During December I took a challenge: code 1 hour every day. I decide to work on a Triple Triad clone (Final Fantasy VIII card game) made with the Godot Engine.

Devember?

If you want to know more about Devember, you can read about it here.

Making Triple Triad with Godot Engine

Final Fantasy VIII is one of my favourite videogames and I wanted to create a code implementation for the card mini-game called Triple Triad. It was a good way to study game programming topics such as:

• Turn system
• Simple Artificial Intelligence
• Selection states
• Data Oriented Design
• JSON data handling
• Programmatically create a card object with attributes
• Programmatically create gradients
• Implement game rules

If you want to know more about this I’m going to release the project as open source in the next days, so keep an eye on my blog or my Twitter profile.

In the meantime you can read something that I wrote during my Devember:

• Godot how to reparent a node
• Programmtically create an AtlasTexture with GDScript

The outcome

Participating to Devember I had a lots of upsides:

1. I worked consistently each day (good habit)
2. I almost finished a project that I’ll use as a base for new tutorials
3. I gained dozens of followers by posting a tweet every day
4. I had my most productive month in terms of blog posts created (just 2, yep)
5. I increased my self-confidence

Being consistent is key

I really enjoyed Devember because it gave me two essential things for success:

1. good habit
2. right mindset

The challenge is easy: code 1h each day (habit), however I often ended up working more because I wanted to make that day count and I was determined to get the most out of it (mindset).

If you have a small project that you want to work on during 2019, then I recommend doing something similar: set a goal, then establish the habit to work on it everyday. You will make a lot of progress, I’m sure about this.

More on time management and productivity

If you want to dive a little bit more on time management techniques then take a look at:

• “Don’t break the chain”: a GDC talk given by Jason Rohrer who gives insights about how he optimized his workflow
• Pomodoro tecnique: a great time management tecnique to get the most out of your working hours

Make sure to check these things and start working on your projects! Let me know what you think and if you use other strategies to keep motivation and focus.