Over the last week or three, I've been using a website named Habitica. I've been doing this in order to assist my attempts at building better habits and generally improve the way in which I go about things. I've made no secret about the fact that when I'm pulled down by depression or anxiety, my good habits and routines tend to get thrown under the bus - which only makes things worse. In this way, perhaps I can reinforce better patterns of behaviour in order to ensure that these habits and routines survive those low periods.

The period between this entry and the last was certainly more fruitful than previous entries - I read quite a considerable amount. Part of this was because I've been on year-end holidays, but also because I no longer have PAX, etc to work through. Since it's also the start of a new year I might do a summary of the last year's reading (though I started this project around the 15th of January I've decided to round that off to the start of each year) with some stats, etc.

Regardless, here's the list for this entry:

It's been an excessively long time since the last entry, and I haven't read much during this time period either. A lot of this is due to crunching for the QoS2 release, followed by PAX Aus 2015, and then finally due to the burnout period afterward. I'll write a bit about that some other time, but for now there's a few things I have read, so let's push on:

Note - this is at the bottom of the article but it's important so here it is here as well: I've omitted the person's account name from the above image and purposefully NOT linked to the review. This person doesn't deserve your attention, and I explicitly ask that you refrain from hunting them out on my behalf. Let's just focus on the awesomeness of you folks instead.

First up - there's a new Feedback build up on IndieDB:

This entry won't be about the game development itself, or the technical aspects. It's a bit more of a personal status one.

To put it bluntly: I'm a bit worried about QoS2QQ.

Not the game itself - the gameplay seems pretty fun, the scope creep of adding bots seems to have converted into reality pretty well, and the UI is something I'm very proud of. I'm proud of the game and the work I've done on it. What's troubling me, is how little traction I seem to be getting as of late with regard to marketing it.

First up, Quarries of Scred 2 has a feedback build available on IndieDB:

First point of order

Ok, this is a pretty basic thing about Twitter usage that I seem to have to point out quite often - thus, a post that I can link to easily.

To make it very blunt: Don't start tweets with an @, unless you intend it to be a very narrow audience. Why? Because if a tweet starts with an @ symbol, they will only show up in the timelines of:

Errr, it's been quite some time since the last entry (a month and a half). My reading has slowed down a bit, but I think that's an ok thing - my previous level of consumption was ridiculously high. I managed to get through the third Doom novel, which was as... odd as I recalled (this is the entry in which the series suddenly goes 'FUCK YOU WE'RE A SPACE OPERA NOW'), and I read some really great short stories (and a really, really bad one too). I began reading the Sword & Planet genre series Dray Prescot, which was surprisingly interesting.

There was once a perfectly succinct article on this topic but I can't find it - so instead you get this one by me. Strap in, it's going to get a bit sweary - like all of my best writing.

This particular topic comes up every now and then - sometimes it even includes a request to sign an NDA.

Let's start off with a simple statement: I do not want your game idea. I do not want to steal it.