Blogs

One of the things on my blogging TODO list is to show how I work. Many coders find it odd to hear that I work on Windows without Visual Studio, or that I work on the Mac by rarely touching the Mac. Just me, a text editor (a good one), and a bunch of useful scripting. In my current project though (Smiles PC), I’ve run in to a slight brick wall that requires me and my development arch nemesis to join forces. It’s almost funny, but it’s been about 10 years since I’ve had to touch a Microsoft compiler. Normally I’d be reluctant, but we’re talking a distribution issue here… and that’s how I get paid. 😉 So, today’s when I swallow my command line pride and get Smiles building with Visual Studio. This post is long, nuanced, technical, and mostly for my own benefit. So if you’re up for an over analysis of Windows Developers favorite development tool, hit the link. ...

Today we announced the date for Ludum Dare #16. This upcoming December 11th-13th weekend. Ludum Dare is that other thing I do. Along with Phil, Mike and Seth, we run a community website based around the infamous Ludum Dare competition. Game developers from around the world assemble, pick a theme, and make a game from scratch over the weekend. Then we vote on our favorites. http://www.ludumdare.com/…/announcing-ludum-dare-16-december-11th-13th-weekend/ Nowadays, we do it 3 times per year, this one being our regular December competition....

This is not what I’ve been up to all year, but it is what I’m up to right now. So, let’s introduce the project. Officially, the project is named Smiles. Specifically though, the project’s working title is Smiles PC. Just as you’d expect, it’s Smiles the iPhone game for PC, Mac and Linux. Actually it’s more than that, but lets stick with this for now. At it’s core, Smiles PC is about removing the dependencies of the iPhone from the game....

As planned, Smiles Zen 1.3 and Smiles Drop 1.3 were sent late Friday night (technically 5 AM the next day). I made the mentioned addition of arrows after discovering some people didn’t realize you could click on the icon. Here’s a snap of that from the iPhone build on the PC. Cross promotion, now with arrows! I had some friends look at this screen, and got a good reaction from the “love hearts”, so I made a similar change to free version....

Here’s something I hope to start doing more often. Technically, I’ve been hoping to actually start all year. Short development video logs. Today’s video is a demonstration of the cross promotion features in Smiles Zen and Smiles Drop. Inspiration hit last night, and I added something amusing to it I’d thought I’d share. Both builds should go out tonight. I’ll be adding a pair of arrows beside the icon, just so it’s even clearer that you can click on it right here....

Smiles 1.3 is already in the Apple queue, but not Zen and Drop yet. Something “new” in 1.3 is that I removed the “how to play music” instructions from the game. This used to be in the upper right corner of the screen. The description used to say you could “double tap” the home button to bring up music playback, but it seems that was wrong on the iPhones and 3rd gen iPods....

I figure there’s no reason not to share these. Smiles Zen‘s “FREE ZEN WEEKEND” download statistics: 1022 – Thursday October 29th (started at noon) 3544 – Friday October 30th 1826 – Saturday October 31st 1361 – Sunday November 1st 144 – Monday November 2nd (ended at 1 AM) The 29th was a fraction of a day. I flipped the switch roughly around noon, which kicked in about 4 hours later....

Today marks the 1 year anniversary of the launch of Smiles. … Yeah, it’s been that long already. This weekend I’m giving Smiles Zen away for FREE. Also, I’ve discounting Smiles to $1.99 to reflect the price. I guess that’s how we celebrate 1 year on iPhone. 😉 In other news, Smiles 1.3 is on the way. I discovered a graphics performance bug on the newer iPhones and iPods (SGX), so that is now fixed....

I’m in the middle of… well… an insane amount of stuff. The WordPress update botched my layout (forgot to copy the default theme), so I decided to break it even more. 🙂 I’ll be writing up a full feature/retrospective for Ludum Dare 15 likely today. Results are up, and we’ve got some bragging to do. 🙂 I also have a big announcement to make soon (in a few weeks, month or so)....

Wow! Ludum Dare #14’s 123 entries in April was a pretty big deal, but our 15th Ludum Dare in August did a whopping 144! Yikes! http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-15/?action=preview On the plus side, Phil and I came together and awesome-ified the website. He wrote our all new voting and submission system, and I made the site look new and purty. And when all was said and done, it actually worked! Wow! It came together the weekend before the competition....