Wow, it’s been 4 months since my last blog post and that was for a photoshoot so I thought I’d do a bit of a catchup so you can all see what I’ve been up to lately.

Work

With the imminent arrival of our baby boy (REAL IMMINENT NOW, 4 days!), and Dee stopping work, we needed to make sure we had enough cash to pay the bills. So I’ve been out job hunting for a position back in the IT industry. I gave my CV out to a few recruiters but only 1 got me interviews – Adam Roi from Robert Half International. He was put on to me via Chuck, a friend of mine. The first job I went for was at Navman. Made it through the first interview, and the second technical interview and then they were looking to make me an offer and that’s where things went pear shaped. The recruiter had the wrong idea about the salary I was after so Navman’s offer was going to be quite a bit lower than what I was looking for. However we were starting negotiations and then wham, Navman head office did a freeze on the role while they decided if they wanted to turn it into a different, more managerial role.

So that one sat on the sideline and in the meantime another job at a company called Qbik appeared. When I had first talked to the recruiter he had mentioned that there might be a job at Qbik at some point in the future and described the workplace and the owner of the company and it sounded like a place I’d like to work in. Big loft style work place, small team, dynamic and the workplace was attached to a recording studio that the owner of Qbik also owns – neat. Oh, and they have a proper coffee machine! So I ask the recruiter that if he could get me a chat with them I’d like to meet up cause it sounds like the sort of place I’d like to work.

Regarding the actual company, if you’re a computer nerd you may know them. They make Wingate, software that initially started in the 1990’s as a proxy internet connection so that multiple computers could connect to the internet at once through dialup. From what I know, the creator of Wingate was flatting with some people and they wanted to share their internet so he wrote a program to do it….and the rest is history. I remember using Wingate in a flat we had and it was awesome. So I went for the first interview, which was a mix of questions, general chat and a walkthrough of the product – it lasted about 3 1/2 hours! – the longest interview I’d ever been on. From there it seemed they liked me so brought me back for the tech interview. I must have done OK because shortly after an offer was made and I’m now working there – and it’s loads of fun – best job I have had in donkey’s years.

I must say their tech interview was pretty indepth and I was more than once stumped and felt a little embarrassed actually because they were questions I should have known, but being solely a C# boy for the last 1 1/2 years before my 11 month sabbatical, the odd bit of C++ had leaked from my brain.

The Boy

So yes, I have a job, Dee’s stopped hers and her Doctorate is on hold (For up to a year she can pause it) and everything is falling into place. I will stop here and continue the update in his very own page which resides here.

Photography

My photography has slowed down a little in the last few weeks because of another project which I’ll talk about below, but recently I had two items accepted into a local exhibition and it’s now showing here in Auckland. Both items that were chosen (Of the 3 I submitted) were baby photos, one of Liliana and one of Tyler. Here they are.

I submitted my photos for the print exhibition (There was a digital projection section too) and the images themselves are 14×9.3″ and surrounded by a white matte and black frame making them come out about 24×16 IIRC. Print submissions get to keep their framed prints at the end of the exhibition which is nice and I’m looking forward to hanging my first printed photographs.

iPhone Development

Well I finally decided to stop talking about writing a game again and finally start doing it. Choosing a platform wasn’t that hard either. Developing for the a Wii, DS, XBox or PS3 costs 10’s of thousands, assuming the companies will even bother to grace you with a response. The iPhone on the other hand costs US$99 for a license to publish your titles and OSX comes with everything you need to develop for it. It’s an indy developer’s dream.

But even though everything was there to start, I still needed an idea. Now normally at this point I’d think about it for months and get nowhere, but I decided it’s better to just get in there and start doing something, so I didn’t spend time thinking about it too much or trying to come up with the next ground breaking, revolutionary idea. I went back through the archives of titles over the years to see if anything had a cool mechanic that could be worked with. I also wanted to be sure the game was small and wouldn’t take long to develop. I didn’t want to spend a year developing a title only to have it sell a few copies so I’m trying to hit a sweet spot between a fun game with lastability (and that will dictate what you can ultimately charge for it) and development time. Numerous websites of other indy developers supported this angle. You need to find an idea that can easily be picked up and played for 10 minutes while on the bus or waiting for a coffee. The majority of people don’t care about epic adventures or 32 player shooters. They want to play Peggle or Planet Puzzle League or Sudoku.

So I had my idea, and got started. I’ve currently spent about a total of 80 hours on it (I didn’t track it since day one) and it’s about 80% complete. Which, if this ends up being like most game development means there’s still 80% to go .

Now I can’t release any screenshots yet as the artist has just came onboard and they haven’t really  started but as soon as we’re ready I’ll put some up on a dedicated website for the game and the company I will be launching alongside it.

So, that’s a quick update for now. I’ll try and make the next one a little sooner!

Related posts:

1. Blast from my gaming past I originally got into computer programming because of video games....
2. The Gallery Is Open For Business In the first post in this journal I mentioned that...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.