Well a lot happened in 2018. But a lot of it felt like I was spinning my tires.
TLDR Highlights:
►Survival Chess released
►Hyper Lava Death Squad was developed and scrapped
►Lightbird is well under way, with release in Q1 2019
►Not a lot changed with BRACE, but a lot will in the future
►I will "try" to keep blog up to date with 1-2 posts per month
2018 started off strong with the release of Survival Chess, my first "real" game with Silvervale Games. Quickly following the high of launching a game, development shifted to Hyper Lava Death Squad, a hectic shooter with a ruthless AI. HLDS is actually a really fun game. The problem it faced was the fact that nobody seemed to care. People would play it once, really enjoy the gameplay, then immediately forget about it. It seems to be too generic of a game, even though it's gameplay is pretty unique. This was disheartening, and so I put off game development for a while I contemplated things.
In October, I decided to start development of Lightbird on a whim. It basically grew from a side-scroller control concept I created for Android in an hour. I started to get a lot of positive feedback from Lightbird's design, so I kept running with it. Development is getting really close to completion, and the game should be released in the first quarter of 2019.
Unfortunately BRACE hit roadblock after roadblock all year long. It has been an endless cycle of design, prototype, production prototype, error... design, prototype... and there is at least a month lead time in between prototype and production prototype. It's basically been a two month iteration cycle. With every iteration thus far a failure either due to a design flaw, function flaw, manufacturing error, don't have the correct tooling, can't create desired surface finish... ugh. The list goes on.
Fortunately, my tooling capacity has greatly increased this year, with the addition of a Nomad 880 CNC mill. This in itself absorbed months of time learning CAM, figuring out tooling and fixturing, feeds and speeds... but it's been a blast!
I've also decided to adjust the scope of BRACE, so in 2019 there will be a transition to BRACE Design, which hopefully will:
►Allow me more slack in my creativity with a wider focus, which should help me add more to it easier and make me mentally feel more accomplished, which will boost morale
►Provide a more versatile platform to reach where I think I want to go.
Unfortunately again; this year I realized I have too many hobbies and projects running at once. So in 2019 I will try to cut extraneous efforts and outsource where applicable, and I will need to reevaluate what to do with my time, and consolidate where I can. That is part of the reason that I started somanyhobbies.net, to help keep track of everything going on and to help set deadlines, among other things. To help keep me on track too, I will endeavor to post project updates 1 to 2 times a month. Hopefully this will keep some momentum going, and I will be able to finish more projects. This should also help me keep the scope of the projects small and manageable as well.
It's easy to speculate what the future holds, but there's a lot going on right now that might change things. I guess the best I can do right now is stick to the heading and see where I end up. If success lies in the journey, then I'm well on my way.
