Archive for the ‘Project Management’ Category
Some Project Planning
Monday, November 24th, 2008
Things are really feeling like they’re starting to come together. I think a large part of that is because the artist I’m working has been sending me some great stuff that’s got me really excited about the visual direction she’s taking. Although the decision to pay to hire an artist is a scary one (it’s the biggest part of my budget for this game, aside from my own time), I’m already seeing how important it is.
I’m one of those programmers who has always had an interest in art. Both my parents are artists, my grandfather was a portrait painter, my grandmother was an art teacher for years and is now a stone sculptor, and my aunt is a painter and art teacher. I grew up around art. I took a lot of art classes in high school and continued taking some classes at university. However, I know my limitations: I’m a hobbyist artist; I’m not a professional. I knew from the start that I’d have to hire someone to do the artwork if I wanted to push the level of polish in the game to a point that I’d be happy releasing. It appears that it was the right decision.
Right now the art is still in the mockup stages, so I can’t wait until I get some assets to drop into the game. Once I get a first pass of the art in the game, I might even post a screenshot or two! *gasp* I know…a shocking move forward. I’ll just have to make sure the artist is ok with me releasing the art prior to completion.
This morning I started realising that I had little notes everywhere about all the stuff I still need to change/fix/tweak/implement. I decided it was time to start compiling it into a central list of “things that still need to get done”. My plan was to take the list and plug it into my project planning software, but I’m not sure if I will. A big part of me knows that this will help me to track my progress and I can use the metrics I gather from it to plan my next project better. The other part of me just keeps screaming “let’s code something cool!” Right now the screaming part is winning out. Maybe tomorrow I’ll feel more like project planning.
Back to coding…
Owen
Moving Along
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
Yesterday I got a lot of emails or IM’s from people urging me to “keep at ‘er”, so thanks to everyone who sent me a note. I’m feeling much better about the state of things this morning. I think the act of just laying it all out there and listing it all out has helped me immensely.
The other thing I did yesterday was to download a free project management tool called GanttProject. It’s free software written in Java (so it runs cross-platform) that basically mimics Microsoft Project’s most basic functionality. As it’s free, it does have a lot of UI quirks (bugs) that are kind of annoying at first, but hey…you get what you pay for. At any rate, I spent a little while yesterday and kind of roughed out a schedule for the next month or so. It has made me feel a lot better about the state of things and where I’m heading.
Today I need to finish up my UML diagrams. I’ve got the main logical side of the game broken down into its new structure, but the big change that’s still to come is the conversion to more of a Model-View-Controller architecture. This is the structure that the iPhone kind of forces you to use and there’s no reason I can’t use it with Playground SDK to clean up the structure a bit.
Then tomorrow, I start recoding the prototype properly. Hooray! As they say in Galaxy Quest, “Never give up! Never surrender!” Hmm…have I just exposed some nerdy part of me that I shouldn’t have shared?
Owen
Struggles with Graphic Design
Tuesday, September 30th, 2008
I’ve been struggling with coming up with a logo design for Streaming Colour Studios lately. It’s taken up much more time that I originally thought it would. I hired a friend, and very talented graphic designer, to design a new look for the website, but I wasn’t really in the position (financially) to hire someone to do a logo for me. Without a logo, I don’t want to launch the new site design. It’s a vicious cycle.
The trouble with doing this myself is that I’m finding it hard to separate myself, as client, from myself, as designer. I keep trying new ideas. I think the one I did this morning is probably my stongest one to date, but I’ve thought that about the last four concepts I did. At any rate, it’s taking up a lot of my time that could be spent coding, but it’s important. My goal is to have it wrapped up by the end of the week and then get back to coding.
In other news, I’ve decided to take on some contract programming work. When I started the company I had aspirations of being the “struggling indie developer” who doesn’t need nothin’ from nobody. The problem is that at some point reality sets in and the idea of having a little income on the side while I continue to develop my own work becomes too appealing. It will be nice to be able to pay for things like rent and food.
The contract work will, no doubt, take up a lot of my time over the next little while, so I may not be doing quite as much work on my game as I’d originally hoped. However, the good news is that the contract should provide me with the income I need to actually continue to afford to both live and work on my own project. That’s a good thing.
Owen
Well, It’s Monday
Monday, September 22nd, 2008
A new day, a new week. My post on Friday wasn’t very cheerful, so I thought I’d follow up with what came out of that. It turns out that pushing through and forcing myself to code was the right course of action in this instance. By the end of the day on Friday I had implemented one of the new end conditions I had been going over in my head. It turns out that it’s actually pretty cool. It seems to balance the game a lot better. I find that I’m losing the game in different places now, and I feel like I have a lot more control over the outcome of the game. This is a good thing. I think this is the solution I’ll be working with for now. It will undoubtedly need extensive play-testing and tuning, but I think it’s a good direction.
A friend of mine from Vancouver was in town over the weekend and we had a chance to meet up for a cup of coffee and chat. We were talking about the game I was working on and then started talking about iPhone games. After our conversation I started thinking more and more about iPhone/iPod Touch development. My plan was to build my game and release it for PC and Mac, then port it to the iPhone at some point. Now I’m starting to wonder if I should try to get a simplified version going for the iPhone sooner, rather than later.
I started thinking about it and realised that most of my time spent gaming recently has been on my iPod Touch. I have it with me all the time, so when I’m on the subway, or waiting in a long line-up somewhere, out comes the iPod for a quick game of Trism, or De Blob.
So I started wondering how much work it would be to port my prototype to the iPhone. I already have a Mac, and I’ve been using XCode to do my prototype development so far. All I’d need to do is download the SDK, learn Objective C and rewrite the rendering part of my game. Hah…sounds easy!
Obviously I don’t have a tonne (yes, that’s a metric tonne) of time to devote to this, but I’m thinking I might spend two days and see how far I get. At the end of two days, if it looks like I can have something running within the week, I’ll keep going. If not, I’ll look at priorities and see where it might fit in the schedule.
Owen