Facepalms

Before the holidays, I was really focusing on OttoJotts by trying to finish up what were a dozen or so tasks that needed to be finished before I could release the game. I had determined, based on the lack of response I was getting from my artist on a separate project, that I should focus on something that I had a lot of control over and had made some good progress on completing. After I broke everything down that remained to be done, I found that I had a month or so of work left on OttoJotts to finish it off. I blazed through several different tasks, had to create some new ones, but overall was making some good progress on it. Then the holidays happened.

Catniss in Nutcracker

The Thanksgiving to Christmas period at my house is one of lightly ordered chaos. Catniss has several performances of The Nutcracker with the Colorado Ballet during that time and the spousal unit sings professionally as a caroler for different functions. Toss in a couple of illnesses and the whole time is just ridiculous. I was certain I wasn't going to get much done over the break so I didn't really even bother. And then for Christmas I received Call of Duty: Ghosts, so I had at least a campaign to complete before I could get back to anything. Then it was January and I joined a CoD clan and then we had a clan war and then... Long story short - nothing really happened on OttoJotts from November through January.
When I tried to get back into it, though, I found it more and more difficult to get back into the groove. I found plenty of opportunities to procrastinate and not work on OttoJotts at all - including finding some data from fiksu.com about iOS 7 adoption (you need to check out that site). Given that adoption rates are around 82% for iOS 7 and I've been having trouble getting OttoJotts to draw properly in iOS 7 (something changed in the basic UIView stack I still don't understand), it put even more of a downer on wanting to work on it. Plus, I had something else potentially brewing at the 9-5, so my motivation was a little more depleted than I thought it could be (without being completely disinterested).
BUT (and it's a big but), that's when things started heading south. The "something else" dried up and I started feeling like the 9-5 isn't going to be terribly viable for much longer (which suxors hardcore). Suddenly, without really feeling like I was up to it, I decided that I need to get back to doing what I should be doing, even if I didn't feel like it. I started checking out what needed to happen with OttoJotts and just couldn't, for the life of me, actually open up the project. I'm just a little burned out on it. It was supposed to be a pretty quick little app that would go into the App Store and then maybe make a buck or two. Instead, it's turned into months and months of continuing development that don't quite seem to be going as well as I'd hoped. All of the backend work is challenging for me (I'm a front-end - but not UI - guy). While there are still only about 80-100 hours of work left on it, I think I'm going to put it on back burner while I reinvigorate with something else for a while.
I thought I had been recharging a bit by playing some other games and taking some time off, but I think it's had the opposite effect. It's put new and interesting distractions in my path to getting anything done for real. Unlike some acquaintances, I haven't hit it big on the App Store and can't just semi-retire at the moment. Until then, it's nose to the grindstone no matter how distracted I want to be.
It's not that I don't love doing this - I do - but it's that I just find myself in the same position over and over again: unable to complete some portion of the game because I lack some skill. I need to either acquire said skill or find someone who is willing to help - and unfortunately I haven't found people who are likeminded about doing this. Or I do and they totally flake. *sigh* As a result, I have a hard time being motivated to work on things.

My favorite captain

All of this said, I have about 4 games that are in various stages of completion. If I can just get ONE of them done and out, I think I can make enough to either hire the people to finish the others or perhaps attract enough interest to get people engaged. And then I'd have a small group of games earning a little money in the store for me and that might be enough to get the ball rolling. Which would be totally cool.
So, I am once again ditching my current project (OttoJotts) for something else - for now. Hence the facepalm (to left). It's been a rough few months and I am not at all motivated to do this, but I am motivated to not be dependent upon a salary. I'm not thinking of quitting any time soon, but going to work when you don't have to makes the trip a whole lot easier and more pleasant. And THAT'S the goal - to have the flexibility to do what I want to do when I want to do it. Don't we all?

More updates

I don't want to sound like a broken record, so thankfully this post avoids that. I've been working on cleaning up the back-end PHP code for OttoJotts so I can create a basic web interface that will exercise the two-player game. One of the concerns at this stage is that I'm going to spend too much time on the iOS front end and less on the actual game play. By working on the back-end I'm focusing my attention on the actual play. This also has the benefit of being the basis for a web interface for other things.
I've almost completed moving all of the actual working code into functions that can be called from either the iOS-supporting PHP code or from an HTML page directly. Given my (relatively) intermediate skills in web development, I'm hoping I can get something written up without killing myself to provide access. Some things, like creating an account and such, I'll pass on as that will require some effort. Rather, I'll just do that manually for now and then later work on getting something coded up that's pretty and usable.
Overall I'm pretty happy with how things have been going. I know that there's an added security benefit to what I'm doing, which is definitely a good thing. PHP has had a reputation for being somewhat "security lax" but there are things that you can do to harden it. Part of this work is doing that hardening.
So, things are progressing even if not visibly. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to get this hammered out in the next few days and then I can work on the web interface. Then I'll be able to test the two player game code and, if everything's working well, be good to go. This does make me wonder, though, whether I should just do a web interface iOS app for the two player game and get the single player game out there. So do an OttoJotts solitaire version now-ish, get the web version working and then write a web UI wrapper app for the two-player game since I'm finding the two versions are radically different. Need to think this one over a little bit...
Until next time...

Decisions, decisions

So after sleeping on it last night, I have a plan. Scary, I know. I've always planned on integrating OttoJotts into Facebook as well and, since I'm going to do that, I think I need to release the game with 2 player games. First, as I mentioned in my previous post, I don't think there's really enough solitaire content to make the game compelling for 1 player. The 2 player game is really where it's at and, when I honestly think about why I did the 1 player game version, it was mostly to vet the concept and test the subsystems. Now that the 1 player game is mostly complete (sans hardening) it's time to really get into the 2 player game. I need to remind myself about the success that Words with Friends had and it's only a 2 player game - there is no solitaire game available.
So, with that said, I've recommitted myself to finishing the bloody thing with 2 player games available. I've been a bit down about the lack of progress and I'm sure that's what's going on (plus it's been a bit tight financially at Chez DeVoe). I think the need to make a bigger, better splash with OttoJotts is far more important than trying to get just something out the door. If I put out a piece of crap (fart apps, anyone?) then people are less likely to trust that my follow-up games are going to be any good. As the first app from the "studio", I need to make sure that it's a good one that people will think is good quality and good value for the money (if not excellent). Then, as my other apps come online, they'll be more inclined to get something else from me.
What this all means, I guess, is that I'm back on the initial track. After a reasonable night's sleep, I actually have some ideas for handling the game creation. Yes, it will take a little time to get it sorted, but I think it will be cleaner in the end, re-use some code (which is always good), and still meet the needs that the 2 player games require. So, back to the salt mines.

OMG but time does fly...

Well, it has been a very eventful 7 months... First, my gig at Examiner took up MUCH more time than I thought it would. I guess the first day should have been a preview of what was to come - I came into the office at 9 AM and left at 9 PM. For a while there releases were taking a VERY long time - up until midnight a few times - but since December they've been very reasonable, mostly taking place during the workday where possible. I guess that's one thing I can look at postively. :)
On the down side, we've had a lot of shakeups in the group. First, we bought a company called NowPublic in October. Their management team became our management team. This isn't usually a terribly bad thing, but let me put it this way. NowPublic was a $10 million company. Examiner is a $100 million company. The NP management style is still a little on the nascent side and, honestly, with my having come from organizations like HP - they don't have a management style. They hire contractors and delegate tasks, but there's no employee development, no interest in the employee - because they're contractors. Unfortunately they inherited a team of 12 developers who are employees (well, for now). *sigh* Beyond that, my manager, the VP of Technology, was let go a couple of weeks ago. It was a bit of a blow to morale for the group because all of them had been hired by her and she was one of the original employees of the company - nearly a founder. Morale's been pretty crappy since her departure.
In the meantime, I am once again looking at making the Otto Von thing viable. I've put the iPhone apps on hold (temporarily) while I explore a couple of other ideas. I've published a game on Facebook called Secret Agent - East vs West. It's a spy game set in 1985 using Social Game Studios framework. Yes, you did read that correctly. I actually FINALLY published a game! It's been slow to get adoption, but I haven't really been advertising it strongly. I'm thinking that my work on the other game currently under development will be stronger and more viable. It's a feudal-era Japanese game called Daimyo. The goal is to try to conquer the different regions of Japan and become Shogun. It's coming along nicely, but once again I'm running into personal skill limitations. *sigh* A continuing theme. I've posted up a request for some help from both a UI Designer and a Web Developer on gamedev.net (link posted here). If you happen to know of anyone, please let me know. I'm looking to share profits on this - just need to get some people who can do a little of everything.
Anyway, it's all starting to come together. Slowly, albeit, but hopefully it will be picking up momentum in the short-term. I hope I can look back at this post and the 7 month gap and think - "wow, that's when it all turned around". *fingers crossed*

Differences Between Windows and Mac Development

Well, after beating my head against a problem for like 6 hours today, I have finally gotten back to where I was... 6 hours ago. *sigh* Okay, it's not that bad. I do have some other work that happened in that 6 hours that's still around, but I made one change in the program and Bam! I felt like Elzar cranked my head up a notch with a spice weasel.

I was creating the character creation screens which are shown only if it's your first time running the game. I need to make it so that it's modal - meaning you can't avoid it - so I needed to do it before you had access to the tab bar. And things were going along well. I had a root view controller that was handling both character creation screens. I got my locations displaying for people to select where they wanted to start... It was going along great. And then... BAM! Spice weasel.

I had added the root controller's view to the main window as a subview. This seemed reasonable and rational and worked wonderfully. But I couldn't seem to remove it and add the tab bar. The tab bar simply refused to display. So I went down a whole clutch of rabbit holes trying to figure out a way to get the tab bar to display AND have the character creation pages come up. And then I managed to get so far down the rabbit hole I got stuck and couldn't find the way out. I hit up a friend of mine who's on Facebook - Don Metzler. He owns his own consulting business and we've known each other for almost a decade now. He's a Mac programmer AND a Windows guy, so he's familiar with the benefits and detriments of both platforms. He and I went looking at the code and tried to get it back to where it was semi-working. And, thanks to the chat, we got it back there. Yay.

What this pointed out to me, though, was one of the things that I really have to laud (that's approve) Microsoft for doing. They make all of the MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes) available as source code. So when you're deep in the bowels of a combo box you can figure out why your particular hook isn't getting called, you have the proverbial snowball's chance to figure out why. With Apple, on the other hand, there's a sort of mystique to the internals. You don't get to know what happens in there and some things happen so automagically you can't possibly figure out how to replicate it.

Case in point: when you attach a tab bar controller to a MainWindow.xib file, there's some special magic that happens inside Apple's foundation code that hooks everything up. You get all of your view controllers laid out, the tab bar looks good, and things happen without having to write any extra code. If you try to replicate that, though, things kinda go south quickly. I found a few people online trying to do what I was doing (albeit slightly differently), but they ran into the same frustration I did. Had I access to the source, I could have replicated it and avoided the spice weasel. Instead? BAM! Spice weasel.

I've finally gotten back to where I was 6 hours ago in terms of the main game play. I need to spend tomorrow morning going through trying to hook up the character generation screens but at least they're done - I just need to get them to display and that will hopefully not involve a spice weasel and my eyes. :)

Travel Update

So it's been a reasonably productive day ending on something of a sour note. I've put the destinations for the game (North America and the UK) into an XML file that I'm able to pull from the website and parse properly. But now I've run into an issue where I'm getting a crash when I try to move from the main location. When I first had things working it was going about five spaces away before I'd get a crash. I thought it might have been a problem with no releasing some objects properly, so I've done that and now it crashes on the first move. Obviously the releases weren't the issue. It's unfortunately too late now for me to think clearly and get anything resolved properly, so I'm going to sleep on it and see what I can find out tomorrow morning.

Artwork is still not being done and I need to get that moving forward. I've talked with a couple of people who might be interested and able to do the work, but I need to finalize that and get them cracking on it. Things are in a place now where they could probably do at least half of the artwork right now and the rest in the not-too-distant future. *sigh*

Overall, I'm happy with the progress being made. I'm a little behind where I'd hoped to be, but honestly things are going faster than I expected they would. Toss in two weeks where very little was possible (due to Princess Ida), and the progress is actually amazing. :) Perhaps things will be clearer in the morning. There's still SOOOOO much to overall, though, that even if I had everything done right now I'd be hard-pressed to get the game released by the end of the month. Right now the best I can hope is that I can get it into an alpha/very-early-beta by the end of the month. That means that I won't likely be right there when Harry Potter opens, but that I might be within a week of the release, and that would be pretty cool.

Resources

I've been really inspired by one of the iPhone developers who's been blogging about his experiences. His name is Owen and runs Streaming Colour Studios (his blog is located here). It's been a fascinating read and he's been brutally honest about his successes in selling iPhone applications. I found him through Slashdot and have been following him ever since, including going back and reading his earlier posts.
I've been inspired to talk about the business side of things because of his blog. I think a lot of people expect that developing for the iPhone will mean success like Ethan Nicholas' success (or Steve Demeter's). Thankfully I'm a lot more pragmatic than that. I'm hoping I might be able to get an extra sushi dinner each month from this. :) Not that I'd mind that success - hell, it would be awesome to be successful enough to do this full-time. As I mentioned, that's a long-term goal.
I've been piggybacking a bit on Owen's blog (and his links to other blogs) to see how other developers coping with things like price points, lite versions, etc. What kind of success are they seeing (or not seeing)? What kinds of strategies are they employing to try to maximize their sales? What kind of "sweet spots" in terms of pricing are they seeing?
I've been thinking about it especially as regards Project Samantha. How am I going to monetize the game? Will I have a free version and a paid version? A free version that can be upgraded in situ to a full version? What kind of security implications does that have? Do I keep the game free and offer paid add-ons (like iMob has done with respect points)? If there's a free vs. paid version, what restrictions do I place on the free version?
I'll post up more on what I decide to do when I finally decide to do it. I'm leaning in one particular direction and will make it clearer when I have a chance to really assess the benefits. In the meantime, Owen's blog has been fascinating. I also stumbled upon Snappy Touch's blog. He's working on a game idea that's similar to one that Susie and I thought of back in November - still in development. But he made a quick and dirty app called Tea Time! that gave him some insights into how the App Store and Apple's approval process worked. Again, fascinating reading.
As I come across more blogs and resources that I can recommend, I will add them here. Until then, enjoy these two very readable blogs.