Back to making it up

For a variety of reasons, my job as a technical writer at a games studio is coming to an end. I’m on garden leave just now – they’ve picked up my tech, and I’ve a couple weeks to get my act together.

I am a little in shock – it all ended very quickly, and I’m also having some health issues again, which is making life challenging. Part of the problem at the moment is a nerve type pain in my hands and arms, which is making me kind of nervous about my potential for using keyboards as it progresses. The GP just suggested I see a physio, I think disregarding that I thought it was a nerve thing.

Anyways, when all else falls apart, there are still children to home educate, so that’s what I’m focusing on today. Yesterday Tigerboy and I started working on some scratch coding kind of together but separately – we’re doing game design projects, based on a book I picked up for 20p at the library.

Yesterday I coded pin the tail on the dragon… https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/802751911/

Today we’re working on coding a buzzer game. Tigerboy is a lot quicker than I am at doing this stuff, he has way more experience in Scratch than I do. Which is boosting his self esteem no end, particularly when he spotted a bug in my code 😉

The book, in case you’re interested, is How to code in 10 easy lessons by Sean McManus. (amazon affiliate) It’s a little out of date against the scratch version that’s on the site, but it’s got enough to get you going, and some good ideas for structuring game development.