Game Development So Far
I missed last week’s game development update because I don’t want to bore you with never ending tales of saving and loading. God knows it’s boring me! For the first time in my game development journey I’ve found something I’m not enjoying. No good complaining though. Head down and keep hacking away until we get to the other end. I’m hoping this weekend should see the bulk of the work done. Then I will be able to finally move onto more interesting work and get back to updating you about the more fun stuff! Until then the code above is the best I can show you…
Other Developments
Other than the continued development of the save system there are other things we can talk about.
Gym Empire Interview
First of all, last week I had a really enjoyable chat with False Phoenix. False Phoenix (aka Elliot) is a great guy I’ve connected with over the Chronik Spartan Discord. A member of the Discord server for a while now, at the end of last year he reached out to include Gym Empire in a December 2018 roundup of tycoon games. It was really nice to be included in the list and see the increased visibility Gym Empire is getting. Following on from that, Elliot asked if I would like to do an interview for YouTube about Gym Empire. Now you all know how much I love to talk about Gym Empire and game development in general so I jumped at the chance!
Just the other week we sat down one evening over a Discord voice chat and had a good chin wag. Elliot had some great questions proposed from his own Discord community which helped structure the conversation. We went on to have a great chat about Gym Empire, game development and keeping fit! I don’t want to spoil any of the interview so I’ll leave there but I think you’ll enjoy it as much as I enjoyed doing it. I’ll post links to it when False Phoenix puts it online, so watch this space.
YouTube
Alongside game development I’ve continued to try and produce a variety of content for the Chronik Spartan Gaming YouTube channel. Focusing on everything gaming related from retro game pickups to current and next generation news and speculation. The plan was to extend the Chronik Spartan brand and help promote visibility of Chronik Spartan Games. However it’s grown to more than just that. It’s something I really enjoy doing. Especially as I start to find a rhythm to the content creation. As with everything that takes time and effort, if you persevere you end up finding a pattern that works and keeps things flowing. That’s when it changes from a difficult task to something you can really enjoy. Over the past few weeks that’s what has started to happen with the YouTube content, which means it will be easier to make better videos quicker.
You’ve probably noticed that the YouTube content has been the focus of my various sources including this blog, the discord server and twitter. This is primarily due to the current phase of Gym Empire not being that exciting to provide info for. Rest assured the Gym Empire updates will coming through thick and fast again soon. However, in the meantime, being new to creating YouTube content I would absolutely love your feedback and any ideas on content you would like to see me make.
Feedspot Top 40 Retro Gaming Channels
In order to help the Chronik Spartan gaming channel grow I’m always looking at new ideas and ways of letting people find the channel. As well as focusing on quality content and SEO to help the videos appear higher in the YouTube Search results. I’ve also tried reaching out and contacting other influencers.
One of the latest developments was getting Chronik Spartan Gaming featured on the Top 40 Retro Gaming Channels on feedspot. Feedspot is a content reader for reading your favorite websites in one place. However it also houses a number of lists that regularly come up at number one in searches for best YouTube channels.
I’m hoping being featured on Feedspot will help the visibility of Chronik Spartan Gaming and bring some new interested viewers to the channel. I’ll keep you up to date on how it goes in future posts.
Time Management
Since the last update I’ve been using the new weekly schedule I set up. I’m really pleased to say this has provided some much needed structure and predictability to the week. I started off developing basically just taking each day as it comes. That worked great for Glo and the beginning of Gym Empire. However as Gym Empire development has grown in scale and the introduction of YouTube content creation as well, it became increasingly harder to take each day as it comes. I ended up spending far too much time just doing one task when others were building up in the background. Knowing what to focus on each day now gives a much better rhythm to the week, and even though I’m taking on even more than before, it feels less stressful and more controlled.
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