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[teefal]

JobLeonard, from a tools standpoint, I'm actually on the bleeding edge. Everything's the most current, since I use them for my billable work.

As for whether these tools or my own designs are current compared to other game engines ... they never were, and never will be.  Building my own engine means living with a subset of features that other game developers have grown accustomed to with Unity, Unreal, etc.  This is okay though, since I'm doing my own thing, top to toes.

Prinsessa, my twitter is @teefal and the project is @playTidepool. All the social media links are on the website under the nav bars.

As for whether I'm making myself sick, I've definitely felt the stress of these waning days, to say nothing of the financial uncertainty. Thank you for your concern. My wife told me yesterday she wishes the whole project had never happened, which I understand, but feel . . . bad . . . about.

When I'm in the code though, I feel better. The framework I've built up is impressive ... the best work I've ever done.

[JobLeonard]

Yeah I was talking about platform support, not the actual engine that you're building yourself. But that's good to hear!

I honestly think someone from Gamasutra or RPS should interview you. Beyond the product itself, the spirit of the project itself is interesting enough to be worthy of attention from indy devs at large.

[oahda]

Whoops, history repeating itself. I've already asked before and am already following those, which I clearly remember now. Sorry, I'm a bit of a scatterbrain sometimes. Twitter's algorithms aren't helping tho, because I never see you on the feed (tho I see now it's been a while since you posted too)... Adding you to my custom list of people that I check from time to time instead and hopefully I'll receive more of your updates.

And yeah, I understand the dilemma. /: I'm impressed by people who manage to pull through. I simply don't have the energy (nor the business competence/mind/personality) for that.

[teefal]

After a schedule sharpening session, we now have TEN weeks to the Tidepool beta. Two for Alpha 4, four for Alpha 5, four for Beta 1.

[teefal]

52 days to finish the Tidepool beta. $7800 will get us there, which is $150 a day. People have given $650 so far, which gives us 4 days.

We need to raise $7150 to finish the Tidepool beta in March. Please give what you can: http://playtidepool.com/contribute/

[teefal]

Found out yesterday we need an extra $1000 to finish the Tidepool beta in March, bringing the amount to $8150.  playtidepool.com/contribute

[teefal]

Rarely are bugs so blatant and dramatic.

[JobLeonard]

Please tell me this does not reflect real life right now

I'm in this emotional superposition of (this is hilarious|oh shit oh shit I hope he's ok)

[teefal]

My neck is fine, but my big toe has seen better days. Limping around with an attack of gout, of all things.

[teefal]

Trudging to the end of a long project, with motivation scarce and obstacles blocking every path, I should praise EFFORT, not results.

When the endgame checklist becomes all you see, remember that all progress is positive, even if it's fixing your own stupid mistakes.

[teefal]

Tidepool stats: 2906 hours (24.2 months) spent over 1288 days (46 months) to create 669 files with 105,111 lines of code (1877 pages).

Tidepool remaining to beta: 3 releases including 9 current bugs and 77 planned features, with 316+ scheduled hours or 10.5 normal weeks.

[JobLeonard]

Teefal after this project is finished:

[oahda]

At least there are many who could match you with time spent on their still unfinished projects. c; Including myself, probably.

[teefal]

It's great to have a place like this for support. Nearly no one in my face-to-face life can relate, not even the software developers (they can't imagine that much free work).

[teefal]

Another event, another Tidepool push:  33 days to finish Alpha 4 & 5 before @Devoxx so I can show Java devs my game world & cognitive agent.

Tidepool Plan 814 ... release Alpha 4 on Feb 27th, Alpha 5 and Indiegogo campaign on Mar 20th, Alpha 6 on Apr 20th, and Beta 1 on May 20th.

We'll also conduct an eight week "Alpha Pilot" with 50 schools in 50 states between March 27th and May 19th. Invitations get sent Feb 27th.

[teefal]

I start today trapped in the Bird Chamber of Colossal Cave, trying to fix a bug with the bird. Seems whenever I make a change to the bird, it creates not one but two copies of it in the databases.



The first copy is expected. Tidepool uses automatic version control, with automatic branching. Whenever you change something on the "trunk", it creates a branched version with your username. You can later "push" your changes to the trunk to make them public or "reset" things to discard your changes. This behavior works everywhere except the Bird Chamber. Changing the bird creates two copies in the database.

Once I solve this "blocker" bug, I'll be able to finish the puzzle in this room, then move on to the last two puzzles I plan to implement in Colossal Cave before moving on to the next big feature, the improved Map UI.  All together I'll have coded 18 of the 94 rooms in Adventure, the eight above ground and the ten you can reach before solving the first hard puzzle in the Hall of the Mountain King.

For me to finish Alpha 4 and Alpha 5 before Devoxx, I need to move on from Colossal Cave, where I've been stuck for quite some time.

[JobLeonard]

I hope that @Devoxx works out! But don't forget you're swimming against the stream and that it's "ok" that many won't get it

[oahda]

We'll also conduct an eight week "Alpha Pilot" with 50 schools in 50 states between March 27th and May 19th. Invitations get sent Feb 27th.

That's impressive! We're doing an educational game at work and the company is trying to strike similar deals with schools, but I don't think they've gotten that many on board!

[teefal]

JobLeonard, oddly enough I think it'll be easier to pitch this to a pure-developer conference, because of the tech. Strange, I know. You'd think it'd be easier to pitch an educational game at an education conference (ISTE) or a gaming conference (GDC).

Prinsessa, the 50 schools aren't all signed up yet. We do have good contacts from my years doing edtech with OLPC and Squeakland, but it'll still be a struggle getting the full 50.  It's a lofty goal. I have managed to pull together similar multi-school pilots in similar time frames before, but never this many.

[teefal]

Yesterday while tracking down the bird bug, I used an incredible tool called Dynatrace, which gathers fine-grained metrics from running applications, then lets you analyze your app in myriad ways. Dynatrace is very expensive, designed to run full time on large server apps like American Airlines and Bank of America. I’ve used it to consult for companies like Marriott, Lowes, and Dollar Thrifty.

While technically an “application performance monitoring” tool, I often use it for debugging because it gives unparalleled visibility into the state and history of running software. Below is a “purepath”, a sort of stacktrace on steroids, which details the exact path your code took for a specific action.



Two things to note. First, this is an end-to-end trace, meaning it shows me the detailed path from Tidepool, the client, to Storymill, the server, and back. Second, it’s giving me exact timing information for individual method calls and network hops. I can then aggregate days or weeks of this data to see the sore points in my code.

I’ve wanted a tool this powerful for most of my professional career. The visibility it gives on running code blows logging and breakpoint debugging out of the water.