Code Justin

I decided to switch rooms and now I’m working on setting up a bed/’office space’.

Trying to give my room a more ‘office’ feel to see if it might help with my productivity =]

I’ll post some pictures when I’m done but the main reason I’m doing it is to set up a space in which I can plan out my projects.  Since I no longer have a job and I’m not in college YET now would be better than ever to start building some commercial applications.

This post is a simple one… its one to remind all the programmers to take a moment out from your programming job or even take some time off from your main hobby project… take time to enjoy programming.

Recently I tried to learn some Android development but it just was not jiving well with me.  So instead I chose to sit down with Python and not try to meet any industry standards or meet any certain level of quality… I just simply programmed a text based game engine and I really enjoyed it.. it helped remind me why I love programming.

Well yesterday I got a call to inform me that I no longer work for DZone.  Though it is depressing I now for what ever reason feel obligated to start programming with money in mind.

I decided that I would pursue mobile development since it is a market that I feel would be a good fit for me in my current situation.

I decided not to focus on any large or even medium sized project.  That hasnt worked out for me too well latley so I decided to set my sights on small mobile apps.  Considering mobile apps are small in nature already making small mobile apps means I will be trying to produce very simple but polished commercial applications. (not sure about the business model just yet)

I will be focusing on learning Android development since the other platforms I would like to develop for require you to be a registered company (like Nokia app store and Blackberry).

If you want to follow my programming journey you can subscribe to my blog.

When I get a game or software idea I often find myself adding more and more features to the idea before I even start to code it.  I often add so many features that I feel pursing my idea might be futile since I have so many planned features.

An obvious solution would be to cut back on the number of features I have for an idea.  For some reason taking features away (even ones that I thought of after my original idea) makes my idea seem less “fun” or even do-able.

I’m realizing this as I try to decide on a game idea for a facebook application.  For my sake I’m trying to rethink my game ideas and start creating a simple game with minimal features so I can finally turn my ideas into something real.

Giving myself a large budget of $25 I plan to create a semi-commercial quality Slot Machine facebook app.  I have a lot of features I would like to add but I want to start with a list of the minimal features needed to get a beta version out.

List of basic features for my slots game

- Very Basic Slot GUI

- 3 Rotating Slots

- Winning Algorithm

- Betting System

- Tokens

- Donation Button

I’m eager to add a lot more features and even raise the level of quality for some of the current features (like the GUI) but I need to focus on getting a working beta out so I can begin testing.  With that in mind I feel my list of minimum game requirements is a solid one that I can reach soon.

When setting goals for any software project I think its important that you can reach your goals within a reasonable amount of time.  Setting very broad and open goals (or in this case planning major and large features) might not help get the project done any sooner than setting goals that are small and can be reached in the short term.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have long term goals… just trying to say you shouldn’t code with only long term goals in mind.  For someone like myself that loves to go wild with features it can sometimes be hard to keep the scope of my goals in mind.

I’ve been in a real programming rut lately but I’m determined to turn that around asap!  One of the things that kept me on track and programming constantly was blogging so I’m going to try and post daily like I used to.

Todays post is simply just letting people know that I will be back to blogging about my programming journey.

As always if you want to follow my journey you can subscribe to my blog!

One thing I have been doing lately is under estimating the size of my projects.  For instance, One of my blog readers/e-pals has been talking to me about creating a flash music store for indie artists that want to sell their music online.  Well not really thinking about it I had assumed it wouldn’t take me that long to create a music store.  Little did I know how badly I underestimated the time it takes to create a good back-end user interface.

I started on the MP3 store months ago but just recently started working on it often and once I got to the admin panel I started to see how much longer it would actually take me to make the store.  Feeling almost defeated and a little bit embarrassed that I had seriously underestimated the work required to create a store I chose to put the project on hold.  One of the pressuring factors is the fact I really feel like I need to get my butt in gear and start in the kids avatar chat if I want to reach semi-commercial quality soon.

I’m not giving up on the store, in fact I hope to return to the project as an even better programmer and create a serious good music store one day.  I’m a bit thankful that I took the time to stumble onto my mistake this early.  By seeing how badly I underestimated the work required to create the store it has showed me that my own goals for the mmo I’m making are still WAY out of my reach.  By realizing this I have come to terms with setting my own goals for my mmo a lot lower.

Right now I’m putting all my energy into creating the best kids avatar chat I possibly can.  I know that I will one day make the avatar chat into a full virtual world but first I need to make the chat!  So starting tonight I’m going back and looking at all my code to refresh my brain and make a few more comments.

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I will be the first to admit that I have put very little effort into my kids virtual world/chat over the past few months due to a few different reasons but more recently it is mainly due to a pure lack of motivation.

I have been having some doubts about whether or not to pursue making a kids game.  I’m a little bit worried by the fact that kids already have very established titles to chose from like club penguin or any one of the other dozens of kid avatar chats.

I was thinking about creating a virtual world but for senior citizens… which seems ok but my art style just does not fit the bill.  I could not imagine an 80 year old man playing an online game with very cartoony graphics.

I had thought about making a kids mmorpg (with combat ect…) but the amount of resources needed just to get the game into public beta is fairly insane for one person.  The combat system and all the art assets alone might take me all summer.

So thinking very realistically and working with what I have (my two hands) I’ve decided that my first idea of making a kids virtual WORLD is still my best option.  I could start out as a kid safe avatar chat then try to build users while adding in new features/mini games.  This would be my ‘fastest’ route for development speed since I can draw the art assets at a decent speed and I already started laying the foundation for an avatar chat and already have a few dozen art assets made up.

I want to start laying some concrete goals for myself so I can stay on track because time is running out really fast.  I want to have this game up and running with paid users before I head off to college in the fall.  So I will need to get a working/playable beta out before summer starts.

Even for a medium sized development team that seems fairly unrealistic but looking at what I want to accomplish I think that the kids avatar chat will be the best way for me to create an online world and secure a good financial future for myself while I’m in college.

As I’ve been doing for weeks I have been thinking about which direction to pursue… I’ve found myself wasting boat loads of time I could be spending on development just doing other non-productive things.

So to be firm with myself I’m publicly discussing my goals so that I feel a little more apt to stick to them.  I’ve been in a bit of a development slump lately but I’m ready to climb right out.  Starting today I’m setting my first real goal which will be to STOP worrying about other ideas for virtual worlds and just focus on my kids chat.  I keep trying to convince myself that another idea might be better or even bring more joy to the development process but I know that the safest/fastest route for me to create a successful virtual world will be to start as small as I can and the kids chat seems to fit the bill.

Wow even as I type this post I’m having second thoughts about what type of virtual world to make.  It is really starting to bug me how unconfident I am about choosing one idea for a virtual world over another.

As of right now I’m going to try and stop thinking about my other mmo ideas and put my confidence into the kids chat.  Once I do actually convince myself that the kids chat is my best option I think that my motivation/dedication will pick back up again.

So the first goal for my kids chat is to be confident in my decision to pursue the kids chat over other ideas in my head.

If you want to follow the development of my kids chat you can subscribe to my blog for updates!

One of my other ‘passions’ besides programming is investing.  Though I don’t have a lot of money to play with I do love learning about investing.  When I first turned 18 I took the money I got and started learning about the Foreign Exchange Market (Forex).  Just like programming you must first learn what half the words mean!  So after learning the key terms of Forex I quickly took off and started learning a lot of technical trading.  I lost what little I invested (I used high leverage plus Forex is very risky in nature).  After that I entered into a ‘play money’ contest which the goal was to see who could make more money trading Forex in one week given 100k play money.  I won the contest and got a free $200 account (which is double what I first invested).  So I did technically make back what I first invested.

I have not traded Forex in MONTHS (over 6 months) but something is telling me to get back into it.  I’m thinking about taking $100 or so and just playing around with a very small micro-lot broker.

I do not know much about other markets but I do know that Forex can be a very fun challenge for technical minded people.  For myself I just love finding patterns and predicting the future based on the technical indicators I have and developing my own trading strategy.  If I didn’t like computer science so much I probably would become a broker.

If you guys are interested I could even post some Forex how-to’s for programmers.

As I hinted to in my last post I’m working on my first commercial product.  One of my ‘life goals’ has been to create an mmo (massively multiplayer online game).  My desire to create a mmorpg is what lead to my journey into programming.  That was around 5 years ago and I’m finally to the point now of feeling confident enough to create a ‘basic’ online game.

Over the past few months I have been learning more and more about client-server logic/programming.  After much personal debate as to what kind of game to make I settled on creating a virtual world for kids.  One of the main things holding me back from trying a different type of game is my art ability.  Knowing that the only thing I can draw remotely well is childish cartoony graphics I decided to play off that art style and venture into making a kids mmo.

I’m not one to just blurt out such a big goal publicly without first having the very basics done.  Starting back in October I’ve been creating my own binary socket server in Python.  I know that there are already various solutions available but I wanted the experience in creating my own socket server.  As of right now the server is fully non-blocking and is working well but I have only done limited testing on it.

I haven’t worked on the client side of my game in over a month because I’ve been debating between making a kids game or another type of game but due to the fact I do not have any money to hire an artist I’ve decided to keep pursuing my idea for a kids mmo.

I don’t want to spill any details about the game yet because nothing is written in stone but the main concept/plan is laid out so that I will first create a basic avatar chat then build an entire world around that chat.  There will be absolutely no violence in the game and the targeted age group will be kids still in elementary school.

Below is a screenshot of my current testing environment, it might give you a better idea of my poor art skills.  Of course it’s safe to assume the game will probably look nothing like this.  Also note that the UI was just set up quickly for testing purposes.  The little ball is a prototype of what the avatars will look like and that lady bug looking thing is the cursor.

I will have much more details about the game later so if you care to follow the development I encourage you to subscribe to my blog!

Well 2010 is just around the corner and in true tradition I have made a few programming related new years resolutions/goals for myself.  My main goal will be to launch my first commercial product (I will have more details about that later) followed by expanding my computer science knowledge and attending college in the fall.

I’m curious to see what other programmer’s goals for 2010 might be so leave a comment below detailing your 2010 programming goals!