Jedi Workshop

The good news… I’ve been making slow-but-steady progress in laying the groundwork for my project.

The bad news… most of my “free time” has come during the work day when I’m (legitimately!) free to make notes and rummage around the internet a little looking for bits and bobs, but not so comfortable posting reports like this (which, somewhat hypocritically, I’m actually doing right now… but only because I’m being overly-generic).

Back to the good news… As long as I can keep up at least a one-post-per-month pace I will feel as though I haven’t completely fallen off, like so many of my blogs tend to. I feel that with the TV and NHL seasons now over (congrats to the Bruins!) I should start seeing more evening “free time” available for both blogging and actually working on my project.

And the best news yet… I’ve gotten my Apple iOS Developer account established and running, so I’m prepared to start building App Store presence for my eventual project(s). I’ve also made a number of decisions about my project – primarily those with specific App Store impacts.

1. I would like to do in-app purchases, but I’ve decided that would be more prudent for a follow-up project.
2. Because it keeps my legal paperwork to a minimum while getting started, my first deployment is going to be a free application (which would, of course, also rule out in-app purchases). I would like to position this first project as a “lite” version of my app, then I can expand it to a paid version in a later pass (and at that point can revisit in-app purchases, as well).
3. I definitely want to have GameCenter integration. I won’t have a multiplayer component (perhaps a third pass?), but I definitely want achievements and I will have the option for leaderboards available (though I will only use those if I come up with a quantifiable “scoring system” for my game project).

So what is this project? Tune in to the next posting to find out the high-level details. That might even happen before the end of next month

I’m finally comfortable with my development software selection (at least this initial version), so it’s now time to record those selections here.  Since it’s possible, if not very likely, that my choices will change along the way I’m going to set up a Page on the site to house my Development Tool selections in a sort-of-wiki style.  That will leave me free to add, remove and modify as needed without having to refer back to this Post. Continue Reading »

I hadn’t originally planned on spending a month getting all my new hardware set up and configured when I’d expected to be making software decisions within just a few days.  But with day-job inconveniences, a week’s vacation, and distracting shiny new toys these are the sorts of things that happen.

As it stands now, I have a 17″ MacBook Pro set up with OSX 10.6 on the main partition and Windows 7 (32-bit) on a BootCamp partition.  I also have Windows XP (32-bit) and Windows 7 (64-bit) established as Virtual Machines within OSX.  So I’m pretty much prepared for any computing emergency.  I also have a 2nd generation iPod Touch, iPhone 3GS and iPad 2 all (nearly) ready to go as my test subjects.  I have my XBox standing by, should my project expand its scope that far… which it may very well do.

Due to Stanley Cup Playoff season my evenings are a little busier than normal, so I’m scaling back my expectations a little bit for the next few weeks.  Goal number one over the rest of this week will be to return to and complete my software selection.  With that task completed it’ll be time to define and declare my project intentions.

It turns out I was mistaken about my  next order of business.  Although I had plans for my project to be developed for both iPhone/iPod and iPad, I wasn’t expecting my pre-ordered iPad to actually come in for several more weeks (or possibly months).  But on a trip to Best Buy at lunch on Tuesday (for other reasons) I decided to swing by the Nerd Herd desk and check to see if my spot in line had advanced at all. Of course, it hadn’t.  They hadn’t gotten a single unit of the model I was on the list for in the 2.5 weeks since I’d signed up.  But while explaining all of this to me, the Nerd began to lament the long line I was in and he pointed out how troubling it was that they had been getting surplus units of my model, but in white instead of black.  They had a whole bunch languishing in their security cage because nobody was buying them.  *sigh*

Long story made… uh… still kinda long:  I ended up “canceling” my pre-order and casually purchasing a white iPad 2.  And so, my last couple of days have been spent loading, configuring, prepping and (most importantly) playing with my new toy.  Luckily, this has even included getting a few of my intended tools loaded up for previewing.

But more on those tomorrow… but no promises this time, either.