Code Justin

Archive for the ‘My Programming’ Category

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.

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!

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!

Since DZone has connections with O’Reilly, a popular technical book publisher, I requested a few small reference books for review.  Well I just got them in today and so far I’m impressed.  I happen to get a freelance job over the week end and I ended up using the CSS reference book a few times.  I got a reference book for HTML, CSS, and C.  I will be reviewing them as I go read over them.  I will also be reviewing some of the books I got the other week soon.

As for my posting I haven’t had much to talk about.  My programming life has been pretty dull and I’ve mainly been learning more about web technologies.

Another bit I would like to mention is my Java auto backup program.  A few weeks ago I found myself needing some simple form of local version control.  Well since I wanted to learn more about Swing I decided to try out the Netbeans IDE and go to town.  The very same day I had a simple backup program which I have been using and modifying over the past few weeks to meet my needs.  I might polish it up and release it for you guys or add a few more features and release it as shareware (or freeware with pro version).

Hopefully I will have more to post about in the coming days so if you want to read my future posts I recommend you subscribe to my blog!

It has been a few posts since I talked about my programming status so today I will go over my current thoughts on where I’m at with programming and my plans for the future.

I haven’t been doing much in the way of projects besides a few simple flash games and I’m currently working on a simple automatic backup program written in Java.  Most of my time programming has been spent learning the basics of socket servers/network programming.

As for college I will be holding off till the spring (at least) because I’m waiting on a decision for a grant which would pay for most of my tuition.  Besides my daily work on DZone I have nothing but free time.  I have been going over a lot of different ideas in my head over the past few weeks for a serious project.  Since I have so much free time I would like to go at a serious project, serious project meaning that it would be able to support me financially through college.

I don’t want to write down my thoughts on each idea because it would be a very large wall of text but I will briefly go over a few of the options I thought would make the most business sense overall.
(No real order)

* Children’s multiplayer virtual world/game
* Hosted Flash chat software targeted at businesses
* Board game maker – print out board games that you make with a simple editor
* Premium video programming tutorials
* Lots of simple shareware applications

Most of my ideas don’t last long because I discard them fairly quickly when I find something I don’t like.  The thing about that list is that I don’t have any real passion for any idea on it.  The few ideas I have had passion for require too many resources (art, code, time, money, ect) so I’m finding it hard to balance business with passion.

I’m still thinking every day about this and so far I have failed to come up with an idea that makes me excited.  I’m open to any advice/opinions which you can leave in the comment section below and if you would like to see what idea I settle with you can subscribe to my blog for updates.

This is my entry for the Ludum #15 48-Hour game contest.  The controls are simple just use the arrow keys to move around.  The whole goal is to collect the bud that fell into the cavern then catch the devil.  Beware of the pitfalls, if you land in one you will need to look around for an onion which will reset you.  If you want to see my future games I encourage you to subscribe to my blog for updates!

I will also be adding a time lapse video of the development for the game soon.

Though not planned I decided to join the Ludum Dare #15 Contest and to abide by the rules I’m freely handing out my starting source code.  It is a very basic (and maybe even buggy)  Actionscript 3 ‘platform’ type engine.  I don’t want to use any outside libraries so I’m going to use my own little platform engine I made the other day which isn’t too hot but it works.  The engine provides basic Collision Detection, Camera, Movement, Key Detection and Gravity.

I welcome anyone that wants to use to go ahead and do so.  The only request I make is that you mention CodeJustin.com in your game and you do not remove the top comment of the source code.  As long as you do those two things you can freely use it, enjoy!

Download Here

(Also if you are a programmer I recommend you subscribe to my blog to check out some of my future posts!)