Rebuild 3: Campaign Map
Colin walking a dune in Sossusvlei, Namibia
Sunset in Sossusvlei, Namibia

Colin walking the rice field highways in Bali
Colin walking the rice field highways in Bali

Where we’ve been lately

Colin and I enjoyed another Christmas in the southern hemisphere. We had a mind-blowing road trip around Namibia where we saw animals. All the animals. So many animals!! Also the world’s tallest sand dunes, blasted moon-like valleys, spectacular cliffs and salt flats that stretched forever.

Next we spent a month in beautiful Bali, Indonesia, where I worked on Rebuild to the sound of monks chanting at our local temple. I’m an atheist and not into yoga or meditation or spirituality in general, but Bali has this culture of melding art and religion with everyday life in a way that makes it all seem more meaningful. Every day someone has to prepare little offerings to decorate the family shrine, the doorway to their business, the dashboard in their car. The bustle of modern south-east-Asian life (think gridlocked roads and honking scooters) is woven in with daily pilgrimages to local temples to leave offerings and receive blessings. The Bali religion is a mix of Hinduism, monotheism, ancestor worship, animism and superstition. You name it, they probably worship it in Bali. It was oddly like being in a video game world where magic was real and permeated everything around us.

Religion in Rebuild 3

Alright, well, none of that’s going into Rebuild 3. Most of the religion in Rebuild is predictable old Christianity, though I imply that the churches are all multi-faith. Religion spreads from devout survivors to their friends if you post them to missions together. Those devout survivors have more conservative cultural views and might disagree with policy choices like encouraging women to be soldiers.

This is a stereotype, I know, but it’s something I feel we should be thinking about and discussing more. Is religion a positive force that brings communities together and gives meaning to the chaos of the universe, or does it hold us back by reinforcing oppressive cultural norms and magical thinking? Can it do one without the other?

I often wish I was more challenging with this kind of “political” content in Rebuild, despite the possibility of angry fans. As is, you might not even notice my political leanings unless you read every scrap of text in the game. Rebuild 3 is me (Sarah) trying to be respectful, and reflecting the world as I see it.

Campaign mode

In version 0.90 (currently in the Steam testing branch), I added the first half of Rebuild 3’s story mode and the campaign map. The story takes place in the Pacific Northwest of the US and Canada. You start off fleeing the destruction of Seattle, then head north in search of a cure. Every city has some unique element, plotline or alternate ending to discover.

rebuild_map_550

The second half (Canada) will be the final piece of content that makes Rebuild 3 complete. It’s almost done! I haven’t picked a release date yet but it’s getting very close, so stay tuned… the Android and iOS versions should follow a few months later in the summer. I still have… ugh… 400 items on my TODO list, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel now. I even found time to write this post.

Thanks as always to the wonderful beta testers who’ve been so diligent at finding bugs and sending me feedback with each new release. Thanks to everyone waiting for the mobile version for your patience and support. Not long now!

Rebuild 3: Luverly Equipment

Colin and I are still in South Africa, because screw winter. The days are getting longer, the weather hotter, just the way it should be. Perpetually.

We’ve fallen in to a routine here of working, then doing more work, then working when we have some time between work and work. Progress is being made on Rebuild 3, which eases the feeling I’ve had for the last year of being in a tunnel whose end gets further away the faster I walk. Finally, I’m gaining on it!

Since we finally have some purdy Adam-art for all the equipment, and close-to-final descriptions and effects, praps it’s time I publish the definitive (*cough version 0.71 cough*) list.

rebuild3EquipMelee

Melee Weapons:

The mandala of pain. And gardening.

Boring old hand-to-hand. I added some silly melee weapons in Rebuild like the shovel and golf club because I just love the image of bashing a zombie’s skull in with things you find lying around. Once to graduate to firearms, they’re also useful for scavenging or recreation, respecitvely.

Equipment Description Effect
Knife Officially Licensed RAMBO First Blood MC-RB2 Survival Knife +2 defense
Stick Everyone knows Donatello has the longest range attack +1 defense
Nail Board A board with a nail so big it will destroy them all +2 defense
Fire Ax A scavenger’s best friend +2 defense, +2 scavenging
Baseball Bat Swing away +1 defense, perk: Recreation
Shovel Good for digging your way through a zombie’s skull +1 defense, +1 scavenging
Golf Club FOOOOOORE +1 defense, perk: Recreation
Sledgehammer Useful for construction or deconstruction of zombie skulls +2 defense, +2 building
Pickaxe Can I pick your brain for a minute? +2 defense, +1 building
Chainsaw Find some meat! +2 defense, +1 building
Sword Don’t hold it by the pointy end +2 defense
Named Sword Makes you feel like a Ninja +3 defense, perk: Ninja
Nunchuks Hope the nose you break is not your own +1 defense
Mierfa’s Nunchuks Mierfa made these herself after a harrowing incident +3 defense
Whip Reinact your favorite scenes from Raiders of the Lost Ark +1 defense
Andy’s Whip More a toy than a useful weapon +3 defense, perk: Recreation

rebuild3EquipRanged

Ranged weapons:

Be prepared.

Things that go boom. Or in some cases “twack”. Most of these use ammo, which is of the one-size-fits-all variety in Rebuild, working in both your pea shooter and your rocket launcher. It’s easy to make more ammo in a workshop… perhaps too easy… so enjoy all that free ammo now before it gets nerfed in the next update and you’ve got to trade Gustav your firstborn just to make your guns work.

And how does ammo work? You use up one unit (obviously not one BULLET, duh) for every 3 days spent shooting at stuff. If you run out of ammo, all guns grant +0 defense. There’s a policy that lets you increase or decrease ammo usage.

Equipment Description Effect
Pistol Useless without bullets +2 defense
Pea Shooter Literally shoots peas +3 defense, perk: Green Thumb
Shotgun Aim in the general direction of the head +3 defense
Named Shotgun Sturdier than the average shotgun +4 defense
Hunting Rifle Without me, my rifle is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless +3 defense
Van Dijk’s Rifle I must master my rifle as I must master my life +4 defense
Submachine Gun Ratatatat +3 defense
Assault Rifle This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine +4 defense
Flamethrower Smores?? My favorite! +4 defense
Minigun Can cut a zombie in half at 100 yards, not that that would kill it +5 defense
Rocket Launcher Eliminate everything in your path, including your path +5 defense
Crossbow Uses ammo like guns +2 defense
Boomerang She might fly off, but she always comes back to me +1 defense
Melanie’s Boomerang Tipped with razors for taking off zed heads +2 defense

rebuild3EquipTools

Tools:

One of the Kickstarter reward tiers was getting to name an item, which is where things like the “Octonoo Binocs” and “Walter’s Go Bag” came from. These souped-up versions of regular items often give a perk as well as an extra skill bonus.

Yes, the “See Further” perk stacks with the Improved Scouting tech, letting your survivors scout a 3×3 grid instead of just one measly building at a time.

Equipment Description Effect
Hammer Bang bang went Maxwell’s silver hammer +1 defense, +2 building
Wrench It’s all about torque +1 building
Saw Man those were some bad movies +1 building
Crowbar Can open almost any object, or at least smash it +1 defense, +2 scavenging
Named Crowbar For prying open stuff… including rib cages +1 defense, +3 scavenging
Flashlight Find useful stuff in darkened buildings +1 scavenging
Binoculars For more efficient long distance scavenging +1 scavenging
Moore’s Binocs Spy on your neighbors up to 4 blocks away +2 scavenging, perk: See Further
Octonoo Binocs Official Binoculars of the Octonoo City Bird Watching Club +2 scavenging, perk: See Further
Toolbox All the tools you need to build your first bidhouse +3 building
Backpack You could live out of one of these for years +3 scavenging
Pitchfork Good fer pokin’ +1 scavenging, perk: Green Thumb
Chemistry Kit A good set of glass beakers and a bunsen burner +3 engineering
Doctor’s Bag Lets you diagnose almost anything, just not cure it +2 engineering
Walter’s Go Bag Lets you diagnose almost anything, just not cure it +5 engineering, perk: First Aid
The Doctor’s Scalpel Lets you diagnose almost anything, just not cure it +5 engineering, perk: First Aid
Mirror Earth A tale of teamwork by Crawford and Yeo +3 leadership, perk: Team Player
Terrible Comic So badly written that it inspires you to do better +3 engineering, perk: Easygoing
Calculator Ancient but solar powered, these things last forever +1 engineering
Science Book Sleep with it under your pillow and learn by osmosis +2 engineering
Named Science Book A first edition! Before they fixed all the mistakes! +4 engineering
Flare Gun Works as a weapon in a pinch +3 leadership, +1 defense
Radio Communication is the key to good leadership +3 leadership
Megaphone Can be heard a mile away on a windless day +2 leadership
Multi-tool Reid Co’s bestselling five-in-one multi-tool +1 to all
Guitar Soothe the savage beasts and lift the sombre spirits +2 leadership
Helmet For more effective headbutt attacks perk: Defended
Top Hat A top-notch hat or the truly refined leader +1 leadership
Cowboy Hat This town ain’t big enough for two sheriffs +1 leadership

rebuild3EquipKids

Pets:

Children also count as equipment in the code. They grant -1 to all perks (to represent the time it takes to take care of them), and grant a happiness perk called Babysitter. Yes, babysitting is a source of great joy for survivors in Rebuild. When you compare it to other possible duties anyway.

You might remember the black cat from Rebuild 2 where it was a reward for cleaning our the gambler’s bank. Kickstarter backers got to name it this time around, so you might win: “Yoshi”, “Stevens”, “Gromit”, “Pepsi”, “Cooper”, “Caboose”, “Kamstra”, or “Linus”

Equipment Description Effect
Cat Nobody can resist this cat’s charms +1 leadership, perk: Pet Owner
Black Cat A very special cat +1 to all, perk: Pet Owner
Pomeranian Adorable, when it finally stops yapping +2 leadership, perk: Pet Owner
Retriever Wants to be your bestest friend +1 defense, +1 scavenging, perk: Pet Owner
Bulldog The jowls say it: this is one mean dog +2 defense, perk: Pet Owner

rebuild3EquipVehicles

Vehicles:

Oh, there are plenty of vehicles lying around. But good luck getting any of them to start after rusting in the rain for a decade.

I haven’t quite figured out vehicles yet… right now they grant the Has Vehicle perk which eliminates the danger of doing missions further than 1 city block away from the fort. But I have several vehicle-related events planned that should make them more interesting than that, and something you’ll definitely want to have.

Equipment Description Effect
Bicycle Keep fit and stay ahead of the mob perk: Has Vehicle
Motorcycle Drive right through those traffic jams +1 defense, perk: Has Vehicle
Car Surprisingly spacious trunk +1 scavenging, perk: Has Vehicle
Armored Truck Bulletproof and full of cash +2 defense, +2 scavenging, perk: Has Vehicle

rebuild3EquipDeluxe

Deluxe edition bonus equipment:

(The Fox rocks!)

One of the Kickstarter rewards (and now deluxe edition bonuses) is some special starting jobs for your main leader, which come with gussied-up versions of some items. They are:

Equipment Description Effect
Handle with Care Groovy +5 defense, +2 building
KITT Heavily armored, but doesn’t actually talk +3 defense, +3 scavenging, perk: Has Vehicle
The Feynman Lectures Arm yourself with physics +4 engineering, perk: MacGyver
Note’s Guitar Smooth sound but a sharp edge +4 leadership, +2 defense, perk: Musician
Construction Hat Doin’ it like a Doozer +3 building, perk: Defended

Rebuild 3: Children

Keep babies safe from zed in a comfy cooler
Keep babies safe from zed in a comfy cooler
Build 0.70x is live on Steam for PC and Mac. This update’s going to be Steam only, so I can get on with the process of making a game and stop fiddling with builds all day. My apologies to standalone & Android players – I’ll aim for an early all-platforms build next month to make up for it.

We’re in Cape Town, South Africa this winter. Our first time in Africa, so we had to do a safari and see us some Big Five. We chose Etosha national park in Namibia and rented a 4×4 with two friends, two tents on top. I nearly had this release ready to go into testing before we left, but a last minute bug stopped me from uploading it in time.

That’s okay. Game development rule #5: Never release the day before you go on vacation, or on a Friday afternoon… unless you’re indie work all weekend anyway.

In the end we landed somewhere between Chipper Chad and Hopeless Hugh.
In the end we landed somewhere between Chipper Chad and Hopeless Hugh.

The biggest change in the new version is children. Tiny humans (called Goats in the code justcuz) who are born and grow up, assuming they’re spectacularly lucky enough not to die in the process. Luck is indeed on their side in build 0.70.2, since the events that might kill them aren’t in yet. They’re treated as equipment… I know, I know, it isn’t a very kind metaphor, but it keeps them from getting underfoot in a gameplay-and-ui sense. They DO each have a “Colin ID” in the code, which is kind of the Rebuild equivalent of a soul.

Children must be equipped by a caretaker at all times. Equipping a child lowers your skills to represent the time needed to raise them, but they provide a happiness boost because they’re such inspirational little devils. They eat half as much food as adults but don’t take up a house. They can be born (to a married couple only right now) and grow up to be full adults at age 14, whether they’re actually mature enough for it or not.

Also in build 0.70: new faces & equipment art (full changelog here)

This is just the start for children. Next month we’ll be adding events to make them more interesting and useful. Young Sophia Sassy-socks will soon be able to:

  • help her dad out around the farm
  • ask her parents to check for monsters under the bed
  • get lost and need to be rescued by mom
  • climb down a narrow well to see why the bucket’s stuck
  • go to school
  • make friends with the boys from St Micheals
  • find a cool toy and learn an important lesson about sharing

Any other suggestions? Let me know.

northwayRhino

Namibia was intense btw – we saw lions DOIN’ IT and all kindsa other animals: two kinds of zebra, thirsty giraffes, snoozing hyenas, the delicious kudu and graceful springbok, common warthogs and baboons (both are suburban pests here), snoozing hyenas, and the terribly endangered black rhino.

Setting up Subversion on Amazon EC2 for free

Remote backups are crazily important for Colin and I with our nomadic lifestyle. We consider ourselves very lucky that we haven’t had our laptops stolen or destroyed in 5 years of travel. We take precautions: we lock our doors, keep our laptops out of sight, and try to give off an air of “thrifty backpackers” while actually carrying around $6,000 worth of electronics. But if it should ever happen, we could be up and working again within 24 hours thanks to offsite backups.

I use Dropbox for large files and Google Drive for documents (both free to a point), and for code I use offsite version control software. There are free hosting services for Git… but after working with it on several projects over many years I still don’t fully understand Git and consistently screw up commits. I am much more comfortable with older, simpler Subversion. But there are no free or even reasonably-priced hosting options for svn projects unless you make them open source.

However, Amazon is offering free linux EC2 servers with 30gb ssd hard drive space. For a relatively small project like Rebuild with only a couple contributors and few branches, that’s more than enough, and the equivalent hosted option costs $50/month or more. The trick is configuring it. This took me a few hours, some false starts and useful tutorials. You do need to be familiar with Linux. I documented the process for my own uses, but here it is for you:

Creating an EC2 instance and SSHing in

Create a new EC2 instance
They won’t charge you unless you go beyond their free tier
I chose to put mine in Oregon (us-west-2)
Check “only free” and pick a freebie amazon linux ami
I used amzn-ami-hvm-2014.09.1.x86_64-ebs (ami-b5a7ea85)
Next page, choose max free (30gb) ssd
Next page, open HTTP port to all (0.0.0.0) – SSH is already open by default
Complete and launch your instance

Create a new key pair when prompted and download the .PPK file from amazon.
Visit the EC2 dashboard, instance should be Running and status checks 2/2
Record your instance IP (YOUR_INSTANCE_IP)
Download Putty
SSH into your instance using the PPK from amazon (guide)
Default amazon AMI SSH username is ec2-user, no password
ec2-user@YOUR_INSTANCE_IP

You’re in! Putty hint: right-click to paste clipboard contents.

Installing software

Update pre-installed software:
# sudo yum update -y

Visit the public ip in your browser: http://YOUR_INSTANCE_IP
should see Amazon Linux AMI Test Page if Apache is installed and running

If Apache is not installed (guide):
# sudo yum groupinstall -y "Web Server" "MySQL Database" "PHP Support"
# sudo yum install -y php-mysql
# sudo service httpd start

Install subversion and mod_dav_svn (should see a long list of all changes):
# sudo yum –y install mod_dav_svn
# sudo yum –y install subversion

Edit the Apache configuration file for subversion:
# sudo vi /etc/httpd/conf.d/subversion.conf
Replace any subversion.conf content with:

LoadModule dav_svn_module     modules/mod_dav_svn.so
LoadModule authz_svn_module   modules/mod_authz_svn.so
<Location /repos>
   DAV svn
   SVNParentPath /var/www/svn
   # Limit write permission to list of valid users.
   AuthType Basic
   AuthName "Authorization Realm"
   AuthUserFile /var/www/svn-auth/passwd
   AuthzSVNAccessFile  /var/www/svn-auth/access
   Require valid-user
</Location>

Create the directory which will contain the subversion repository:
# sudo mkdir /var/www/svn

Create the directory which will contain the permissions files.
# sudo mkdir /var/www/svn-auth

Create the permission file:
# sudo vi /var/www/svn-auth/access
And fill it with (replace sarah, colin, guest with your usernames):

[/]
sarah = rw
colin = rw
guest = rw

Create and add to the password file (use -c the first time to create)
# sudo htpasswd -cb /var/www/svn-auth/passwd sarah SARAHSPASSWORD
# sudo htpasswd -b /var/www/svn-auth/passwd colin COLINSPASSWORD
# sudo htpasswd -b /var/www/svn-auth/passwd guest GUESTSPASSWORD

Create a repository (REPONAME is the name of your repository eg rebuild):
# cd /var/www/svn
# sudo svnadmin create REPONAME

Change files authorization (again after creating new repos too):
# sudo chown -R apache.apache /var/www/svn /var/www/svn-auth
# sudo chmod 600 /var/www/svn-auth/access /var/www/svn-auth/passwd

Start apache web server:
# sudo service httpd restart
Will complain about determining domain and using 127.0.0.1, that’s ok

To make sure apache always starts on boot:
# sudo chkconfig httpd on
# sudo chkconfig --list
Should show 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on for httpd

Verify the subversion repo by opening in a browser:
http://YOUR_INSTANCE_IP/repos/REPONAME

You’re done! Connect via Tortoise or your fav svn client using the url above.

Other operations

To copy from an older repo including revisions:
# sudo svnadmin dump /var/www/svn/REPONAME > /tmp/REPONAME.svn
(copy the file to the new server then)
# sudo svnadmin load /var/www/svn/REPONAME < /tmp/REPONAME.svn

To connect a backup mirror on another (non-free) EC2 server with the same setup (guide)
First make revisions editable in the mirror repo:
# sudo echo '#!/bin/sh' > /var/www/svn/REPONAME/hooks/pre-revprop-change
# sudo chmod 755 /var/www/svn/REPONAME/hooks/pre-revprop-change
Then initialize the mirror from the old one:
# sudo svnsync init file:///var/www/svn/REPONAME http://YOUR_INSTANCE_IP/repos/REPONAME
Should see "Copied properties for revision 0."
Then copy the data including all revisions:
# sudo svnsync sync file:///var/www/svn/REPONAME
Can use this to make nightly backups to another server

Becoming a Nomadic Game Dev: How to Travel

Since 2010 Sarah and I have been traveling the world while making video games. We’ve written and shipped Rebuild 1, Rebuild 2, Incredipede and Deep Under the Sky entirely while traveling. We’re currently both working on Rebuild 3. There are a few questions we are often asked about our work/travel so I decided to write out a how-to. Or at least, talk about some lessons we’ve learned. Might as well start with the one true secret of making travel and work happen:

The One True Secret to Working While Traveling Is…

Spend at last a month in one place

We do one to three months everywhere we go. This is important because if you spend less than a month somewhere you won’t get any work done. There will be so much to do and see the pressure to do do and see it all before you leave will overwhelm you. You need time to get into a groove, you need time to let the excitement of being in a new place fade into the joy of experiencing a new culture. It’s like visiting an art gallery for the second time. You see more nuances, you start to see how it all fits together.

There are other advantages to slow travel, like that it’s cheaper.

We spend between 1000$-2000$ a month on rent when we travel. We usually get an entire apartment or house to ourselves for less than a hotel would cost. I am currently sitting under dappled shade looking at Sarah’s reflection in the pool of our two-bedroom house in Cape Town which we pay 1300$ a month for. I can hear the waves breaking on the beach and can’t see any neighbours because the property is so well treed. This is better than any hotel anywhere. You also get a kitchen which means you don’t have to eat out all the time and you can spend less on restaurants.

AirBnB is your friend here. It’s an easy way to find long-term rentals. Write people who don’t show a discount for long-term stays, they probably just haven’t considered it yet. Also dig around off of AirBnB, some places still have thriving local rental websites.

Airfair is less when you travel slow. Say you fly to Japan for 1500$, that 1500$ goes a lot further if you spend three months in Japan and then three months in Thailand before flying home.

Also, traveling slow is just better. You get to make local friends and get a feel for what a place is really like instead of bouncing between toursit attractions.

The Only Piece of Planning Ahead You Need to Do

Is to find an apartment/house for the time you’re staying. Everything will fall into place when you get to your new home. If you have a place to live you can figure out the rest. Remember that you are often competing with vacationers for these places and vacationers tend to plan ahead so you will have to as well. We like to plan six months in advance (this also goes for flights).

That being said, chosing and booking a place encapsulates a lot of other decisions. The important things in choosing a place are…

Internet, internet, internet

This is the most important part of any housing decision you make. Tripple check that the house has a functioning internet connection. Depending on what you’re working on you might not need a very good one. Sarah and I have gotten by on pretty terrible 3g cell connections for months because we weren’t working on games that required assets to be passed back-and-forth or big binaries to be uploaded to Steam. If you’re collaborating with a remote team and putting emergency builds up online all the time you’ll need a beefy connection. If you’re just spending three months doing prototyping you might not even need the internet.

Whatever your internet needs are confirm specifically over email that the house has the connection you need, then confirm it again. If you need a reasonably good connection then ask the house owner if you can stream YouTube and Skype reliably, these are questions non-technical home-owners can answer.

Honestly, if you have a decent internet connection you could live in a box with no windows and still have a pretty high quality of life so this is the big one. It’s also the only thing you can’t really fix after you get to your new home so make sure it’s what you need beforehand. (in practice we often have to make alterations to the internet setup, we travel with a small router we sometimes use as a repeater).

Location, location, location

This is the most fun question to answer: Where you gonna go?

The answer to this is obivously: That place you’ve always wanted to go!

If there’s one place you really desperately want to go (say Istanbul) then get on the internet and track down a place to live. Use AirBnB but also do web searches, hunt around for a while, write a lot of emails to landlords. Some of the best places we’ve stayed were secret little gems or places with much higher prices that we negotiated steep discounts for (it’s a pain in the ass for renters have new people comming in and out all the time so a lot of people welcome long-term rentals with open arms).

If you’re more open about where you want to go (say Costa Rica) then I like to find a nice house and then let that determine what city we live in. When we stayed in Greece I searched all of Europe on AirBnB for a cheap place with a view of the mountains and the sea. We found a nice little house in a mountain village on Thassos and had one of our best trips.

Don’t forget to read the AirBnB reviews! Some countries (I’m looking at you Brazil) have a culture of exageration.

The Other Stuff

Some other things to consider when you pick a place are:

  • Safety, do a google search, are you going to feel comfortable in the neighbourhood?
  • View, you want to like being in your new home so you can stay home, work, and be happy. A nice view helps.
  • Transit, can you walk/bus everywhere you need to get? You won’t have a car.
  • On-site Landlords, nearness to friends or other indies. It’s nice to have locals who can help out

The transit point might be less important in some places. We’ve stayed in a lot of very remote places and there’s always SOME way to get groceries. You might just have to walk eight kilometers along a beach or take kayaks through some mangrove tunnels.

 

You Have Your House, Other Considerations

There basically are none. If you have a house with the internet and money in the bank anywhere in the world then you’re pretty much good.

There is some basic stuff like:

  • Check what entry/visa requirements the country has BEFORE you book a place or get plane tickets
  • Figure out how to get from the airport to your new place (landlords that pick you up are the BEST!)
  • Get the necessary vaccinations at a travel clinic if you’re heading somewhere tropical
  • What’s the banking situation like? If you’re really remote you might have limited access to ATMs (you’ll just have to take out lots of cash occasionally)
  • Travel Insurance, get some travel health insurance, you want to be in a strange country’s hospital AND worrying about the cost of healthcare?

There are also things you shouldn’t worry about:

  • Language, you’ll muddle through
  • Where you’re going to get groceries, if people live there then there is food
  • Street Food, you’re there for a month, you can afford to mabey get sick for a couples days
  • Rainy Seasons, you’re there for a month, so what if it rains for half the days, you have work to do

 

The Downsides

If you are looking at the above “don’t worry about” list and getting scared then mabey you should think twice about this whole thing. Traveling is going to require patience, flexibility, and privation. You might have to completely change your diet. Buying the simplest things may be a challenge. The transit system will probably make no sense at all. Imagine you have been throwing up and haven’t slept well for three days, you walk for three hours to the pharmacy because you can’t figure out the bus sytem, when you get there you ask for a specific brand of medicine and instead of simply grabbing it and handing it to you the pharmacist asks you a question in a foreign language and just stares at you. This is the downside of the unfamiliar.

If you’re shy, a picky eater, picky about matresses, don’t like public transit, scared of people not like you, tend to freak out when anything goes wrong, can’t adapt to new situations, or are not a generally calm and welcoming human being then prepare to be seriously challenged.

Also, homesickness is real. Our first long-term trip was to Thailand in 2006 for six months, the first month was exciting, the second was uncomfortable and the third was I-want-to-go-home misaerable. The fourth through sixth were great! Homesickness goes away and varries from person to person but it can be emotionally brutal, be ready for it.

Another serious issue is loneliness. Sarah and I are extremely lucky to be able to both work from anywhere.  Traveling long-term on your own is going to be much more challenging than travelling with a partner and way less fun. Sometimes you can make friends with locals, sometimes you can’t. Here is where going to GDC is going to help you. If you’ve already made friends with a bunch of people in one city or another then that might be where you want to head. I’m not talking about talked-to-them-once-at-a-bar aquantences here. I mean people who you know well and are eagre for you to come.

I’m also going to put the disclaimer here: if you book a non-existant house in Somalia and get yourself kidnapped it’s not my fault! This all represents my experiences and doesn’t represent the full posibilities of what can go wrong while wandering the earth.

 

The Upsides

Downsides suck :(  But they are all worth it! With no challenge you wouldn’t grow as a person and travel wouldn’t mean as much. When you’re walking down a deserted tropical beach trying to solve game-design problems, talking angrily about bugs you can’t squash in a dark pub with new friends, or just sitting at your laptop staring out at some strange foreign place you will know it’s worth it.

And the world-wide network of indie devs is amazing! Most major cities have someone you can meet up with for a beer and get some advice on how to see the city.

You can work from anywhere, you have friends everywhere, explore!