Version 1.5.1:
- Keyboard now shows when clicking back from the embiggened text screen (thanks for the idea Duncan!)
- New animations in Embiggen Plus!
New embiggen updates
Overland v 0.1.4
- Stat based attacks
- Armor actually protects you!
- Run game in landscape mode (switching back and forth is still an issue)
- Removed status bar in gameplay window
- Bouncy Balls move faster
- Fixed quest list screen
- Adjusted experience/levels
Dry-clean only shirts
The late comedian Mitch Hedberg once said:
My shirt is dry-clean only, which means that it is dirty.
This is one of his many funny one-liners, but it has significance when making software. If it’s a pain to take a shirt to a dry cleaners, you’re not likely to clean the shirt at all. The same goes for unit testing, making reliable backups, having a branching strategy, etc. Sometimes the tools you’re using make it hard to follow these best practices, so they don’t get done.
If you find yourself saying things like: “Branching, oh no, we use VSS, merging is a nightmare!” or “I can’t unit test, our code has so many dependencies”, maybe it’s time to start looking into fixing the reasons why you can’t branch or unit test. Maybe switch to git, or a recent version of TFS if you can. Set up some dependency injection so that your code is easier to test. Sometimes it’s not easy to make these types of changes, but it’s usually worth it.
What are some other “Dry-clean only shirts” in the software world, and how can you fix them?
Trello for task lists
I just started using trello for the game I’m working on, and I’m pretty happy with it so far. It’s pretty simple, and allows you to have lists of lists. Most of the time those lists will be for maintaining what needs to be done, what you’re working on, and what is complete (sorta like a scrum board). You can have multiple boards (one for Home todo, Work, etc), and do all sorts of labeling, break out tasks, etc. It’s free to use, and I’ve been using it a lot.
It’s made by some of the people who brought you FogBugs and StackOverflow.com. You should try it out.
Ludum Dare, Notch, and Dubstep
Haven’t posted in a while – been working on an android game. To get inspired, I’ve been watching this: http://www.twitch.tv/notch/b/302823358
It’s a screencast of Notch (of Minecraft fame) making a game from scratch for Ludum Dare, all while listening to dubstep. It’s super interesting.
Embiggen at Devo!
Redditor kermix was nice enough to send me a picture of him and his friends from a recent Devo concert. It looks like there are a couple Android phones running Embiggen, an IPhone, and maybe a windows phone? Pretty awesome though. Thanks kermix!
How are people finding my app?
A few weeks ago I noticed that the usage stats for Embiggen were going up pretty quickly. Normally there would be about 200 page views per day, but that number jumped up to about 700 one day, and then up to 6297 the day after! I was psyched, but I didn’t realize until a couple of days after that embiggen had been posted on Reddit, and the app had gotten most of the downloads from that post. A small viral effect started, and there were market links popping up on twitter, blogs, and eventually AppBrain listed Embiggen on the Top 10 Hot apps of the day, because of the increase in downloads within a single day.
I want to thank reddit user evilpig for posting the app, and everyone for providing feedback on it. I just wish I could have seen it sooner, so that I could have responded to some of the questions quicker. A couple of weeks later, there was another crest of user activity that came with a bunch more downloads, but I have no idea how word spread about that one.
As far as I know, there is no way to tell how people are finding your android market page, but it would be really useful to know that sort of thing. Does anyone out there know if there’s a way to get stats for your android market page? Leave a comment here, or hit me up on Reddit (SN: briercan)
If it’s not required, it’s forbidden
I’m currently working on this idea for a game, and have been struggling with getting it to the point where it is playable. I have a bunch of the pieces, and a bunch of ideas, but I keep getting stuck on parts of it. After recently watching this presentation by Jonathan Blow, the creator of Braid, I’ve been inspired to push myself to work on the game in a different way than I’m used to.
For example: in this game, the player has an inventory. Ideally, the player could control the sorting of the inventory – move things around, and put items onto different pages of the inventory display. Implementing this feature probably wouldn’t be that tough, but every minute working on item sorting is a minute I could be spending working on how the items are being used. There’s a saying that I learned from a friend of mine: “If it’s not required, it’s forbidden”. It applies really well to software – especially when deciding what features to have in a product. In my case, the inventory sorting feature might be required in a later version. Right now however, there aren’t any items in the game yet, so it doesn’t matter if the player can sort them or not. Item sorting is a feature that is currently forbidden. I’m not allowed to work on it. Now, to get back to some important features…
Faster server -> broken application
This is why you don’t use dates for primary keys.
http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Key-to-a-Good-Schema.aspx
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