Last day, but big changes! I know it’s only 7:30 here so quit early to write the day report but that is because I want to make the big reveal during the live-stream of the big changes I implemented.
Big changes?
The project structure has changed a lot, it’s something I had been thinking about whilst working on the ffmpeg stuff. the past 2 days I have been cleaning up code, making overall improvements and been testing out if what my head was thinking was actually possible.
I know I’m being vague right now of what actually happened, but I am positive once I show the changes during the live-stream, you’ll understand why these changes were made … I hope hahah.
Early optimization
I feel that I got afraid of doing things which may be seen as early optimization as it is something which people have been pointing out to me. But on the other hand, the project is not working right now anyway, nobody is using it yet to edit their videos as well … so I also feel that now is the best time to test things out.
Of course I should really invest more time into the core parts of the editor, of which right now the timeline is one of the last big remaining tasks. Won’t procrastinate on that one and I have already set my public and personal deadline on when I want this part of the editor to be done.
How was No zero days November
No zero days November was HARD. I had a couple of personal goals for this month:
- Create more regular progress videos; (Failed with that one ^^”)
- Learn to balance my time better; (I managed to succeed with this towards the end)
- Get a good amount of work done on GoZen; (the FFMPEG GDExtension is basically in a working state now (except exporting audio))
- Gain more public interest in the project; (Couldn’t really make much videos, but we got 1 new monthly ko-fi supporter and 28 new subscribers)
- Figure out if GoZen is actually possible. (Yes it is!)
These daily logs intention was as a way to force myself to actually get work done each day. Having to prove that I got work done motivated me enough each day to actually sit down and work on GoZen. I enjoyed writing these logs and these logs also made me actually achieve something each day … or at least try to achieve something each day hahah.
Positives
This month was really worth it as I learned a ton of new things, having been busy with GoZen daily really helped to tackle these heavy tasks such as the rendering and importing of videos. Without this month I would have kept struggling till the end of the year I guess.
It was also needed to actually get ffmpeg to work and test how it goes inside of Godot, because if I could not make it work with a good amount of performance, then this was going to be near impossible to complete GoZen successfully. The moment I got the video frames to play I was so relieved. After having worked so long on it and to finally see it working … I basically stood up, sat on the ground against the wall and sat there in silence for a good amount of time just enjoying the moment hahah.
Negatives
The past month also showed that as long as my kid is this young it is near impossible to get a good amount of working hours done each day. That together with my other stay at home duties such as cooking, cleaning and taking care of my kid were starting to take a toll on me as I felt I should invest as much time as possible into GoZen during this “no zero days challenge”, however I learned to balance everything and that I can actually achieve a lot by 2 separate 1 hour sessions each day.
Life gets busy, and this month was stressful. I came very close to burning myself out again at certain points and the moment I got stressed I felt my panic attacks creeping up again from my previous period which I apparently have not fully recovered from.
Conclusion of No zero days November
Making these daily reports helped me massively in reviewing how my day went, how it could have gone, what I can improve, why my days went bad/good, … But it became very clear to me that I should set more limits for myself so I don’t overwork myself and that I don’t stress too much.
Luckily I started figuring out a better balance towards the last couple of days of this challenge, a balance I really needed for myself to find a better work/life balance. I know that these daily logs were supposed to be update logs about GoZen and its progress, but these quickly turned into diary style entries instead. ^^”
Will I keep working on GoZen daily? Probably not, I think there is a good reason why work weeks exist of 5 out of 7 days in a week hahha. Even with GoZen being my biggest passion project, working on it daily gets me into some tunnel vision making me forget about my other tasks as a stay at home dad and as a part of my family.
As for the rest of this day, I’ll keep fixing up the mess of the big changes I made and tomorrow will be a well deserved day of in which I’ll go to the park with my family and just enjoy touching some grass. Thanks for everybody who kept reading these daily reports and I hope you found it somewhat interesting in following my life whilst working on GoZen.
