Screenshot Saturday

Game Update

First things first - it’s time for a screenshot:

You might notice there’s a volume control and my background, because it’s tricky to take a screenshot from my iPad.

Editors Note: You won’t notice anything as the screenshot saturday website no longer exists.

That’s what was initially a Kaboom! port and I had been tentatively titled Mad Bomber. It’s todo list is growing ever shorter for a first release in part because I keep cutting features, with glee. For instance the game does not work on every possible iPad display. Initially I thought this was really important but of course it isn’t. I’ll release on the devices it currently works on, and move from there.

The major feature I’m cutting is the “new graphics” feature. It still needs a new background, plain green won’t do, but I’ve decided that rather than hire somebody to make appropriate bombs for a straight port I’m going to actually make a theme that fits my chests, little Lady Bug and my rocks. That might mean changing my explosions, which are a particle effect that sounds like a bomb, but otherwise that’s the least amount of work and it might actually work well.

Most importantly, the game is actually fun to play.

“Systems” Update

On New Years I wrote about what I want to accomplish this year and “systems” for accomplishing them. Some were more thought out than others, but I think all could use continuous updating in order to be effective. Today let’s look at my Indie Game Business:

Indie Game Business Goal Update

There are three parts to my system. The first was to start a Seinfeldian Calendar, which is now embedded in this blog. As you can see I’ve hit every day since I set my resoultion. I’m in the easy part though - I only went to work Thursday and Friday this week, with Friday involving a nice ride on the train. Next week is the real test.

The second part is to track time spent. I’m using RescueTime for that. It shows me as having 1 hour and 24 minutes in Appcode this week, 11 minutes in the iOS simulator, and 4 hours in iTerm. The first two are definitely game development, the third can be but could also be work. It seems a bit low, and I might want to talk to one of my co-workers who uses Rescue time about how to best use it. The total computer time seems very low.

The third part is to develop a marketing plan which I am supposed to do today. That now seems unlikely as my daughter does not have Spanish class and I’m currently with her in the Library, normally this is just me alone. The first step though is to make this blog into a website for my game company, with this becoming a blog. That will start right after I post this.