This is a shot of the prototype I have been working today. It has been a quite Sunday, and I have been cleaning and fixing some details of the implementation so I can create more situations to test the mechanics and the game flow. This is a project that can get out of my reach very quickly, so I don't want to tell too much about it as I don't expect to keep a regular pace woking on it.

I have been thinking about switching to Unity 4 and I downloaded the free version because I haven't even tried it yet! There are some new features that looks promising. Updating to the pro version is something of a not-so-near future, though :-/

I'm going to try again to embed the prototypes and test those I already have because I think that having the feedback can open new options for me. Working quickly in Unity has become quite comfortable and it is a tool that I can certainly want to keep in my creation book.

In another vein, tomorrow I expect to write, and maybe deliver, the June summary for all the subscribers. So this may be a right time to subscribe if you haven't already.

Yesterday I went to a RPG meetup. I didn't know anybody there but I wanted to meet role players. I sued to play some pen and paper role playing games and I wouldn't mind to play a bit. But I also wanted to find some people to platest a prototype I did some time ago for a Tactics-RPG game inspired by the way the pen and paper role games are played.
I am resurrecting this old project and I am more interested in researching the concept slowly. If it starts to go somewhere I will show it looking for more feedback.

I am going to be a teacher at the second games laboratory organized by Arteleku at San Sebastián (Spain) from 6th to 8th  of September. I will be supporting the participants of the workshop on the gameplay design perspective along with Javi Sánchez, a game journalist and theorist and Rubén Alcañiz, a highly experienced developer.

There is no fee for the participants, to take part fill in the application form and send your CV or short biography and you will receive confirmation of your acceptance onto the workshop once the deadline for registration is up.  You may need to cover the expenses for travelling and acommodation though. It's a great opportunity to spend a weekend developing some concepts and going out to eat tasty pintxos (northern version of the tapa).

Read the complete announcement and apply for the workshop Laboratory #02: Conception, designing and prototyping videogames.

A drawing I did today at the park, with some digital touches.

Paradoxically, I have had a great day.

Today I have been working a lot on the wedding site, some guests are already registering and not everything is done yet. I have been tinkering with plugins and code tweaks. And researching about different options to get the things done.

I am also wondering what to do with this site, if I could try to set up a wordpress installation and start the migration now that I have the momentum and the skills are sharping again.

Just one simple, and memorable, sentence said today at the NLP course:

So you better have your attention aimed at something useful and productive. This is just another view on the positive thinking philosphy. If you have your attention to how to solve the problems, then you are giving your energy to the problems. 

Post for today, 24 June 2013

I am having problems with sites in the same server, domains, DNS and A records. So this is going to be my temporal solution until I fix everything while keeping sane. I have to fix other things first, but this doesn't need to stop my goal of publishing a post each day.

Whish me luck!

You can still visit the site and the other blog posts of AlejoLab

Last Friday I posted my first mini-product for sale a writers tracking spreadsheet to help improve productivity when writing. Apparently my mind thought all the work poured there surely deserved missing the post on the following day. Yep, that's the second day I miss the daily post. I was the whole Saturday working (or fighting) to develop the web for my upcoming wedding and at the end of the day I just wanted to go to bed and keep my reading of A storm of swords.

Today I had another session to work on the Oppa! video project, but the weather was so awful that we ended in a cafeteria and nothing worthy to be speak of was made. Because of the way the project is this was expected to happen anytime. I wonder why do I want to make a project that relies so much in the weather if I am in the UK.

I have also been writing, and using my brand new and cool tracking spreadsheet for the first time. I wrote 1583 words in two sessions, with an overall speed of 590 words per hour. I was working on character notes and synopses. I don't have enough data yet to draw conclusions, but it seems that I can spot a pattern appearing. My speed is a bit higher on my second session during the day. I will keep an eye on that since this is just a vague hypothesis, I don't even have proper data about long sessions or days in a row working.

See you tomorrow.

I have been creating a spreadsheet to track and improve my writing sessions, and I my plan is to sell it for a small price. This is based on the techniques explained by Rachel Aaron in her ebook "2k to 10k" which I read recently. She explains the basics in her post: How I Went From Writing 2,000 Words a Day to 10,000 Words a Day

I wanted to use the ideas presented, but when starting to gather the information from my last writing sessions I couldn't resist to take some time to prepare a proper spreadsheet. What I want to provide here is a way to track the information about the writing sessions, not information about the overall progress of the book. The goal is to analize all the data to spot the patterns in your writing sessions in which you are most productive.

I have prepared a version with Microsoft Office 2010 and another with LibreOffice, automating the calculations of different statictics and making everything to look nice and easy to use. The file has a sheet with instructions, another for the actual tracking of the sessions and a last one with a clean template.

Some of the features included are:

• Open and go, no macros or plugins needed. Save the time to set up the whole thing and just start writing.
• Easy and clear instructions to help you get started.
• Calculates automatically words per day, session time, total writing time in the day, words writing speed for each session and word writing speed for the day.
• Automatic day summary. The spreadsheet recognizes when there is a day change and show the total statistics for the day in a light colored row.
• Ready to use sheet and a clean template to copy new sheets. Helps to keep everything organized the way you like it.
• You get all the future updates and fixes even if I choose to rise the price a bit. Get in touch if you have any problem with the product or ideas to improve it.
• Receive everything in your email. A zip containing versions for Microsoft Office 2010 (.xlsx) and Open document format (OpenOffice, LibreOffice) (.ods)

Not conviced yet?
Well, it's just £1.2, I won't fight for it. When the time comes that you need something like this, just remember that for this price it doesn't worth your time doing it yourself.

If you think this is interesting but don't want to buy it yet, consider suscribing in the sidebar to the monthly summary newsletter to keep informed.

Today I went to see a theatre play called "Hermione Steel and the island of lost minds". A big lava lamp that seemed to be infinite was mentioned, and so an image like this came to my mind.