The third post in my new years resolutions posts. Previously, on getting my life in order:
The perception of time passing faster as you get older is an odd one, you would assume that time would appear to fly when you were younger as you have experienced less and each moment in time is a larger percentage of your whole existence and yet here we are, it’s the end of February… How did that happen? It will be Christmas again soon!
Bloxkrieg
My first game, Bloxkrieg, has been released on the Google Play store. You can get it for free (ad supported), here! To make this happen, I’ve worked through both the developer sign up process for Google Play and the advertiser sign up for AdMob and AdSense. Everything seems to have been approve so hopefully that’s all working!
As is predictable with any software development project, the moment I released it and more people played it, bugs were found. I have already pushed out an update to resolve the round of issues encountered and will be getting another version submitted for verification shortly.
Boing!
My second game is Boing! Even though the controls are simple (you just make a ball bounce), fine tuning the bounce so that it’s fun and still challenging without being too annoying is my current major activity with this project.
Now that the ad code I wrote for Bloxkrieg is working as expected, I have exported this into its own component for use in future projects, such as Boing!, which is now also available on Google Play!
Starfall
I have started on a third game, this is currently called Starfall and in a state of very early development. I am working on a random level generator for it (this seems to be a running theme in these games so far) and hope to have more to share soon! Bloxkrieg and Boing! were each projects that took two weeks to complete and fine tune. I have been working on Starfall for a week already and it is clear that this is not going to be finished this week, next week, or probably even by April. The scope for Starfall is significantly larger than either bouncing ball game – this is closer to the game I was working on and abandoned last year (called Survive) but the scope is still fairly small – it’s 3D, with random level generation, it’s not going to be multiplayer and most likely won’t have any combat. Let’s see what happens – I’ll keep you posted!
Running Down The Way Up
This blog is a work in progress, it’s actually a bit more effort than I had originally anticipated. I am still learning some bits of search engine optimization, and I’m still trying to ensure I keep posting regularly. Overall traffic growth for the site is basically non-existent but I am honestly not sure what I expected?
A Downward Trend
One other goal I have as part of my new years resolution is weight loss. I am pleased to note that this is currently following a downward trend, and hopefully this remains the case. I am exercising more and this is noticeably contributing positively to my overall health. The dogs are all enjoying getting walked a bit more than usual, that’s for certain!
I was hoping to quit smoking this year and I haven’t managed it yet, but I have reduced the amount I am smoking by about half. I don’t have a picture to show this.
Work
I am also gainfully employed for a large IT service provider and software company, my usual role in the mergers and acquisitions’ team is a bit dry at the moment so we are taking the time to investigate the opportunities available to automate our workflow. The investigation so far has resulted in a fair bit of documentation – none of which I can share here unfortunately!
Currently we use a variety of third party tools such as BitTitan and Sharegate – in the first instance we are going to build a light weight but extensible management system to integrate with and manage these third party tools, before looking to expand the functionality of our in house tool to replace our dependency on these third party utilities within the specific areas we operate in.
The first milestone would provide a platform to capture the information required within the process and integrate with the various systems performing the processes to automatically configure and monitor the tasks required. Having started the scoping exercise for this system, I believe it’s actually quite a simple activity we’re trying to achieve and the initial “phase one” system should be achievable and running within the very short term.