Zelda BOTW tree

great tree, Justin . This is the kinda thing that smaller steps (like making tiny trees or listing project steps) is trying to build up towards. People should be able to make stuff like this without much trouble. and later, when more advanced, should be able to think about things like this tree without writing the tree down. it should be so automatic it can inform how you approach lots of stuff even without being written down. ppl generally have some of that kinda thing, or similar, already automated but with significant errors, so going back to basics and reviewing things consciously and practicing improved methods is a way to clean up errors.

the tree shows some understanding of levels of detail, zoom in and zoom out, and ability to manage a decently large tree with a lot of nodes and levels without making a chaotic mess.

it's not the one right answer. there are many other trees you could have made for BotW that would also have been fine. there are lots of small changes that could be made to this tree that'd make it a little better, a little worse, or about equal. and there are lots of options with no clear "the one right way". organization of stuff has to fit one's context, goals and problem situation. how well this tree organization fits your problem situation is something i don't know in detail. but it looks like at least a decent fit.

and it's good that you're using something from real life. it doesn't seem super artificial. lots of practice is overly artificial which causes problems. this seems like it could be somewhat artificial – i'm not sure how useful it really is – but also fairly realistic and related to some actual non-trivial goals you have.

one of the things that made this tree a reasonable choice is you already have lots of experience with video games and are reasonably good at them. so understanding the game itself wasn't diverting as much of your attention as it would for some other ppl. so you could focus more on the activity of doing a tree and think about tree-topics mostly rather than zelda-topics. that is good and fits what i've been telling ppl: pick something that is pretty easy for you so your focus can be on learning about trees, organization, project management, project steps, etc., not on the topic itself.

this tree looks to me like a good medium step between just practicing basics and actually getting towards something useful in complex life situations. it's not all the way to making a tree that helps a lot for figuring out e.g. how to handle an argument with your friend well, but it's getting noticeably closer.

also, i know you already practiced smaller trees a lot. you made a few dozen trees before this Basecamp was created. other ppl seeing this may not realize that cuz you didn't practice trees very much on Basecamp. i think that context is important. you didn't just rush into an advanced thing and then do a good job. you actually did lots of smaller steps in the past already that did help build up to this and that process of working up towards this actually worked.

so, IMO, keep it up. you have made some progress. you've gotten better at this than when you first started learning about trees. more practice around this level of difficulty or a little harder – possibly with things that are more of real problems for you (whereas with zelda i'm guessing u could probably mostly do this fine even without the tree) – will help. more experience and also connecting the trees to actual irl outcomes will help with improving judgment about how to organize stuff (which is ofc not just about learning to organize trees, but about how to organize ideas and knowledge in general, and trees are just one of the more useful tools for representing organization explicitly).

Elliot said:

Oh yeah I super agree with this re: context. I've made trees about a variety of stuff, and have been doing so on an ongoing basis. Recently it's mostly been programming-related trees as part of my Simply Scheme project. Just within that, there has been a great variety of tree-making, from trees that are much more simple than this one and took me a few minutes to trees that were significantly more complicated and took me quite a long time. So yeah, tree-making has been a long-term ongoing project that I've been practicing with fairly challenging subjects and at a variety of difficulty levels.

Elliot said:

Yeah I think it might not be super useful in figuring out something game-related or something like that (whereas, for example, some of my programming trees have been very useful for understanding how a program works). It was helpful in terms of practicing breaking down a recent real life activity into tree form and seeing how it fit within the context of larger goals. Although OTOH making it prompted some game-related questions (e.g. I realized I don't actually understand how stacking buffs works in BotW.)

Elliot said:

Yeah I agree this is a good approach.

you could find something that's actually hard for you in a game, where you need to use creativity to develop a better strategy (or need to use some math and organization to figure it out), and then use a tree for that.

a typical example of a hard part is a boss fight. you lose a few times then figure out a few causes of failure then come up with a better strategy.

you might not actually have a hard time with any BotW boss fights tho. depends how much gear/hp/stam u have b4 u get to them.

the island where they temporarily take away all your gear is another hard part. IIRC u can't save midway either, so u need a strategy for doing the whole thing in one go successfully.