Done and done.

The game passed Sony approval, despite having 1 major crash bug, though since it only seems to happen at the 40th level before restarting at the 1st, they've let it slide.

strange...but still...yippee..

I can reveal the name of the project now that its done. Cosmic Clean-up. Its an old school arcadey game, hard to describe, but a simple game mechanic taken to an extreme...sometimes too much I think but hey ho.

http://www.ripstone.com/cosmic-clean-up.php

Ripstone are the UK publisher for it, and it goes on sale any time now on the Sony App store...so if you have a psm certified device, please give it a go..the crash won't worry you. I'm going to fix it and supply a new version in case they get a chance to do an update/patch, but apprently thats another submission process which no one wants to do.

There is going to be an IOS version of it in a few months, I was originally slated to do it, but I really didn't enjoy the Agile Development style of project managment by the Dutch developers and opted out as soon as I was able, I'll help out whoever is doing it but I'm not in a rush to put myself through that again. I won't bitch about it here..but its no secret I had many issues with the way the project was managed.

Its not uncommon though, I spent a lot of time learning project management in an effort to improve the production process, I was pretty good at it, none of my projects were ever late and no one ever crunched. But I didn't like the lack of acknowledgement that being good at it returned.  Its an old PM complaint, no one ever notices the PM when the jobs are going well, so it must be some kind of magic that makes it go so well, but if it goes bad...well the PM's the 1st on the line to get fired.

But equally, trying to explain to other project managers using different methods that their methods are not well suited to small projects is tilting at windmills. Agile makes no real allowance for coder fatigue, slippage, lack of others to pick up slack or re-iterrate after 1 too many iterrations. 

It frankly seems more like a constant state of panic trying to continually add new stuff and rework  old working stuff based on client feedback over and over again with no real regard to risk or planning..
Fine if you have a team of people able to pick up and redo things, but utterly useless when you have 1 coder who occasionally needs some time to figure out wtf is the problem with the code that isn't doing what its supposed to do.

I'll need to add a 3rd Brians Law of self fuckery...

Brians 1st Law of Self Fuckery: If your code is not doing what you expect it to do, you fucked up.
Brian's 2nd Law of Self Fuckery: same as the 1st.
and now.
Brian's 3rd Law of Self Fuckery: If your SDK is buggy and the client keeps changing the code requirements , 1st and 2nd laws don't apply, just try not to kill anyone.

In the end there was a lot of very unpleasent crunch, which I detest. I saw it through and now will move on, a little wiser, and a lot less interested in Agile development. So much so that if anyone ever offers me a job where they use AD, and its just me..I will walk away.

I am going to have a crack at doing a couple of small PSM projects though, I bought a couple of tablets to help me do the project, which I probably won't use for anything else, so might as well get a game or 2 out and see if I can recoup the costs.
PSM market, is currently very undersupported, and though the Vita isn't selling all that well there's still a sizable market of people out there looking for games....might as well...once I've have a chance to recover.


On a related games note.. the Wii U is out...I quite like the idea of this, I've always been a big fan of interactive controllers, and this is of course the ultimate.
Unusually for Nintendo the launch seems to be quite low key, barely any coverage on mainstream media...I suspect a lack of titles is to blame...I decided to buy one though and went shopping. Sure enough there was some available at my local game stores and I picked one off the shelf, then went looking for games.

hmmm I think I found 4....not great...but wait...€60 ...are you fucking kidding me...€60???

I put the unit back on the shelves..

Sorry..but I do know that games are expensive to produce, I do know that there are overheads, etc..
But at what point are we going to get the idea that people have a limit on how much they want to spend of a few days (at most) entertainment on a GAMES console.
I might consider 40...I could even be tempted to spend 50 on a must have title...but 60 ...sorry its too much.

I guess I no longer am that interested in console games.






Ahthankyew