Hello all, and hello winter!
Mood Meter
😺️ Felix: I’m a good boy, as long as the treats keep coming.
😺️ Sneaky: My cone of shame is gone!
🧑⚕️️ Maryla: I want my formal qualifications as a cat nurse.
👾️ Over-Engineering: Having a great start with lots and lots of documentation!
😪️ Lonely Socks: Wake me when the overengineering stuff is done…
0️⃣️ New Project Ideas
Absolutely none this time. November was enough of a distraction in itself!
Top 5 To Dos
Last Month
✅️ General-purpose MatchGraph
✅️ Code cleanup with new features
✅️ Update Lonely Socks to MatchGraph
✅️ ➡️ New Playstore assets
➡️ Release?!
This Month
➡️ Finishing touches for Lonely Socks
➡️ Release!!!
➡️ Give my design wizard more access
➡️ Start next game (again)
➡️ Christmas 🙂
Last Month
Well, this went about as bad as expected. Implementing the MatchGraph was as complex as I thought, and with all the trips to the vet and some ill humans on top, there wasn’t enough time or brain to get Lonely Socks finished.
✅️ General-purpose MatchGraph
It took a lot of time and some 2nd and 3rd tries, but overall, the results are promising! I’m looking forward to implementing other match games now. It will be interesting to see what I missed, and iterate on it!
✅️ Code cleanup with new features
I may have gone overboard in some files, but now most things should have a tooltip in the code editor 🤓️ I also hope that a more “standardised” file structure will help me find things faster now.
✅️ Update Lonely Socks to MatchGraph
This needed a few attempts, but with the new system, my animation issue is gone! 🥳️ I’m also quite happy with the reaction speed of the match graph with the new system. A small refactor made it possible to start a new match while one of the longer animations is still playing, which makes the game feel way less sluggish.
✅️➡️ New Playstore assets
This is partly done, but some screenshots for the Playstore are still missing. The main challenge was the banner image, and with a bit of help from someone with better design ideas than me, I was so happy with the result that I changed the loading splash screen that I never quite liked in a similar way. It’s so cute now 🥰️
➡️ Release?!
Did not happen. Sorry about that. Nothing to see here, move along…
Next Month
December can only be more productive than this. I have half the month off for Christmas, but since we can’t food coma for 2 weeks straight, I expect more time and brainpower to get Lonely Sock’s last details ironed out.
➡️ Finishing touches for Lonely Socks
With this month’s changes, some updates need to be made to animation times, the credits screen doesn’t mention the design wizard yet, and there is one more visual glitch I noticed that I want to try and fix. Famous last words: This should be quick!
➡️ Release!!!
If I don’t get the Socks into a state where it can at least be sent for review, I’ll be so annoyed with myself. Of course, all the website updates and social media stuff also still needs to happen.
➡️ Give my design wizard more access
Some people enjoy creating logos, banners etc. more than I do, and usually, they are also better at it. Fortunately, I’m married to such a person, and now we need to figure out a way to share asset files in a way that works for everyone. Maybe we’ll have proper artist meetings in the future 👨🎨🧑💻
➡️ Start next game (again)
Remember that time I got overconfident, thought the Lonely Socks release would be done within a weekend, and started setting up the project for my next game, Number Collapse? 😅️ Well, this time, I won’t touch it until there is no Sock left to be improved. I want to start with the UI and its own logic based on MatchGraph and will see how far I get. This is a “catch all” item, a proper list of tasks will follow next month when it is more predictable what I can get done!
➡️ Christmas 🙂
The big feast is coming! If the Meowerlords allow, we will be visiting family, eat too much food, and visit some Christmas markets. If you celebrate as well, have a lot of fun and hug some family members and pets for us. See you all at the end of December!