Sunetos, Inc.

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

I split my available time this evening between Xcode and Blender.

Early in my 90 day wanderings, I skimmed through multiple 3D modeling programs, both free and for purchase, trying to find something I could use. Initially I was turned off by Blender’s interface, but tonight I took the plunge and worked through some tutorials on Blender.org. The Blender User Interface Tutorial gave a good, brief overview of Blender’s user interface style, and the Blender 3D: Noob to Pro wikibook was very helpful as well.

Building complex, beautiful 3D models is probably not on the horizon for me — but being able to make rough models for prototyping is a definite plus, and I now will uninstall several 3D modeling trial applications and reclaim some disk space. There were several other tools that looked good, but for my needs, Blender is plenty good enough.

I also spent time reexamining some OBJ loading utilities I received from Noel Llopsis during his iPhone OpenGL class, and downloaded Jeff LeMarche’s loader class he put up on google code. I am certainly no expert, but I am now understand enough of Noel’s code and Jeff’s code to snarf part of it and roll my own semi-custom loader.

Day T-80 Accomplishments (Thursday, January 21, 2010)

• Became comfortable enough with Blender to generate some 3D models to use in prototyping
• Worked through Mr_Rob’s Blender Hillside Tutorial and built my own landscape file to use
• Played with Jeff LeMarche’s iPhone WaveFront Loader to gain better understanding of OBJ format and usage

I fixed a small problem in my sample code that I found at the end of last night’s session (a wrong data type). It was not hard to find at the beginning of my session tonight, but I would have spent an hour looking for it at the end of yesterday. There is a time to persevere and a time to quit, but I am still new enough to the material that it can be hard to tell the difference.

I spent time tonight reading, learning, and testing ideas, and not too much on my project — hopefully it will pay off over the next few days.

Day T-81 Accomplishments (Wednesday, January 20, 2010)

• Fixed a bug in my skeleton code
• Worked through more tutorials, examples, and sample code, making changes and watching what happened

I was able to spend three uninterrupted hours on my iPhone project tonight in my hotel and finished enough of my prototype skeleton that I know what I need to do next. I hope to be testing the first game mechanic tomorrow night. It is very satisfying to actually make progress, even it is small.

I also realized that some of the choppiness of my first week was my perception of my OpenGL familiarity was wrong. I am still new enough to Mac and iPhone development that my knowledge and skills gained last fall needed more reinforcement than I had been able to give these last couple of months.

Day T-82 Accomplishments (Tuesday, January 19, 2010)

• Working skeleton (very simple) in place to test first game mechanic idea

On my first flight tonight, I moved back to paper and pencil to work through what I really want to do over the next few evenings. I’ve always been much better at sleeping or reading in coach class than writing, but it has been helpful to work within the constraints of a yellow pad and an airline seat.

Even though I was not able to spend as much time on this project last week as I had hoped, I could have been more effective with what time I had. The one thing I will work to correct is to keep my focus tight over several evenings, and not start on something different each time I have a work session. I hope this allows me to get back into the flow more quickly on subsequent nights.

For the immediate future, I will not be able to dedicate one or more full days to this project — so I hope to simulate a full day over the course of several evenings.

Day T-83 Accomplishments (Monday, January 18, 2010)

• Streamlined design for first prototype
• Sketched out thoughts for what comes next

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