I’m planning to work in Unity, but I’ve been spending a lot of time working with HaxeFlixel recently and I may have to go that route instead…

My goal this jam is to stop trying so damned hard

In recent years I’ve found myself spending entirely too much time concerning myself with “what if” situations rather than working. When I actually get to work I’m very productive, but I spend the majority of my time thinking about alternative solutions. I have to try break that cycle.

Let’s improvise

I participated in a graphics design workshop last month. We were taught the basics of shaders, and then given an hour to play around on http://shadertoy.com and encouraged to improvise. Instead of visualizing a desired outcome and trying to reverse-engineer the appropriate code, we used random inputs and scaled parameters until they produced something interesting. Only after finding that interesting thing were we encouraged to fine-tune our work.

The results were fantastic. I stopped second-guessing myself. I stopped trying to predict the outcome before committing to it. I embraced the unknown. Nothing felt risky because no outcome, good or bad, was going to be taken personally. I was free to play.