I... Uhm... I'll have to check what I'd actually planned. Quite a few things have happened since the last time I posted here. Keep working with my current main client. Less negotiations and research – more paid work! FAILED: There were too many tricky technical issues, and the project was abandoned. Kobo II: Multiplayer! More fun! Proper levels! To speed things up without dumbing down the mechanics, I’m going to drop my custom physics engine for Chipmunk. A persistent scene graph rendering engine is going in, to improve performance and eliminate OpenGL from the scripting level. FAILED: Well, mostly. The scene graph rendering engine is mostly done, but nothing much more than that on this front. New release of Kobo Deluxe! It’s had somewhere around 200k downloads, and is also included with a few Linux distros and other things – but few of those players have any idea there is a related game in development! FAILED: Well, 2013 ain't over yet, but I don't know if I'll bother with this right now. Finish a small sidescroller I started working on: Project Pixelfire. FAILED: No time for that. Port at least one game to OUYA – probably Project Pixelfire. (Too heavy scripting in Kobo II, so that’s probably going to need a native compiler. Later…) FAILED: No time for that either. Get back up to speed with music! Almost dropped coding for music about two decades ago – but then I burned out, and this is about all I’ve done over the last 15 years. I’m beginning to realize I need to pick it up again to stay sane. SUCCESS: Not that I've released much; some updates and WIPs over here, but I'm kind of getting back into those ways of thinking. I've also been working a bit on my audio engine, Audiality 2, which is now on GitHub, and is rapidly evolving into a seriously usable tool. (For me, at least. If you can't get your heads around it, good! Less competition. ) So, WTF did I actually do then, apart from hacking some weird noise creation thingy!? Well, the project I was working on consumed way too much time and energy, so that explains a lot of the lack of progress. However, a few months ago, I started working for a major player in Deep Packet Inspection (beware - my code will soon touch your packets!), which paradoxically means I have more time for game development again. I also have a proper income, and get to work with interesting stuff with some seriously skilled people in a nice environment. As to my game development plans, I'm not entirely sure about the details yet. Things have changed radically... I'll keep working on Kobo II, but now that I don't have to worry much about time or expenses, I'll focus more on getting the structured/procedural stuff (graphics and sound; ZeeSpace and Audiality 2) to work as I originally intended. So, I'm basically going back to developing engines with games as pilot projects again, rather than the other way around. Why...? First of all, because I want to. I fucking love engine coding! Especially realtime scripting engines and weirdness like that. Second, because coding is my primary craft, and I believe I can create something slightly different from the "usual stuff" if I can leverage that properly. What's the point with 30 years of coding experience if you just script for a ready-made engine? You don't use a Katana to slice bread! Or something... Third, because over the last 18 months or so, I've gotten involved with a talented, creative person who knows how to make things happen - and despite being a lone wolf and one-man team type of guy, I'd really like to work with this person on some project some time. So, maybe I'll be a full time engine and tools coder in an indie team or something like that eventually...? The weirdest things happen sometimes.
1. Slightly successful - Managed 1 iOS app and hoping to get another out before Christmas. Learned a hell of a lot from that though 2. FAILED. Totally and utterly. In fact I think I've actually gotten slightly worse off :-( 3. FAILED. Didn't have time to focus on it :-( 4. SUCCESS. But not in the way I expected! The opportunity came a long to work with a team on a reboot of one of my all time fav games from when I was a lad so I jumped at the chance. Iain
Goals: 1. Release WWII - Europe single player game in the Endless Empires game series. 2. Improve Dungeon Demon. 3. Next version of Real Estate Empire on web, desktop and tablet. Results: 1. Done but not released while I rethink what I'm doing with EE. 2. I'll say. Ground up rewrite for the web - very, very happy with the results. 3. No although I will wrap up Real Estate Empire DECK and do a new release by month end. REE 3 in 2014. I mean it!
For 2013 I intended to: Publish an OUYA game. SUCCESS Hit 30K OUYA downloads. FAIL (15K only) Hit 10M downloads (cumulative over all platforms, all years) for Little Crane That Could. SUCCESS (Hit 11.7M) Maintain 2012 income. SUCCESS Reach 750 followers on Twitter. FAIL (Standing at 478) Publish my first multiplayer game. SUCCESS (Although player base of Buggy Bang! Bang! never took off.)