Moved

Well, we are now moved. Moving is always an interesting adventure. First you have to pack up all the crap you've accumulated over the years (6 years for us). You also have to decide what crap you actually want to pack and what you could not care less about. We probably had three truck loads of garbage. I don't understand where it all comes from. It's not like our old place was a total trash hole and it really wasn't that big so I'm not quite sure how soo much garbage was hiding in it. Oh well, it's gone now. Then you get to load everything up (for those of you lucky enough to have movers come in and do this all for you, I am most envious). We used a stock trailer. We were like "This thing is almost bigger then the trailer, I'm sure everything will fit in it". Of course, we were wrong. We stuffed as much as we could in that and the car and there was still more. How on earth did we get so much stuff! And we didn't even take the couch, fridge, or stove. My god, we have enough towels for all of Canada! Why? I have absolutely no idea. Then you make the long drive to the new house and unpack all the crap you decided not to throw away. Then you have to find a place for all of it. I'm pretty sure I've moved the mess around the house about 6 times now. It's finally all in the basement so at least I don't have to look at it. I figure things will get put away as they are used. And now we have at least twice as much space as we did before. I guess we had better buy some more crap to fill it up!

Facebook

Facebook is something that I'm sure everyone has heard of by now. I had received a few invitations to join and eventually gave in just to see what it was all about. Of course I am now hooked. It is actually pretty cool. They put a bunch of extra crap in there like different applications you can add to your page (i.e. Pirates, movie ratings, zombies, horoscopes, fortune cookies, pets, etc.) which is really pretty useless. The cool part is how many people are actually using it. I have found people I haven't seen in 16 years. That, to me, it pretty amazing. I guess the downside would be that people can also find you, whether you want them to or not. I find it very convenient for sharing photos. It is very easy to upload and add comments to pictures. They also have this option where you can select a region containing someones face and name it and if they are on Facebook too you can link it to their profile. I guess the messaging part is basically just like email. You have an inbox where you get messages but you can also post messages on other people's (or your own) "wall". All of the people who are in that profiles "Friends" list can then see that message. Nice for getting a public message out to all your friends (not that you can't do that with email too). To me it seems a little more personal then email. Maybe it's because it feels more like real-time then email because of the way the message board is setup. All in all, to me, it seems like a great way to make the world a little smaller.

Excited to Move

We finally get to move. It's so very exciting, nerve racking, scary, and exhausting. There is so much to do. I can hardly believe it has been almost 6 years already since the last time I moved. How time flies by.

Kaiser

Since it seems like I will be sufferring a lack of inspiration for an indefinite period of time, I have started a Kaiser game. I need to practice figuring out logic and stuff anyway. This time, to try to get the logic somewhat correct for the computer players, I am writing tests for things I need the code to be able to do and then writing the code to do it. I know this is how you are supposed to code anyway but the City Builder project ended up with the majority of the code in a controller and could not be easily tested (not that that's an excuse, but since it was just for me I kinda slacked). This time I'm trying to keep the code isolated in a class and independent of variables in the controller. That will make it easier to write tests and it will make it easier to change the interface without losing all the code if I should need/want to later. I'm kinda trying to concentrate on getting the code I need to make it functional first and then I can concentrate on the user interface. See if I can't get some good enough graphics to appeal to some of the more seasoned players.

Searching for Inspiration

I wrote a game. It's like monopoly. It was fun. And good practice for work since it was in the same language as what we use to write our product. Plus, it was fun. I was going to rewrite it in something that would allow online play but as I thought about it more, it probably wasn't going to happen anyway for many various reasons. So now I want to do something new. The problem is what to do. I've been reading 'chris crawford on game design' and the last bit is all about games he has developed and how he went about the logic and stuff. He has a lot of good ideas about how to design the gameplay first and the interface later and that kind of thing. So now I know a better way to go about designing a game I just don't have a game to design.

Where do you find a good idea? I don't even care if it's a new idea or not, I just want a good idea. I was thinking Kaiser because that's something that I want to play and can't find, but it's kinda a boring idea. I suppose it would keep me occupied for a while anyway. That would be a cool game online, but when you only have dial-up, it's hard to develop and maintain an online game. Plus you have to find a place to host it and get a domain name and all that crap.

Are games like stories? Do you write what you know? Obviously everything I know has already been done otherwise I wouldn't know it. Plus, I'm not a 3D graphics expert or video expert or anything like the designers who create todays computer and console games so anything I know is way out of my league anyway. I could take an existing idea and make it into something in my league like I did with the monopoly idea but then no one would want to play it, like the monopoly game.

I guess that's why I write trucking and accounting software and not games. Don't need a lot of creativity to figure out what gl accounts to use or how many reference fields to have on an order.

Tablets

So I got a tablet from work and it is awsome. I don't know why more people wouldn't be using these. The one I got came with a pen and a mouse. The pen is so cool. And so easy to use once you get used to it. You would think that would be the more logical move from paper to computer. I find it more comfortable to use. I also really like that you plug the tablet in and everything is powered off it. There are absolutely no batteries to replace. It's also nice that you can still have your regular mouse plugged in, especially if there are other people using the computer who might not be so thrilled about the tablet.

I have tried it out a bit doing some minor photo editing (removing red eye and cleaning up scratches and fuzzy spots) and it works really well. I like the preasure sensitivity feature.

GIMP is Grrrrrreeeaaatt!

I've been using GIMP for a while now but I never really read anything on how it works. I just sort of played around until I figured out what I was trying to do. I've always wanted to learn more about it because I know it can do a million amazing things it you just learn how. So I started reading a How To book on it. I'm only through the chapter on drawing (I think it's the third) and I'm pretty sure I've already warn out "ohhhh that's how you do that". The project at the end of the chapter is drawing a 3-D tree in a box. It's pretty cool. I've never been much of a drawer, but my tree actually looks pretty good. I was really surprised how easy it was. I think that things like that and even the selecting would be a lot easier with a tablet. I've always wanted to try one but I don't know anyone who owns one and I'm much too poor to purchase one. Some day I guess. I also learned how to remove red-eye from photos. It works pretty good if you can get the selectiong right. Although, I will tell you this now, it does not work on pictures of cats!

We're on our way, from misery to happiness today...

We have now switched all of our customers over to continuous updates. It was a little rocky but I think that things are starting to settle down now (I hope anyway). I'm not sure what the customers think of it. Probably split. Sort of like the feeling in the office about it. Seems pretty good to me. Especially with the critical changes we've been making lately. Instead of having to tell the customers they have to wait 3 months for something that is already done, we can say that they'll have it Friday morning.