Cube Cube Now Available FREE on App Store
I'm happy to announce that Cube Cube is now available on App Store.
Demo Play: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW13zhRaj-s
Release Notes:
Cube Cube – A 3D cube matching game based on the classic card matching game.
Want to test your short term memory and feel confident about your sense of space? Well, good news! The classic card match game is now in 3D! Flip the colored cubes in the 3D space to reveal a matching pair, and challenge yourself to a fastest match!
Features:
- Four types of levels: 3D, Space, Gravity, and Endless.
- 24 hand picked levels + 2 endless levels.
- Race against the clock, and earn a total of 78 stars.
- Normal and Hard modes.
- Earn game center achievements, and challenge your friends.
Now They Call It Cube Cube
I'm sad that there was an issue of the game’s name and it was rejected.
Now Cube Cube it is called.
Pray it will pass the review this time and be available on App Store before the holidays.
Memory Cube
As I said two weeks ago, I'm making a game called Memory Cube.
The game comes from a really simple and naive idea: memory card match game is one of the basic games you need to make if you want to learn game development, and I'd like to make 3D games in the future. So I decided to try out a 3D memory card match game, where you must remember the card identity as well as the card position in a 3D space to make a match.
1st Prototype
It’s actually quite simple to make the first prototype. I only need some colored cubes in the 3D space and let the player to flip them. Then I realized that it did not work. It is more like a mahjong game, where you could match the cubes without rotating the 3D space. Essentially, it’s still 2D.
2nd Iteration
The idea is to find a way so that the player must rotate the 3D space to match the cubes. I added a barrier in the space. To flip the cube, you must rotate it to the front. It works as what I have imagined. And it became the fundamental mechanism of Memory Cube.
Level Design
My initial thought is to just add more cubes to later levels so that it becomes harder. But, it’s really boring. I tweaked a little bit so that now it has four different level types. Also there is a time limit to solve a level.
Look and Feel
This is the most difficult part for us. But I am satisfied with what I have now for my first game.
Testing
I only had three people testing the game. But they made the most significant contribution to it. Through this process, now I truly understand how powerful it is to test as early as possible, and as mush as possible.
The End
The core game mechanism and basic levels are finished, but the game couldn’t evolve anymore by my limited power. So I decided to ramp it up. It will be soon available on iOS, stay tuned.
Introducing DevLog
Update on November 12, 2015: DevLog is considered being replaced by Umbrella.
Before talk about this DevLog, I feel it is necessary to say a little bit about DoleeArts first.
DoleeArts is the name of my side project. It came from a simple idea: I should really start to make something, anything, but seriously, with love and long term commitment. It is actually not one project, but a series of projects.
So what are they? Well, first thing is this website. It is built from scratch using Go and Bootstrap, and is hosted on App Engine. It has a home page, the Linked List(inspired by Daring Fireball), and now the DevLog. You can also subscribe site-wide updates via this feed.
Besides the website, I also decided to make video games. After taking a game design course at my graduate school, I was fascinated by this industry. I can’t wait to step into it.
Currently I’m working on a mobile game called Memory Cube. I don’t have much experience on making games now and this is only my very first official game, so I don’t expect it to be very attractive. My ultimate goal is just to finish and release it, and at the same time to learn game development from this process.
However, the development stopped every now and then. It has been almost a year since I started the game, and I still haven’t finished it yet.
Why? Why on earth can’t I just fucking finish it?
Lately I find out it is actually hard to make progress on anything if I’m just in my house staring at my computer screen and only thinking on my own, especially when the game is simple and I started to suffer from aesthetic fatigue.
After weeks of procrastination and randomly reading other developers’ blogs, I realized that writing is a good potential solution to this issue. One can be benefited from writing in many different ways. But for me, the most important one is it plays the role of commitment to my audiences. Of course, the most important (and likely the only, because of my poor linguistic performance and competence) audience is myself. I believe I will be unconsciously influenced by this public commitment, and actually be pushed forward.
So, here is DevLog. My writings on the progress of my side projects, DoleeArts.
In the next post I will talk about Memory Cube. Stay tuned.
∞ On Apple Employees
Poornima Gupta and Peter Henderson wrote on August 22, 2013:
Some Silicon Valley recruiters and former Apple employees at rival companies say they are seeing more Apple resumes than ever before, especially from hardware engineers, though the depth and breadth of any brain-drain remains difficult to quantify, especially given the recent expansion in staff numbers. “I am being inundated by LinkedIn messages and emails both by people who I never imagined would leave Apple and by people who have been at Apple for a year, and who joined expecting something different than what they encountered,” said one recruiter with ties to Apple.
Like Om Malik said about Yahoo, “forget the products”. It’s the employees who decide the future of a company.
∞ Just Fucking Do It
You drive to the office dreading your day, but you drive home with a dream… “One day I’m going to build a startup. One day I’m going to finish that side-project. One day I’m going to launch that thing.”
But that one day never comes.
Why can’t you just fucking do it?
Yes, why can’t I just fucking do my side projects? > Here’s the secret: they all have partners. This made me think. Why writing about your project in early stage helps? It has the same underling reason as doing it with a partner. ♥
∞ A Tip on OmniFocus
Ben Waldie has a tip on OmniFocus:
What I really want, however, is something that will pull out recently completed tasks and summarize them in Evernote, my note management app of choice. This way, I can maintain a historical log of my progress, and pull out summaries of completed tasks to send to clients. Since this type of integration isn’t built into OmniFocus or Evernote, I wrote an AppleScript to do it.
The only thing I miss from OmniFocus is a long-lasting daily completed task view. Yes, you can create perspectives to view the completed tasks. But they will be easily deleted at some point. With this tip, I am able to leave my footprints somewhere. Long lasting. And inspiring.
∞ Do Things, Write About It
Matt Swanson wrote on August 11, 2013:
All I did was “Do things and write about it”…and you should too.
Yes, I should really start writing too.
July 4th at SF
July 4th at SF
∞ Zero Notifications
Joel Gascoigne wrote on January 07, 2013:
… should try disabling all notifications on my iPhone
Tried this strategy for a month, what did I miss because of no notifications? Nothing at all. And what did I get? One level of freedom and productivity.