In junior high, I had a social studies teacher who was known for being a bit of a hard-ass. Very strict, thought 100-question tests were the epitome of pedagogy. I liked him.
One time during a lecture (yeah, he did lectures–lots of them), he went off on a tangent for a bit, explaining some extra faff about his trip to Egypt and then about his other vacations.
And then he apologized for it.
“I do that a lot. Go off on birdwalks. That’s what I call them. ‘Birdwalks.’ When your mind just sort of hops away like a lost bird and you get entirely off-topic.” He paused. “All birds are lost, when you think about it.” Paused again. “How do you think a bird decides which way to fly in the morning?”
I remember thinking, “Did he just go on a birdwalk…while explaining what a birdwalk was?”
It had to have been a joke. I was sure of it–there was no way this guy would get distracted like that whilst describing how easily he gets distracted.
His delivery was so deadpan.
And then, after he said it, we went right back to learning about Egypt.
To this day, I don’t know if he was joking.
But, I do use the phrase “birdwalk” a lot, even though I don’t think anyone else uses it. Or even knows what it means.
I’ve been going on a lot of birdwalks as I’ve been working on Beta this morning.
I’ve got a running list of To Do’s that I sort (very generally) by priority. This morning, I thought I’d cross off a whole chunk of smaller, quality-of-life issues.
X Changing the roaming behaviors of some mobs.
X Adjusting some test sprites to make them more scalable.
X Adding a “SUMMON” button on the overworld that lets developers summon any mob for testing.
Things like that.
I thought it wouldn’t take long.
However.
It’s so easy to have an idea and think, “Oh, we could just add that real quick. Why not?”
Then, bam, off you go on a 20-minute birdwalk.
In this case, I altered the behavior of one of the “special tiles.” The “U” Stink! tile now summons 5-8 flies that you can “swat” (tap) for extra loot.
Now I need to draw some better flies.
What size should that image be? It’s going to be, what, 40 pixels wide on a typical phone?
Hmm…