Category Archives: Uncategorized
The Level Editor Sprint, Pt.3
My second attempt at a level editor for THE OCTOBER GAME was a useful failure. A few months after my last effort, I wanted to try a new method of app development. Previously, I tended to write code in a … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized, iDevBlogADay, process, tools
Tagged complexity, lessons learned, level editor, rework, THE OCTOBER GAME
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The Level Editor Sprint, part 1
Early on, I decided the THE OCTOBER GAME would have designed levels rather than random ones. That decision led to significant complexity, here’s how: The core of the game is simple, the player jumps up to hit enemies flying across … Continue reading
Posted in Technical, Uncategorized, creative, iDevBlogADay, process, sketch
Tagged complexity, iDevBlogADay, level editor, THE OCTOBER GAME
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The New Year Cleanup Sprint, a post-mortem
What came before At the end of last month, I transplanted THE OCTOBER GAME to a fresh app template. For the next week, I fixed lots of niggling little bugs, did more code cleanup, then another round of tweaking artwork. … Continue reading
Posted in Technical, Uncategorized, iDevBlogADay, process
Tagged mini post-mortem, THE OCTOBER GAME
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The Game Core Transplant, a sprint post-mortem
After regenerating all the art assets, it was time to move THE OCTOBER GAME core to a fresh app template. The game architecture had changed over the months, leaving the project with lots of cruft. Classes had unused methods, or … Continue reading
Posted in Technical, Uncategorized, iDevBlogADay, process
Tagged mini post-mortem, sprint, THE OCTOBER GAME
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Hot Coils
Cool! An article using one of my Creative Commons pictures. How to Calculate the Surface Area of a Coil. This is exactly why I allow some of my art to be used. Here’s the image link on flickr. The source … Continue reading
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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On The Dangers of High Self-Esteem
Shmott Guy Anti-patterns Being A Short List of Descriptions, Remedies and Example Thoughts, Enumerated in the Hope of Learning From the Mistakes of Others* Unwarranted optimism leading to higher risk-taking Sounds like: “I can produce my first commercial video game … Continue reading
Posted in Ideas, ProTip, Uncategorized, iDevBlogADay, process
Tagged iDevBlogADay, THE OCTOBER GAME
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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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Chasing the White Whale
Making THE OCTOBER GAME: Where did January go? My plan for last month was to build out THE OCTOBER GAME in a straight line from the initial Play menu to the Game Over screen. I felt bogged down in peripheral … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized, process
Tagged bugs, LASER focus, Lesson learned, performance, scope creep, THE OCTOBER GAME, time sink, white whale
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