Sunetos, Inc.

Day T-70 Accomplishments (Sunday, January 31, 2010)

• Brain rested
• Mental state recharged

Skiing was great, now for a five hour bus ride home. I spent some time doing some code cleanup and minor refactoring — not sure mentally I am up for anything too complex. In the course of some refactorings, I realized I needed a better understanding of how game events will be generated and consumed, so I did some more design work on it.

Day T-71 Accomplishments (Saturday, January 30, 2010)

• Began design for game event generation and testing
• Minor code refactoring

Posted from my iPhone

Since I am going skiing with my daughter this weekend, I was going to take a sabbatical today and tomorrow. We are on a group trip with a 5 hour charter bus ride, but she had enough homework that she was occupied the whole ride, so I spent several productive hours in Xcode until my battery died.

Day T-72 Accomplishments (Friday, January 29, 2010)

• Added interfaces for handling user input and converting it into game events to better track and test game behavior
• Added support class for tracking velocity, acceleration, and deceleration

Posted from my iPhone

I managed to get several hours of work done in airports today.

I decided I had learned enough from my prototyping to build a true game, although a simple one. So I changed my tactics this morning, and I will not end up with a workable prototype for my family to try tonight, but I am pleased with my current direction.

I started a new project sitting in the Minneapolis/St Paul airport, and will copy the ideas and perhaps some code snippets from my prototypes into a revised, simpler game model. I have several prototype projects with useful code snippets and ideas, but they are all too messy to be worth refactoring.

Day T-73 Accomplishments (Thursday, January 28, 2010)

• Designed simpler model for game world for first version of the game during my first flight
• Started a new, clean project for my game during break between flights

I ended my work trip today, collected my thoughts and notes, and finished up a few items for my client — it all went well, but I have less mental focus available tonight than I had hoped. But the iPad announcement has me jazzed — I would *LOVE* to have my game finished before they ship — I have no idea whether that will happen, but it is motivating.

Tonight I added some of the additional behavior I wanted to my prototype, but have gotten stuck on some misbehavior — I’m pretty sure after a decent nights sleep, I will clear it up quickly, so I guess that means it is time to cash it in.

I’m still hopeful that I can have something to show someone else tomorrow night, after all I have 5 hours of flight time and probably another 4-6 hours of sitting around airport gates tomorrow.

Day T-74 Accomplishments (Wednesday, January 27, 2010)

• Added some more logic to game behavior, unfortunately it’s not quite right
• Not really an accomplishment, but excited by the possibilities presented by the iPad

I managed to get in a couple of hours on my prototype this evening, and made some useful additions to it.

I fixed a couple of (dumb) calculation errors, and added a simple view with labels to provide on-screen feedback. (My first version only updated the log.) It made it much easier to change gesture parameters and test their effect on the game state. I like the basic gestures and think they will work well for my game.

Tomorrow evening, I will make the game model in the prototype a little more complex. Hopefully, I can finish that soon enough so I can begin work on a simple OpenGL interface. To get a better feel for gameplay, I need graphical feedback, probably just color changes and simple images, instead of labels and text. By the time I arrive home on Thursday night, I hope to have something my wife and daughter can try — I want some feedback before I move forward.

Day T-75 Accomplishments (Tuesday, January 26, 2010)

• Corrected some errors in my gesture tracking code
• Add immediate feedback on screen to get a better feel for the gestures

I tried out some things tonight in a simple prototype, and I like it so far.

One of the key game actions is a composite of a single touch series. What happens in the game depends on the initial delay between the touchesBegan to the first touchesMoved, and then on the changing velocity of the subsequent movements. I am using a rolling average for the velocity so the game can detect accelerating and decelerating motions. Right now it uses the last 20 movements, but I will play around with that and other values to get the right behavior for the action.

I need more granularity in my prototype and a little more feedback so I can tell if it is a good way to play or not, but it seems good so far. I’ve thought about whether multi-touch will add value to the game, but for now I am sticking with single touch.

Day T-76 Accomplishments (Monday, January 25, 2010)

• Tested game action behavior based on touch movement series
• Tied game action to a simple model of the game world to track results

Okay, so the team currently consists of just me — but I have high hopes!

I spent an hour or so on my project today and was able to make decent progress on what I started Saturday.

My goal for the coming week is to finish one of the core behaviors and tie it into a simple 2D interface to get a feeling for the potential “fun” level. My stretch goal is to expand it to 3D.

I am at my client’s office through Wednesday and we are wrapping up some important discussions and planning, so I am unsure how mentally alert I will be in the evenings. I’m hoping that this project will be a welcome mental diversion.

I am going on a ski trip with my daughter this weekend, so I will be taking a sabbatical from this project on Friday and Saturday.

Day T-77 Accomplishments (Sunday, January 24, 2010)

• Implemented initial version of some basic game behavior
• Set project goals for the week

Today I had two several hour long sessions where I made some good progress.

At the beginning of my first session, I deliberately chose to ignore user interface, 2D vs 3D, or any OpenGL decisions today and concentrate on core game design and behavior. But I think the biggest gain for me today was the boost in motivation from seeing concrete progress.

I integrated GHUnit into a new project where I started pulling in pieces and parts to build the basic model for my game. I think I have a solid design, and good plans for the next several sessions.

Day T-78 Accomplishments (Saturday, January 23, 2010)

• Created new Xcode project for core game engine and behavior
• Added GHUnit based unit test target for core game behaviors
• Refreshed my motivation for completing this game

Normally, I would take Friday night off from work (either the paying or learning kind), but since I’m stuck on an out of town business trip this weekend, I made up for the ‘bleh’ factor by spending time in Xcode (I know, what a geek). I felt more comfortable in the development environment and APIs tonight, but don’t seem to have much to show for it in terms of code.

Tonight I spent most of my time investigating how to turn touch events into interactions with my very simple 3D world. Again, half my time was spent with google and on-line articles about ray-tracing, ray-casting, and the like. My brain is just about full for the evening, so I’m not sure if my game idea is too big a reach given my available time or I just need a break from all things technical. I am thinking clearly enough to know that tonight is not the time to decide — I’ll spend some more time with paper and pencil tomorrow, after I sleep in!

(They are predicting a fair amount of snow here this weekend, so it’s not like I have anywhere to go.)

Day T-79 Accomplishments (Friday, January 22, 2010)

• Nothing much really, just more time with the tools