dylanreed.com

I just released v. 1.0 of Falling Cats on the iTunes Market for free. So go download it… I’ll wait…

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It isn’t “finished” but then what game ever truly is finished as envisioned by the creator. I worked my ass off making this project and am pretty happy with it. Without Harper forcing me to release it I may never have released it. Falling Cats was a project that I started in 2010 0r 2011… not really sure. I got the basic idea down and then shelved it because I had other things going on in my life.

I got it out again because Will and I wanted to make video games. Here was one that was at like 60% done. We connected with another dude who wanted to do graphics. It was great… but then it happened.

Feature Creep:

Feature creep, creeping featurism or featuritis is the ongoing expansion or addition of new features in a product, such as in computer software.^[1] Extra features go beyond the basic function of the product and so can result in over-complication rather than simple design. Viewed over a longer time period, extra or unnecessary features seem to creep into the system, beyond the initial goals.

The problem was that we drifted away from a simple game where you caught cats in a basket to a crazy game that at one point had bosses, bonus stages and what not. The problem is that these things were all hard to implement in Gamesalad. Not impossible just outside the scope of what I could figure out… so development dragged, people lost interest or focus and life got in the way.

About three months ago I made the decision to get rid of boss fights. Which was a positive. I also lightend up the menu system trying to keep as much as possible in one scene. The scene would load at the beginning and after the initial load there was nothing else to load. So it was a lot faster. This was the positive step. Unfortunately I lost sight of gameplay and focused instead on making sure that it had a credits screen and in-app purchases and all that crap. This slowed development down further.

By dragging my focus from making a fun game by trying to add features not necessary to the main gameplay I was making a crappy game with a lot of unfinished features. Some of those features are in the current version of the game but when the next update comes it will be a cleaner version of the game. It will be awesome.

When I re-started building this game I did a lot of reading on game development. I learned that shipping a “finished” product is better then never shipping. The nice thing about development is that you can always fix bugs but you won’t know about them unless people are seeing your game. Plus once you have the game figured out you can add features with future updates. In fact all of the things I wanted to put into the game can still be added.

Lesson learned from this experience: K.I.S.S. It is more important to make your product (game or not) do what it is supposed to do first. Get all that crap figured out and then worry about how cool it looks or what other features you want to add. Also make sure that every feature you add to the product adds actual value to the product, either for your user or for you, and isn’t just cool in your head.

One of the hardest parts of this project was relying on others for parts of the game. Some of the graphics and all of the music were done by other people. It was hard relying on others for things I wanted right away. It was also hard to work on a project for as many hours as I did and find out that someone hadn’t done even a little bit on their part or had worked on something else that wasn’t important to the core of the game. Of course no one was getting paid so I can’t blame them too much.

If I were to do the project again I would start from scratch. Gamesalad was great but the limitations of the program didn’t allow me to do what I wanted. The time I spent figuring out something in Gamesalad could have been used learning python or java or any programing language. This would allow me to move on to other projects immediately afterwards instead of now learning to program.

So what’s next? Updating Falling Cats to get rid of some of the nonsense that is in it. Maybe release a few themes for in-app purchasing… but maybe not. Outside of Falling Cats I have a few other projects that I am excited about and will hopefully be able to get done quickly and without a bunch of feature creep.

 

 

 

 

I have joked about this a lot but it is unfortunatly true. I am an accidental hipster. I wear the skinny jeans, the threadless shirts, the thick framed glasses and am always trying to grow a moustache or forgetting to shave. The nice thing is it has all been Harper’s fault.

You see, when Harper worked at threadless I ended up with a lot of t-shirts. I think it is because Harper was too cool to wear them… so I got them. I have lucked out and been just a little skinnier then Harper most of the time. He would have a pair of jeans that didn’t fit anymore and poof  I would have new jeans. And now he gets me jeans whenever he is in Japan. Which makes me even more hipster because I don’t even get my jeans in the States. Then there are my glasses, which Harper recieved from someone and never wore or really opened… so I got them.

The shaving is all me though. Because I am lazy.

 

Thanks Harper!!

Harper and I had an interesting conversation yesterday. It was about ideas and games. We were discussing one idea in particular when he said something along the lines of “Dylan you have a hard time focusing.”

After a good long laugh, because no one was suprised by this declaration we decided what needed to be done. Falling Cats has now been submitted to Apple and will be approved soon. With that off my plate I am free to focus on other things. Like THE NEXT BIG THING.

I won’t be telling you about THE NEXT BIG THING yet. Still need to make sure that it is real. But this does mean that I am going to be focused on that and not on a lot of my other projects. They will be moved to the status of Hobby. That way I can get THE NEXT BIG THING done sooner rather then later.

Wish me luck.

As I posted here I have a crush on the Nintendo 3DS. As luck would have it I now have one. I got the blue-ish one and I love it. I have Mario Kart 7 and Super Mario Land 3D. I am enjoying both of them a lot and find the 3D to be more then just a fancy gimmick. What I like is that you can turn it off if it hurts your brain or if you are going to be moving a lot while playing.

So far I have played the most of Mario Kart 7. It is what you would expect of a Mario Kart game. Mario characters in Karts racing around tracks. There are a lot of new tracks as well as some old ones. What is really fun with this Mario Kart is the inclusion of gliders and underwater portions on courses. Nintendo even took the time to update the older courses to include these features. I also enjoy unlocking different Kart parts that let you modify the Kart to fit your style of play.

Where it really shines is the multiplayer. It is online and the few matches I have played have been a lot of fun though I usually get my ass kicked. Hard. Just like when I play Modern Warfare online I am a middle of the pack person. I do enjoy playing though.

Super Mario 3D Land is also fun… but not as much as it could be. I am not an expert platformer. I need all of the lives I can get, but seriously mario there is no reason a mediocre player should have over 100 lives with out using some sort of 100+ lives trick. Which I haven’t.

They have made it easy to get lives which I would fully support if the difficulty of the games required a lot of lives to be used. But this game is sadly not that hard. Plus if you die too many times the game gives you an invincible tanooki suit. You have the choice to not use it but lets be honest, everyone wants to wear a white and gold raccoon suit that makes you impervious to damage. I am sewing myself one as we speak.

Also the addition of the boomarang suit is ok but I haven’t found a place that it is better then a fire flower. The Ice Flower from The New Super Mario Bros. Wii at least gives you platforms to stand on to use to get to other areas. Or in Super Mario Galaxy there was the bee suit… which is a bad exemple… But the mini mushroom or giant mushrooms for the DS version of Mario are awesome.  Boomerang suit is not awesome.

 

 

I love meeting with people who know what they are talking about. The people who are so focused in their field that they can answer any question you have or point you in the proper direction. I will never be one of those people.

The beauty of not being one of those people is being able to use those people to the fullest. I have a general understand of many things and I understand what people much smarter then me are talking about because of that. And since I am interested in almost anything I always learn something. I am lucky that way.

Having not finished my college education I have yet to focus on learning one specific thing. Because that is what college is truly about: Focus. You pick you degree and you learn everything you can in four years of studying whatever it is that you love… or like… or think will get you paid the most. Even if you get a General Libral Arts Degree you are still asked to focus in one area. To concentrate in one area. Why is that?

Do we truly need everyone to be hyper focused in a specific area to have the world succeed? I don’t think so. I think certain areas of study require a specific focus, like medecine. But if you just want to have a bachelors degree so that when you fill out an application for a job you can put down that yes you completed at least four years of college and have a piece of paper saying you did that, should you have to focus?

I am a learner. I like to learn all sorts of interesting crap. That is why I went to commercial diving school (also to escape living at my parents house) and also why I studied art. Because of all things that you can study in college, and I have tried a lot of them, Art is the one the encourages learning and not memorizing. I am sure it is the same in creative writing but other then that most of the classes I experienced during my 10+ years of trying college have been about memorizing facts, regurgitating facts and then doing it again at a harder level the following semester.  Which is stupid.

I understand that in order to excel at science you need to understand some basic fundemental rules/laws/whatever they are called. But do I need to spend an entire semester learning them again when they were covered in my high school A.P. bio class? Honestly, at this point 10+ years from high school… probably. But when I took college algebra when I was 19… nope.

 

I am currently suffering from to many projects and not enough time to finish them. Add to this the normal things that are life and I need to figure out how to get things finished. Part of the problem is that I am not recieving all the support I need from my partners in crime. Some of this is laziness on their end some of it is me not asking for help when I need it. The other part of the problem is that I love all of my projects. ALL OF THEM.

This post is to hopefully put these projects in prespective for me allowing me to choose an order to finish them. So without further ado here are the projects I am working on and their current status.

1. Falling Cats – This is a pretty big one. I started making this one more then a year ago and it is slowly coming into being. I am at the ever so crucial bug smashing stage. The problem that I am running into is that the game isn’t what I want it to be. I don’t want to take any steps backwards and succumb to feature creep, but… there are things that I want the game to have that will make the game awesome. Not sure which way to go with this one. Those of you that don’t know Falling Cats is a game where cats fall from the sky and you control a blob that catches the cats. The original plan was to have a story mode complete with boss fights and an arcade mode where you just try to catch as many cats as possible. I chopped out the story mode to save time. Last night as I was looking at the game I realized that that was a mistake. I am now trying to decide if I release Falling Cats as it is to get it done or take the extra couple weeks to add in the story mode. As it stands this is probably priority number one, I have invested a lot of my time into this project so I feel I should finish it soon. The problem is that I don’t know which direction to go. Do I polish and publish what I have or do I add story mode and work my ass off for a another month before publishing?
2. Learning Python – This is more of a pet project. I am interested in learning to program so that I will no longer have to use GameSalad to make the games that I want. I should be able to get a good handle on this if I focus on it for a couple weeks or a month at the most. The problem is that I find learning programing to be BORING. I guess it isn’t that bad I just have a hard time staying focussed when I am learning. I am going to be Learning Python the Hard Way, thanks to Harper buying me a course at UDEMY, I just need to start it. I think the hardest thing with this project is that the value comes later.
3. Magic – I have been learning/ performing magic for a while now. Sadly I haven’t been practicing as much as I should or learning new tricks. I have a whole slew of new tricks I want to learn but I have been working on other things instead. Magic is just so time consuming to learn, taking so much practice before you get the pay off of blowing someones mind. I have also notices the last couple times I have performed card tricks that my slights are weak due to lack of practice. I need to dedicate about an hour a day to practicing magic in order to get my skills back up to speed and learn some new tricks. 
4. Fast Milo – My dad wrote/illustrated Fast Milo when Harper and I were kids. It is the story of Milo who likes to go fast. I have read it many times and think it is awesome. I am currently working on digitizing/coloring Fast Milo so we can publish it digitally a little slicker then how it is currently. This project was actually my dads idea and I thought it was a good one. I am doing this entire thing on my iPad which has been an interesting experience. Currently I just have one page done and it took me about 2 hours from start to finish. I am not 100% please as I am not sure if I should add shading or if I should leave it flat. I spend so much time looking at comic books and I am amazed at how colorists are able to add so much depth to images. I think I will go back and shade the first page and then let Harper and my dad decide which one they like better.
5. Awesome Guys/ Mompheous Bros. – I am currently in the process of editing and lengthening some stories that I have children’s stories that I have written. Not sure where these are going but I have at least one that is ready to be sent out to agents/publishers for rejection letters publishing. Of course that means that I need to do research on children’s book publishers, unless I want to use Graphicly to do the non-traditional approach. If I go that route  I will need to find illustrator(s) or illustrate myself, which could potentially be a pain in the ass. The nice thing about this project is that once I send stuff off to publishers I will have at least a month to work on other projects while I wait to hear back. However if I go the non-traditional route I will need to do all of the publishers job myself.
6. Joe and Em’s-  Sarah and I started this blog a while ago. Not very well… but we started it. The hope is to make it into a look into our handmade life. The problem with this project has been time. Sarah is the primary person behind this project and she has had a crazy school year. The hope is that this summer we can really get to work on this blog and get into a routine of posting that will allow us to be successful.

I am not going to lie. This process of listing out all of my current projects did nothing to help me prioritize. Damnit. I just need to commit to finishing them all I guess. Probably do some sort of crazy schedule that will allow me to work on each one everyday. Oh and this Fast Milo sprite I made totally has hands… they are just a little too light for the white background.

So apparently I have let my self go… physically. I have hopefully topped out at 170 lbs and I am not necessarily proud of my belly. So I am going to make it disappear.

Here is the plan: Yoga at least 4 times a week. Jog at least 10 minutes 4 times a week(and increase that to 20 minutes next month, etc.) I am also going to do some sort of push-ups or sit-ups every week day.

That was the original way this post started out. I was doing the very American “I have to get in shape for the new year” thing. It didn’t work. I jogged once… it was really hard and I regretted it for days. I also have avoided sit-ups and push-ups like the plague. I have gone to Yoga 4 times a week since January 2nd though.

What is important is not that you are in great shape or look super buff, it is moving. My brother lucks out because he has access to public transportation which allows him to get a good walk in before and after work. I work at home most days (it is the rough life) and when I do go into the Graphicly office I have to drive for an hour and then park and walk about a block to the office. I long for decent public transport that would force me to walk.

Most people that I have met working at Graphicly or at other start-ups tend to be about the same shape. Skinny arms, skinny legs and a belly. This is because most of us spend out time sitting at computers for work and then go home and sit at another computer. This needs to stop. Not the constant computer use but the lack of physical exercise.

One of the developers at Graphicly plays soccer all the time. Every time I talk with him he mentions that he is sore because of soccer. He is certainly more hardcore then I am about exercise but he also lacks a gut so maybe soccer is the way to go.

Over the past 3 months I have lost about 7 lbs, which is pretty good. And that is just doing yoga and avoiding eating all of the crap that is so tasty and yet bad for you. I am looking at you soda!! The great part is that I have gained some muscle, which means I have more energy and my pants fit better. Win, win.

I am no fitness expert and I think I may have an easier time with exercise then others due to my years doing gymnastics and cheerleading but if you feel out of shape, out of energy and just kind of BLAH!! start an exercise program. Nothing to difficult. Just start walking more or find a class the interests you and go for it. Yoga is nice because it is non-competitive (which other fitness classes will claim but in truth you will feel like you are competing with others in class or at least being judged by them) and low impact. Another option for the people who don’t think yoga is right for them is Zumba, because who doesn’t like dancing.

 

I spend a lot of time on the internet. Probably less then some but more then a lot of people. I also tend to judge a business on their online presence. I really like it when a business is online in all the same spaces I am. It isn’t enough to just have a webpage; I want a twitter feed, maybe an instagram account and possibly some sort of an blog.

If you are going to take online orders, make sure your shit works. This is even more true if you are a restaurant. If you are a restaurant your online ordering system should never time out or if it does it should be hours after I have abandoned my cart… not in the middle of ordering. Keep in mind that sometimes a person is ordering for 10-15 people and if you system isn’t intuitive then it can take a while.

Nothing pisses me off more then getting all the way through an order and clicking view cart and seeing it be empty. Also when this happens and I call your store to make my order and tell you about the problem please never say “oh, that happens” because that will piss me off. Nothing on a website that causes your users experience to degrade should ever “just happen”. If it does your website sucks or you better be fixing it. That is where the twitter feed or blog comes in. Tell me what is happening.

Let me know on your front page that if you are making a large order that sometimes the cart system breaks and it might make sense to call your order in. Or at least be sympathetic.

The actual point of this post (if there is one) is that if you are going to be online, be ONLINE. Work the internet to your advantage. You don’t have to be some fancy tech start-up to use social media to your advantage. I can think of many ways in which a church or real estate company could use these free systems to drive their business and connect with their customers on a deeper level.

As a consumer I am more likely to use your services if I know that you are a human company not some faceless corporation. If I can look at your facebook fanpage and see that you participate in the conversation or see pictures of your workshop via twitter/instagram I am more excited to give you money then if you have a webpage with no functionality that hasn’t been updated since 1995.