Monthly Mewsfeed – Apr 2024

Hello all! Spring is here, and with it the next Mewsfeed.

Mood Meter

😾️ Felix: Stop. Wiping. My. Nose. … Also, GTFO with those yucky allergy pills!!!
😻️ Sneaky: I was not done getting my chin scratched, thank you? More cuddles please!
😑️ Maryla: Need some FUN things to do…

✨️ Count Dartula: Got spring cleaned! Feeling shiny.

2️⃣️ New Project Ideas:

• Ball Destruction Idle Game
• Random challenge/event generator app:
  • input from dice, dart boards, coin flips, …
  • define a list of “outcomes”/bets/…
  • probably not going to happen, there must be tons of apps like that out there already

Wait, only two new project ideas? That is good, right?? Nah. The ball destruction game might be happening right after Count Dartula! I found some really cool inspiration and can’t wait to get to it… until the next idea hits, that is. But I am holding off for now, to finish Count Dartula.

Top 5 To Dos

Last Month

I’ll be honest, April was a bit of a struggle and I did not manage to get things released. A boring task at work drained the motivation to focus on even more dry tasks for Count Dartula (looking at you, ad consent… sorry.). However, except for nothing being released to the Play Store yet: things got finished! So all the points below should be public soon. Maybe wait a few days before reading about those shiny new features… 😅️

✅️ Ads consent implementation

This one can enjoy some righteous rage about lazy devs. After a month of procrastinating, I can confirm: it wasn’t even that difficult 😆️ The consent forms should also now be a standard feature for future apps, without the need to touch the code again.

Pushing this back also meant that nothing was published, because I really wanted the forms to be in the next version, but also really really didn’t want to work on it. I’m counting this as a lesson about following the priorities you set for yourself, but won’t pretend that I didn’t see the delay coming.

Once this is on the Play Store and you can test it, please let me know if you are facing any issues or weirdnesses that I am not aware of! It may not be the most interesting feature, but it is important.

✅️ Zoom into dart board on tap/hold

Mouse coordinates can be evil when zooming while simulating clicks at the right coordinates, but it seems to work quite well now. If you tap and hold the dart board, it will now zoom in and let you drag your finger to the number you wanted to hit. I hope that saves people a few presses of the “Undo” button!

The board will fade in and out when zooming, which is a bit of a shame. I wanted to animate the position as well, to have a smooth movement, but that didn’t work while zooming in at the same time. Let me know if you hate it, and why, and what could work better!

✅️ Code cleanup

Unfortunately for the release plan, I like cleaning up code way too much and jumped right on it, instead of focusing on getting stuff published.

The board and game logic have been restructured to have loads of stuff properly reusable now. It’s not perfect, but good enough to start implementing some more game modes soon!

✅️ Saving/loading games

The app will now store and re-load the game state after it exits. This works in the 501 mode and will also work in “Around The World”. Note that it will reset if the number of players changes though. This is intentional – a player can’t just jump in mid-game.

✅️ Game mode: Around The World

It is playable! Compared to “501”, this was really easy and quick to implement. Probably because of all the code cleanups 🤓️ Saving/loading will also be supported immediately. There are still some improvements that I would like to add to polish it up a bit. See next month’s plan 🙂

Despite its simplicity, I am not sure I like the display of the game’s state. Feedback and ideas are welcome!

Other Honourable Mentions

“501” now has a button to display some options and an explanation of the rules. You can now choose to start with 301 or 701, or your own custom score!

The board has been re-designed for the zooming feature, but I will probably alter it again for a better player stats display in “Around The World”.

Next Month

For May, I don’t expect to have too much time to work on Count Dartula because I will have to focus on some personal stuff, so the plan is going to reflect that with smaller tasks. If anything more gets done, I will brag about it next time!

➡️ Fix ad layout on phone

On longer phones, the ad banner covers the game’s title bar and the layout is stretched more than I planned for. That looks a bit silly, and I want to fix it before publishing the update.

➡️ Around the World: rules and options

To add some variation, I think it would be cool to have the option to only count singles/doubles/triples. That will add some challenge for the people who, unlike me, can hit things!

➡️ Around The World: better board highlighting

Finding the right number on a dart board is hard if you don’t know the board like the back of your hand yet, so I wanted to highlight the area on the board that the current player has to hit. This might even be useful for other game modes as well!

➡️ Player stats

For both game modes, some player stats could be displayed, e.g. on the win screen or the board itself. I am looking at dart count and average score per round for “501”, and a count of attempts per number for “Around The World”. Let me know what else interests you! I am open to ideas.

➡️ Update store entry

From an old header image to outdated screenshots with the wrong colours, the store entry could do with some updates. Since I want to start thinking about getting some more people to test the app, it is time to make it look a bit better and have more accurate information on the website as well.

Overall, last month’s reduction in scope has worked nicely and I am excited to see how May goes. Until then, enjoy spring! Or autumn, depending on your location.