting into a state that reading some stupid Tweets was able to get me into a lot of anger and completely ruining my weeks due some arguments I had (even if they only happened on my head).
So since July 11th I officially stepped away from twitter — nothing too destructive as deactivating my account, since I still will use it to post about my games. And it was really life changing to me. I've been exercising more, spending more time with my partner, doing things more slowly and cautiously and enjoying more the things I want to do. I have the habit of quick switching between bad habits, so the first thing I'd do after leaving twitter would be spending more time on Discord, for instance. But this time I've been putting more effort into opening my RSS feed (if I'm going to keep on screens) and reading something interesting rather than alt tabbing between Discord and my current task and being inattentive for both things I'm trying to do.
# Walking
As a consequence of the previous topic, I've been also starting walking more, which might seem futile for most people, but at times I wouldn't leave my home for months if possible for anything, so it's a huge thing for me. Well, I hope with this bigger focus and capacity of being more productive I can bring more attention to the project I want to release.
# Gamedev 2 👀
As of now, first week of august, I'm now a member of Luxe engine closed beta and I'm so eager to tinker with it, so I might be a little sidetracked with the other things, but hopefully not so much! Since it's an earlier version I really hope to be able to contribute with something and since it's a project I really believe in and have been eager to interact with, it might get a bit of priority for me as well.