Slow and Steady Wins the Tank Battle?

In which Arielle tries a new idea to potentially speed up workflow and gets prepared for tomorrow's project progression review with GameGen, also known as the Blog Showcase...

If you haven't surmised by the way I've written past blog posts, then I should be forthcoming and state for the record that: I'm a person who tends to obsess over conveying information as accurately as I possibly can and I'm not afraid to be verbose. Honestly though...it's less about fear, and far more about the compulsion to be accurate and inclusive of all possible information pertaining to whatever it is I'm currently writing or talking about. I tend to have trouble figuring out what information to filter out of the "Data Dump", despite my best efforts. Long story long (as I like to say), "I lack brevity."

I notice that this need to write/speak all information in as captivating and accurate a way as humanly possible is interrupting the progression of my workflow in a frustratingly time-consuming fashion. ☜Exhibit A: That sentence. Seriously...don't ask how long it took for me to word that sentence...I'll die of embarrassment. SO, ... In my constant search for ways to create a more streamlined and efficient order of work progression, I've come up with a possible solution for myself. If the hardest aspect of posting updates and publishing projects/games tends to be the writing portion of it, I figure the best course of action is to get the "meat" of that done before starting the coding and art of the project. Hopefully I will experience a steadier flow of completion and no longer become frustrated or bogged down in the final stretch. With that, I'd like to thank you for allowing me the space to disclose and think out a solution to a current issue. This solution may also help me to be better prepared for Blog Showcase Days, that is: a twice monthly review of work progress on projects. With tomorrow being a Blog Showcase Day for myself, I recon the time to implement a new and beneficial workflow would be now.

Now that the preamble has been completed, I can feel the pace speeding up! Time to talk about my newest project: Tank. Let's see how much I can accomplish first day on the project with the new workflow!

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Following a merger between Atari, Inc. and their subsidiary, Kee Games, in September of 1974; Atari would release a game, previously being engineered by Kee Games, that year in November. That game was Tank, a two-player game in which each player operates a tank through a maze and safely around landmines as they attempt to hit one another with projectiles for the most points in a race against time. It was a game of many "near firsts", such as being one of the first games to pit player against player in combat, one of the first games to depict explosions, and (at least preceded by Atari's Gran Trak 10) one of the first games to use a Mask ROM to store graphical data. While Tank may not have been the first to use integrated circuit-based memory, it did set such as the industry standard. It was a massive commercial success, helping Atari at a critical juncture for the company. It was so popular; Atari would give the game a second release in the form of a cocktail cabinet (an extremely popular type of arcade cabinet common in bars and pubs during the 70s and 80s).

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I wish I could say I had more to show for the first day working on this project; or rather, that I had something more visual than just text to show for the time spent. Regardless, I think I completed a lot more than it looks like at first glance. What appears to be merely a paragraph of writing, is a small history of the game and its impact. I research some of this information myself, along with using information given by the introduction of a project. This serves as both an interesting and satisfying way to present a project before showcasing the process of completion, as well as being a quick and thoughtful introduction to the clone I create when publishing the game. It may not seem like much up front, but it will hopefully expedite the final blog for the project as well as its publishing.

It'll be proof of correct coding, creative process, and pixel art moving forward! For now, I wonder off to ponder to myself: How am I going to make an armored war vehicle with explosive projectiles...an animal?