Category Archives: traps
Rejected Elaborations
Rejecting features is a vital phase of the game development process. Skip it and you risk the all-too-common failure mode of Overwhelming Complexity. While THE OCTOBER GAME has grown in scope, there were plenty of features I deliberately didn’t include. … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized, philosophy, process, rants, traps
Tagged complexity, core values, features, sunk costs trap, THE OCTOBER GAME
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Switching gears to get unstuck
Last week I finished a long-overdue upgrade to Lion, Xcode 4 and the latest cocos2d. After I got THE OCTOBER GAME running again, I turned to updating the artwork that I talked about last time. The work wasn’t hard, but … Continue reading
Posted in Technical, Uncategorized, creative, iDevBlogADay, process, traps
Tagged burnout, stuck, switching gears, THE OCTOBER GAME
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The Game Deadline Problem, part 3
THE OCTOBER GAME was taking longer to finish than expected. Since I was unwilling to abandon it after some arbitrary date (that is, set a true deadline), I had to improve my development process. Why was the game taking longer? … Continue reading
Posted in ProTip, Technical, iDevBlogADay, process, traps
Tagged cheevos, cocos2d, deadlines, performance, testing, THE OCTOBER GAME
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The Game Deadline Problem, part 1
A friend asked me about the deadline for THE OCTOBER GAME. Since it was the end of July (8 months after I started), this revealed a problem with my deadline-setting procedure. I’d set a due date, not a deadline. I … Continue reading
Posted in iDevBlogADay, process, traps
Tagged burnout, cocos2d, deadlines, THE OCTOBER GAME, traps, work-life balance
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Fatal Distractions
Making THE OCTOBER GAME: Defense against Distraction Welcome fellow #iDevBlogADay readers. I’m Will Culpepper, a fairly new, solo iPhone developer. My company is called eliolhan and I have four programs on the iOS App Store: How Old Am I, Tipidy, … Continue reading
Posted in ProTip, Uncategorized, creative, iDevBlogADay, process, traps
Tagged defense, distracting ideas, distractions, iDevBlogADay, outlet, THE OCTOBER GAME
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Bug Hunting
Making THE OCTOBER GAME: Uninitialized Values are Not Your Friends While rebuilding THE OCTOBER GAME prototype to use cocos2d, I ran into a subtle and persistent bug: Any time the player quickly hit three bad guys in a row, the … Continue reading
Posted in ProTip, Uncategorized, process, tools, traps
Tagged debugging, lessons learned, THE OCTOBER GAME, Xcode
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Search Your Feelings Luke
Making THE OCTOBER GAME: Facing the Uncomfortable Late in the first week of December, it felt like The October Game was in the last stages. Having the game come out before Christmas didn’t seem too unreasonable. App submission had to … Continue reading
Posted in ProTip, Uncategorized, philosophy, process, prognostications, rants, traps
Tagged eat that frog, less wrong, planning fallacy, THE OCTOBER GAME, time-estimation, ugh fields, uncomfortable truths
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Fear is the Mind Killer
Making THE OCTOBER GAME: A Handy List of Fears to Ignore …when creating your very first commercial game. Say them out loud. My game will: be too simple have crude artwork have lame music be too small get bad reviews … Continue reading
Posted in ProTip, Uncategorized, creative, philosophy, traps
Tagged dune-quotes, fear, mind-killer, THE OCTOBER GAME
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Let’s Get Small
Making THE OCTOBER GAME: Containing scope creep This project has three phases: Design – describe game Development – build and test elements Implementation – final code + asset assembly A month after starting, I’m still in the Development phase, though … Continue reading
Posted in process, traps
Tagged scope creep, Seth Godin, THE OCTOBER GAME, The Resistance
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Slow and steady wins the race
Making THE OCTOBER GAME: Integration I found a doozy of a performance bug today. My frame rate drops off a cliff when there’s more than 7 enemies onscreen. Only happens on my 1st-gen iPhone. It’s impractical to test every single … Continue reading