OttoJotts and other stuff

Been working on the back-end pieces of OttoJotts over the past few weeks. It's been slower than I'd hoped, both because I'd run into a small issue that was keeping me from moving forward with the game views and because I was finding other things I wanted to do instead (like catch up on Reddit and watch some videos). I've been a bit demotivated the past few weeks. Lots of stuff happening personally and financially that have added more stress than I needed right now.
On the OttoJotts front, though, things have been progressing reasonably well given the time I've spent on them. Right now I've got the account information and the main game list showing up. I still have to get the game details (the guesses and such) showing up and the ability to start games. Still a lot of work left but once I get these things sorted out it's a lot of playtesting and hooking it up to the iPhone.
iPad is still something of a question. I don't own one so I'll need to rely on people who do to test it out. I'd like to make sure that it works and that I have a good set of graphics for it so it looks reasonable. Just hoping that at least one of my friends is willing to help out. *wink wink*
The other issue I've been running across has been my ADHD kicking in wanting me to work on another small project and get it out. That's kind of what OttoJotts was supposed to be, so I hesitate to jump through the hoops to get something started only to end up on month 15 with nothing yet to show for it. I need to take a Kanban approach and just finish the work in progress and then work on the next thing. It's something I've struggled with for years and is once again rearing its ugly head. I wish I were more motivated to finish OttoJotts and get it done. Maybe I'm unable to complete things. Maybe I'm afraid of what happens if I do complete it (total flop). I don't know - it's just frustrating and adds to my stress level.
Anyway, lots to do at the "real job" (for now). I have tons to do still but I can actually pull this out if I can just get some focus on it. Send happy, supportive thoughts!

New OttoJotts UI Ideas

I was in the shower today getting ready to pick up Cathy from a birthday party (no, not that one - we unfortunately missed that one *headdesk*). This was not her cousin Zavi's party in Laramie but my best friend Dan's son Matthew's 6th birthday. It was at Chuck E Cheese's and now that I've wasted far too much time with off-topic over-explanation, let me get back to the point of this post - user interface ideas for OttoJotts.
So while I was in the shower I began thinking back to the days when I used to play Jotto and what usually had to suffice for Jotto sheets when we'd exhausted our supply. We opted for legal pads, a ruler, and a pen. So this made me wonder - what if I made the UI look like a legal pad (or at least just lined paper) and then had all of the buttons and letters be handwritten? I think it might be "retro", but I think retro is hip these days (it's so hard to tell sometimes). PLUS, it's something that I, with my limited graphic artist skills could likely pull off. That was a definite benefit.
I think it would be very cool to have a slick UI like, say, Words with Friends, but I'm just NOT a graphic artist. Been there, done that, got my wrist slapped. I may just need to accept my limitations on this particular point (not that I ever thought I was a graphic artist). What does this mean for Alpha 4? Absolutely nothing. I'm sure I'll find ways to try to derail myself from actually working on code and work on the cool new UI, but it needs to wait until Beta 1. The alphas are all about functionality; betas are about polish. So that's kind of the thinking for, say, April. And I've got a cool idea for the badges, but that's later as well.
I guess we'll see how well I can keep this "shiny new toy" on the back burner. I've actually managed to get most of the friend and game creation code done and in, which was surprisingly smooth. There's still a lot of hardening that needs to happen, but I think that once I get into that mode it will be straightforward to do pretty much the same thing to every file. Plus, I need to make the code a little harder to exploit, which I hope I can get done with a minimum of fuss. Let's just hope I can keep up some of the focus here to make this project FINALLY successful.

Been WAAAAAY Too Long

Well, it's been a LONG time since I've posted, but we've had a LOT going on here. To give a quick run-down:

• The 9-5 got interesting at the end of the year as my contract may have ended abruptly. Thankfully it didn't, but it was still quite a bit of shock that it might have happened.
• The spousal unit got REALLY sick. Sick to the point where she's still on short-term disability from HER job trying to recover. And when she does recover, she likely won't have said job. *sigh* She's been overly prone to illness lately because...
• The spousal unit is PREGNANT! Yeah, trust me - it was a surprise. A wonderful one, no doubt, but a surprise nonetheless. SO much to do and so little time. Due date is May 2nd and his name is going to be Andrew Ximun William. Yeah, we're sort of into two middle names. His big sister is just thrilled that she's going to be a big sister. :)

Other than that, the work I've decided to tackle for Alpha 4 is the meat of the project - two player, server-based games. That's requiring a lot of doing both PHP and Objective-C, but things are progressing. I've gotten a lot accomplished over the past few days, getting friends lists into the database and retrievable. I just finished creating accounts/logging into an existing account code. Took longer than I'd hoped but it came together nicely at the end. I'm storing hashed passwords (obviously) in the DB, but when I looked at the size of the hash I calculated half the size it really was, so I couldn't log in (because the two hashes didn't match - I wonder why?). I finally got that sorted out and things have progressed wonderfully since then.
Today has been a day about friends and creating games. I've got code in there to randomly find an opponent who's similarly rated (I'm using a modified Elo system for rankings). The idea is that you'll play someone who won't completely blow you away - unless you choose a friend who so far-outclasses you that it's ridiculous. Good thing is that Elo takes that into account and more than 400 point ratings differences tend to result in no change (as the result is practically guaranteed).
Searching for an opponent by their email is almost there as well. I just need to hook up the iOS code to do the query, but the PHP is solid on the back-end. One thing that I haven't done yet and I really need to make sure happens before release is to bullet-proof the PHP back-end. PHP is generally derided for being not-as-security-rich as some other technologies. If you've got pretty confined entry/exit points, though, I think it can be pretty solid. Regardless, in the interest of getting Alpha 4 done and out to testers I've neglected that, but it will need to happen for Alpha 5/Beta 1.
Also thrown into the mix is a new website design. I think I'm getting a lot closer to actually finishing this bloody project and I thought the old design (while state of the art in 2001) has not aged well and was in sore need of replacement. I've gone with a Wordpress front end, but I need to tweak the hell out of it to make it more aligned with my ideas. There are some things that I'm not grokking from the posting/pages side of things with WP, but I'll beat up on it once I'm done with Alpha 3.
So, that's it from here for now. LOTS happening, but hopefully this will be done by May and I can take my paternity leave in the knowledge that I've got my game in the App Store paying for at least some of the diapers we'll need to get.

Alpha 3 Update (redux)

Things are progressing well on the Alpha 3 front. I've redesigned the create game logic now, so it's a little cleaner in terms of creating single player games (the two player games are targeted for next release). Overall I'm pretty happy - spent about 3 hours and redesigned how games are created, including difficulty level. I've got a weird bug where it's not cleaning up completed games, but in retrospect I need to think about whether I should even do that as I plan on having those available after you finish. At the same time, that might be all server-based, so I'll punt for now and worry about it later.
I've got the levels sorted out for the game (the screen shot to the right shows the difficulty levels available). I still need to get the UI changes in place for the new difficulty levels, but I don't think it will take too long to get that sorted out. Nightmare is easy as it's just a simplification of what I've already got. It's Medium and Easy that are going to require the most revision. I did find out how to do what I want to do with them, which is good. I'm planning on having Easy show you the correctly placed matching letters in green and correct letters but in the wrong position in blue. Everything else will be black. Medium will just show you which letters are correct (in blue), not whether they're placed correctly. Hard will be the game the way it is now and Nightmare will be hella-hard (pun intended).
I'm hoping to make some good progress this week and maybe even have the new version available by next week. That would be just awesome if I can pull it off. Then, perhaps, it's time to spend a couple of months making Alpha 4 with two player games. OooOOooo. Ahhhhhh. Ohhhhhh. (For those of you who went to the Colorado Renaissance Festival when Dextre Tripp was there, it all makes sense; for everyone else, just nod your head.)

Good Progress

After resolving my problems with the modal view this morning (MUCH faster than expected), I spent a lot of the day working on integrating my server back-end with the app. Things have been working well there, but I've got a little left to get sorted out. I've written a lot of server code recently, but thankfully I had some code base to work off of, so it hasn't all been new code. As things stand now, I'm hoping to get questing started tomorrow. Once I get quests in I think we can start looking at doing an alpha. :) There should be enough stuff that people can start playing with it. There are still quite a few gaping holes, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I'm thinking that if I continue on with the rate of progress I've been making I should be able to stick a fork in this thing by the end of the month. A lot behind when I wanted to get it done, but about in line with how long iPhone apps take to develop and test.

Anyway, it's been a long week but I've managed to get some things accomplished. Now I'm into the more mundane database work that I know pretty well, so things may start to pick up a bit. That's my hope. And my hope, certainly, springs eternal. :)