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[JobLeonard]

I sent you a PM, did you notice it? The TIGsource messages are quite subtle: top left of this page, right underneath "Hello teefal"

[teefal]

Tidepool podcast #786: Haiti Hurricane.

 "I spend my first dev day worrying about Haiti and parsing Adventure data."

[teefal]

JobLeonard, yes they *are* subtle   Responded via PM.

[teefal]

I haven't been very chatty these past two months, which is just as well since my forward progress has been slim. I'm still struggling to finish Colossal Cave.  The data file is imported, but ironing out the gameplay is proving to be more difficult than hoped.

In the next three weeks, I should be able to finish the next big release (Alpha 4), which includes Colossal Cave, a much improved interactive map, and mirrored forum functionality ingame and on the website. Most importantly, Tidepool will then be feature complete, except for the cognitive agent (Alpha 5) and realistic terrain (Beta).  These latter two are essentially optional ... you can make stories and code agents without them ... but they will be a big part of what people like about Tidepool when they're done.

As it stands, I don't have enough money to finish Alpha 5.  Including today, I have 40 days left to work on Tidepool before switching to another big billable gig on January 2nd unless I raise $2400 by then, which would give me January to finish both Alpha 5 and the Beta release candidate.

Okay, on to the day's work.  I'm hoping to finish Tidepool 0.3.3 (Colossal Cave) by this weekend.

[JobLeonard]

Good luck!

[teefal]

What it's like everyday after two years on a solo project: "I want to quit. I need to quit.  But all the work!  And I'm close!  Keep going!"

[JobLeonard]

Don't stress yourself to death man

[quantumpotato]

What it's like everyday after two years on a solo project: "I want to quit. I need to quit.  But all the work!  And I'm close!  Keep going!"

You've done so much..! Keep it going!

[teefal]

Thanks quantum!

[teefal]

Happy Solstice everyone!  Today is three years since starting Tidepool, since writing the first of 1671 current pages of code. So far I've spent 89 solid weeks of work, nearly two years of three, representing $534,000 of billable income.

Today I'd hoped to launch the beta, but we're still two months away. Between scrambling for work and homeschooling Isabel, I never got a groove going until a few weeks ago. Coding requires a focused mind and unbroken stretches of time, especially with a codebase this large.

If able to keep my current pace, I could realistically finish by March, though only with $6000 to get us there. Otherwise, it's back to billable, which would delay the beta by another year.

Two months to go after two years of work. Conrad had it right: "Why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees?" To finally get some real momentum going, then have to stop with the end in sight is frustrating.

Especially when I need just $120 a day to keep going.  Please give what you can.

[JobLeonard]

Send me the required information for an international transfer, T! You keep forgetting

[teefal]

Wiring info sent.  Thanks

[teefal]

I have 12 days till I need to halt Tidepool development to focus on billable income. That's 72 dev hours and 24 sales hours before January 9th.

My goal is to launch Alpha 4 and send an email blast to schools in 25 states. My project schedule tells me I have *exactly* enough time.

Issues will go long. Bugs will be found. Laziness will happen. No matter!  

This is my last chance to make something happen before getting distracted with something else.

[teefal]

Been making some progress on cave walls in Adventure. There's 94 "rooms" in Colossal Cave, which all have different exits (north, east, up, etc). Since the original game is text only, I need to create the dimensions of these rooms myself. I started with a fixed square room in all 94 rooms, but after walking around it because clear we needed differently shaped rooms to correspond to descriptions such as "east/west canyon."

Until now, players could only make a room by dropping four points while walking around, then using the /path command.  To help with Adventure, I decided to move the issue KM-289 (floor/ceiling/room commands) from Milestone 5 to Milestone 4.  Three hours later, I can now type "/room 1000" to make a square room and "/room 1000 3000" to make a rectangle.

There's a curious bug though. Sometimes the created room has an irregular shape, as though some of the drawing steps were skipped. My code literally moves the player while drawing the room (though the player doesn't see this). At first, I thought it was because the player was hitting objects in the world, but it's happening in clear areas.  A mystery.

[JobLeonard]

Do you have any weird concurrency/physics interactions? Like moving too fast for the physics engine to keep up with?

[teefal]

JobLeonard, no actual movement is happening onscreen . . . I go invisible while drawing the room. It's likely some strange artifact of this "go invisible" thing though, since I don't really do this anywhere else in the framework. I likely forgot something that needs to be "real", perhaps.

What I oughtta do is refactor the movement/coordinate logic so it's completely separate from the UI stuff. It's mostly there already.

I've got bigger things to do though, at the moment. And change the core movement/coordinate stuff is risky just before a release.

[JobLeonard]

Sounds like you might end up breaking more than you fix, yeah. Well, one to put on the list of open issues then.

[teefal]

Each of Tidepool's big milestone releases were scoped to be roughly four months of work. Alpha 1 took 3 months, 29 days, with a week off.

Alpha 2 had a "billable break" in the middle, taking 7 months to do 4.5 half months of work. Alpha 3 was better, taking 4.5 months to do 4.

Alpha 4 has been greatly delayed. In the last 11 months, I've put in  a measly 3.5 months of Tidepool work, with still a month to go.

So how did I lose 7.5 months?  Three months Kickstarter/marketing and 3.5 months billable break. And now another break looming.

[JobLeonard]

Life is what happens when you're making other plans.

What I always wonder with long projects like this is: aren't you worried your "tech" will be too outdated by the time it is finished? By which I mean the surrounding technology stack to make everything run on the various platforms.

As a result of being a single-person project I mean

[oahda]

Hey, haven't really been active in this part of the forums for a long time, but I thought I'd peek in. c:

It's cool to see you still going, but of course I too am a bit worried that you're working yourself sick. Might be able to donate something, but I think it's more important that it gets out there to more people, since that may prompt even more donations. I don't see a twitter link in your signature. Do you have one?