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My 100 Days of Code

It’s quite incredible and terrible at the same time that it took me about a year (if not even more) from when I started talking about 100 Days of Code to actually starting the challenge, but here it finally is.

My 100 Days of Code

Last year or two were quite busy for me, mostly because of the js13kGames competition, but also all the other activities. The problem is, I’m running Enclave Games, an ”indie game development studio”, which released only one game in 2017 (Flood Escape), and none in 2018. I really enjoy(ed?) coding and building games, and to help me get back to that, I’m starting #100DaysOfCode today: on Monday, March April 15th 2018 2019.

The challenge

If you don’t know what’s that, be sure to check the website first. The challenge is about coding every single day for at least one hour throuought the period of 100 days, and documenting the process. I’m gonna break this rule before even starting the first day, and here’s why.

My rules: not every day

While I’d love to go even further and code at least 3-4 hours a day Monday-Friday, I know how important it is to rest with my wife and daughter during the weekends. Sacrificing family time just for the sake of keeping the streak alive is something I’m definitely not gonna do. It is my challenge, thus my rules apply.

Call me a cheater, tell me it’s not going to be “the original” #100DaysOfCode - I’ll ignore it and do what I wanna do anyway. It’s not about having a perfect streak no matter what, but about consistency, and working on building a habit that I will benefit from in the future.

I can guarantee you that week-wise I’ll have more than 7 hours total of the time spent on the challenge, it’s just that the weekends are optional. I could cheat, prepare something on Friday to be commited for Saturday and Sunday, but it makes no sense if the challenge is for me alone, and not as a show off for the rest of the world.

Not all in the open

Given the specificity of how Enclave Games earns money on licensing the games, not all the source code I’ll work during the challenge will be created in the open. I’ll document it anyway, more for myself, but you can follow up the progress if you want to.

After all, I want to release more games and sell their licenses to keep the business going, but the games themselves will remain free to play on the Enclave’s website. Plus there are projects like Enclave Phaser Template that are, and will remain, open.

The plan

I’m gonna work on games, and release as many as possible. Enclave Games as an official company runs since 2017, but the brand born out of passion came into life around 2013. Since then I’ve published 10 games, which usually took 1 month each to build. As you can see, there could be a lot more, especially if Flood Escape debuted May 2017 and there was nothing more since then.

So, the list of projects I consider for the challenge is as follows:

Not particularly in that order, although that’s quite the complete list, probably for a couple of “100 days”. As you can see there’s A LOT to be done, so I’m gonna do as much as I can within the first challenge and probably continue past that with the next ones. It’s an endless war, but the one I’ll fight with pleasure.

New toolset

I’m also gonna challenge myself with the new toolset - switching (finally!) from Phaser 2 to 3, from Sublime Text to VS Code, and from manual builds to something more modern, like Webpack, probably.

Let’s begin!

I’ve created the repo to update it every working day, and will share the progress on Twitter too. So, who already completed the challenge? Who’s joining?