Sunetos, Inc.

I had to choose one of two goals for today: better material handling, or better movement processing. In thinking through what each meant, I realized that the better material handling is really dependent on smarter movement processing so I dove in. We are almost to my brother’s house, but I finished the core refactoring that should provide more efficient handling of movement, better coverage that will support the material handling better, and simplification of several classes.

Day T-43 Accomplishments (Saturday, February 27, 2010)

• Simplified movement handling
• Provided good basis for material handling improvements

I am heading out of town on a two week trip, visiting family in Florida for a week, then on to Alabama to help my daughter and her husband move to a new house. I have enough work commitments that I’ll probably try to get in 60-70% of my normal consulting work hours, but I also hope to elicit some good feedback on my app (and continue making progress!). It is far enough along that I can explain where I am going, have folks try it, make some changes, etc. It will also be a sanity check on what they think the “fun” factor is.

A key part of the game involves digging with tools of different shapes and sizes. I want the tool face (width of a shovel, bucket, etc.) to rotate to be perpendicular to the current direction of the touch movement, and tonight I got that behavior working correctly. As you move around, the screen is updated as I expected.

Next on my list of things to accomplish is a more realistic movement of material. Currently, the tool picks up material along the path of movement, but without limits–a shovel with infinite capacity. I have placeholders for capacity and some reasonable ideas of how to handle it–perhaps tomorrow.

Day T-44 Accomplishments (Friday, February 26, 2010)

• Finished tool rotation code, it now correctly stays perpendicular to direction of motion

I didn’t spend a lot of time evaluating things at the mid-point — my natural tendency is to over analyze, so I’m going to give it a quick check:

• Progress is not as fast as I had hoped, but I *am* making progress
• I over-estimated my available time, but I have not been that far off the mark overall–I just need to be disciplined with the time I have
• I do not know if I will have my app in the store before 360iDev, but I’m not discouraged–it will be done when it’s done
• I over-reached a bit early on, but I think I’m doing a reasonable job of keeping over-analysis and feature-creep at bay

My project is a game that involves digging motions where you push material around with touches. Today I modified my tool handling to start taking into account the direction of the movement. I added code for rotations as well as decent unit tests, but still have some odd behavior with the gestures–fixing that behavior will have to wait until Friday.

Day T-45 Accomplishments (Thursday, February 25, 2010)

• Added tool rotation code to gesture handling

Last Thursday was the last time I worked on my project–I was sure I had control of my schedule and that I would be able to spend most of Friday working on it as well. But, on Friday, my schedule took control of me instead and I only escaped this morning. My main consulting project consumed most of that time, but we pushed the latest release out to QA this morning, and I believe the next few days will be a great opportunity to get some quality time in on my iPhone project.

I left my project in a broken state the last time I worked it, including a stupid, but insidious bug that would have taken the entire evening to track down if I didn’t have a decent set of unit tests for that particular class. Fortunately, after about 20 minutes of remembering where I was, the failing tests pointed me to a small block of code and led to a fairly quick fix.

I once again believe I will be able to spend most of tomorrow on this project (hope springs eternal!). But, even if I can’t, at least I am leaving my project in a working state.

Day T-46 Accomplishments (Wednesday, February 24, 2010)

• Finished an input gesture refactoring that left my project in a broken state last session
• Reclaimed control of my schedule (at least temporarily)

Wow. So much for keeping on a regular iPhone development schedule. For each of the days from Friday through Tuesday, I could find clear reasons why I could not spend time on my iPhone project, I just wish it weren’t so.

It doesn’t seem like I completely skipped 5 days, but Wednesday evening I will finally be able to get back on the development wagon, though it is likely to take an hour to remember where I was.

Day T-51 through T-47 Accomplishments (Friday, February 19 through Tuesday, February 23, 2010)

• None, not even a passing thought

I spent most of this evening adding some new classes to add some new behavior and a few to replace some C pointer arrays and structs. I’m not against using C structs, etc, but in this case they were getting in the way of getting work done. I don’t believe the changes will introduce much of a performance hit, and they will be much easier to work with now.

I updated my input gesture handling and display to be a little more fitting for the game play, still more to do — always more to do 🙂 Hopefully I will be able to spend several hours on this project on Friday to keep up the momentum I feel.

Day T-52 Accomplishments (Thursday, February 18, 2010)

• Added slightly better input gesture handling and display
• Replaced some older style code to ease development

No Xcode work Wednesday, but I should have extra time on Thursday.

Day T-53 Accomplishments (Wednesday, February 17, 2010)

• Zippo

I managed to get in a little coding tonight, less than an hour, but still useful.

Day T-54 Accomplishments (Tuesday, February 16, 2010)

• Added two methods to the movement handler class
• Added unit tests for those methods as well

I was able to spend several hours coding today and really enjoyed it.

I had left a few classes in a broken state last week, but got them cleaned back up and working correctly. Building on that, I added several new classes and test cases and would like to add some more, but I can sense it’s time to quit for the evening.

The only real problem I had today was that I seem to have messed up my configuration for the GHUnit GUI test runner. The test cases all run correctly in the command line version, but something in my project changed, and I’m not sure what — I posted a message to the GHUnit google group, hoping for a pointer in the right direction. Not a big deal for the moment, the only thing that really bothers me about it is that it points out there are still too many things about Xcode project configuration I don’t quite grok yet.

I still have a lot to do this week to get something useful to hand to someone else, but I am pleased with my progress today.

Day T-55 Accomplishments (Monday, February 15, 2010)

• Fixed some classes I left broken last week
• Added several classes and test cases to support them

I’m a little bit past a 30 day review so this will be more like a five week review. It was a profitable week for my consulting work, but also consumed much more of my time and emotional energy than I had anticipated. My consulting work week coming up will be full, but hopefully not overflowing as much as this past one.

Initial commitments and goals

My commitment on day T-90 was to have my first app in the store before 360iDev begins, which included the following:

1. spend at least one hour advancing the state of my app (designing, coding, thinking, marketing, something)
2. report on my activity via twitter with the hashtags #90days #360idev
3. summarize my progress (or lack thereof) here: https://sunetos.com/tags/90days

My very rough outline for the first five weeks was:

• Week 1: brainstorming ideas, planning, play with ideas
• Week 2: develop enough of a prototype to begin getting feedback from others
• Week 3-5: iterate through prototypes, expanding feedback circle

How I did

My progress to date along with my satisfaction level on a scale from zero to ten:

• (6/10) Time: Spent at least an hour on my project for 28 out of last 35 days, not as much as I had hoped, but a couple of those days were close to a full work day
• (9/10) Accountability: I have reported via web posts and twitter on a daily basis with the exception of the last two days — I’m not sure anyone reads it, but it has helped to keep me more focused
• (8/10) Idea: I have a solid idea I am pursuing, even to the point of postponing what seemed like some other good ideas for the moment
• (6/10) Prototyping: I have prototyped enough game behavior to be satisfied that it is worth pursuing, but I would like to be farther along
• (1/10) Feedback: I barely have enough to show others right now, and thus have received very little feedback from them yet

Overall, I am still excited about the idea and believe that I have enough skill and time to make better progress over the next two weeks. My goal for this week is to have a minimally playable game that a few others can try, and then for the next week to begin working on some real graphic elements for the game.

Day T-56 Accomplishments (Sunday, February 14, 2010)

• Evaluated progress against original commitments and goals
• Mapped out goals for next two weeks