Last night I started working on my game again.  It felt good to start looking at the code and figuring out what I was doing where.  Even better, is that I started to organize my code, something I’ve been meaning to do for a while.  I am still working on my ‘using space bar as a pause button’, but until I can more easily read through my code and know what’s happening I think that any further progress is going to be difficult.

At least, for me.  I have a good idea of most of what’s in my js file (javascript file), but sometimes recognizing what interacts with what appropriately enough to know how to alter things.  Well, yes, that is the difficult part.  Robey discussed a normal practice, that if you can’t see an entire function on your screen, then it’s too big.  That means you need to subdivide, and separate out the parts into smaller functions.  That had happened with my tick() function.  

In case you’ve forgotten, my tick() function is the one that runs most of the aspects of the game.  it interprets time as it progresses throughout the game, and makes sure the the appropriate checks occur when they should.  Basically, it’s the type of function that can normally get really big anyways.  It was high time I went and chopped it up.  

Once I had reorganized my code I had a much better idea of what was going on.  Unfortunately it’s been long enough that parts of it are still a mystery, so I’m going to need to simply go back over everything.  Like with any organization, making sure that similar things are in the same place makes it easier overall.  

One of the things I’ve run into now, though, is how much more I want to know.  How much more I want to understand.  Problem is, ya gotta eat, and right now I’m paying off loans and credit cards with the money I’m earning from translation, so translation is always...first priority.

I miss the day when I was able to focus purely on FlamingLunchbox.  Oddly enough, I didn’t actually make my first game until after I started my translation job.  Did I need that stability, or more like, did I need the safety of a job that was sure to pay before I could feel able to devote time elsewhere?  It would be sad to say if that’s the case.  For some reason it makes me feel not quite devoted enough.  But I guess, that’s kinda the way it goes until you feel like you can actually do something without asking a bazillion questions.  You need a level of confidence in what you’re doing, before you can start to feel able to do it on your own.