Elysian Shadows

Anyone have any common time that they are most likely to dev? Maybe some type of music that helps you concentrate on the development process? Perhaps you don your lucky underwear that hasn't been washed in 6 years.

Personally, I find that I get the most work done after my girlfriend has fallen asleep and it is mighty late (past 11pm or so). Although this ends up being a problem when I get reeeeeally focused as I've found myself up til 4->5am working on a program.

A nice big cup of strong coffee and a visual basic/c/c++ book.

seeing something really cool and going "how'd they do that?". Or if I just want to make something that looks cool(I'm a graphics programmer primarily )

M_D_K wrote:seeing something really cool and going "how'd they do that?".

Definitely. This is the exact reason I love the Elysian Shadows team so much. They motivate me to play around with new things. Any time I come across something new I always want to go try it out.

As far as time I'm also a late-night devver and I generally can't concentrate when it's light outside. Anywhere from 7-9 pm through 1-3 am. Sometime I listen to music or have the TV on in the background, other times I just watch a YouTube video every half hour or so to let my eyes have a text break.

I do most of my game devving on the weekends. So, it's usually a week filled with ideas that gets me "in the mood" to dev. I have all week to come up with a concept and design it in my head, then it's time to implement over the weekend.

Watching an episode or two of AiGD always helps as well!

After a bunch of pr0n and some cereal. Lol, just messing. Typically I get put in the mood after watching an episode of the Elysian Shadow team's work. Or, if I get REALLY bored of playing WoW (which happens a lot, and yes I know I shouldn't be playing it, lol) then I typically start programming or reading one of my programming books. If I find a good book (and I've found a few), then I wait for my wife to go to bed, open it up, start to program, and put some techno music on (for some reason, it makes me go all jumpy, but that's probably the three energy drinks I drink before reading). Anything really, it's like a football junkie... it just appeals to him and sometimes he's more in the mood to tackle some dudes than other days.

Sex then caffeine and Rush or video game music playing.

free time.

It depends on what I'm doing. If its some mindless busy coding (UI rigging or some such simple but time consuming task) then I start up some music. Maybe watch some TV while coding.

If I'm working on a rather complex task (More thinking than coding), then the music and any other distraction needs to go. Usually I'll walk away from the computer while I try to think through a solution.

If I can't think of any dev work that I want to start on I just start up the game/editor and start looking for bugs, or I'll take a look at my task list and try to pick out some easy things I can plug through for an hour or two. Usually this is the after work weekday process as its harder to get into a major feature when I only want to code for a few hours.

That said I probably spend a whole lot of time thinking about working without actually getting anything done.

Playing a game like Portal or Braid, and wondering how they made it,
,reading a Programming book, or when learning a new equation, because
if you want to truely understand something, write a program that does it
for you.

And... watching an AiGD vid, of course!

I usually listen to energetic music like Rage Against the Machine,Prodigy
or Disturbed,
I stay up to 3, and sometimes 6-AM.
(if I dont have school, or in times like now, when I'm waiting for my last year of suffering. )

After seeing something cool in retro games or watching an episode of AiGD, that usually does the trick. Unlike some people on here I can't code late at all. Most of the coding I get done is in the afternoon. I once tried coding past about 11pm and found the next day my code was really buggy

If I see some cool youtube video of someone making a simple game in C++ I remember that, that is my goal also and I am motivated again ^^

Watching cheesy software/hardware demonstration videos from the 80's/90's , usually gets me in the mindframe of a desginer, helps me convince myself that my project is as relevant and as exciting as the first *insert a cheesy 80/90's demonstration video*

Another odd one is to shower, all of my distractions are blocked out, and it leaves me to think about a new project and plan it in my head!

The one that I think almost everyone has said is free time, same here really, I need to feel like programming is one of a very small list of things I have to do, too much to think about at once, and ideas become few and far between (exams are the issue at the moment)

My final thing would be "communication", i'm not talking about general banter with friends, i'm talking proper, programming-oriented conversation, a good chat about your ideas always helps (although this kind of one-one conversation is few and far between at the moment, I think this should change when I get to uni in a few months )

An interesting topic, I wish I had thought of it

A lot of free time, its hard to dev when I know im going to school, training or anything else in the coming hours. Inspirational videos and games helps a lot as well.

Coke and music is great while devving, but I don't have a specific "devving genre" so it's generally rock, classic and video game music.

programmerinprogress wrote:Watching cheesy software/hardware demonstration videos from the 80's/90's , usually gets me in the mindframe of a desginer, helps me convince myself that my project is as relevant and as exciting as the first *insert a cheesy 80/90's demonstration video*

Out of curiousity, where do you find such vids?

YouTube mainly, i'll watch anything from old promotional videos, to demonstrations, mainly the Apple and Microsoft ones, anything innovative, something to get my imagination going, i'm personally very interested in building menus and buttons at the moment (it's my current project, but I shall say no more ), so watching videos about the macintosh or early windows videos helps to get my creative motor running