We feel this is the best pokemon tracking and finding app out there!

Give it a look!

Buy it on iTunes!

Then we get another phone call. It looks like Contrail’s former company is going bankrupt, so are you still interested in working with your former coworker? Maybe for, say, twice as much money? Well, that puts a different spin on things financially. Now that I don’t have to scramble to figure out how to keep a roof over our heads, I can refocus on the Pokemon app. I design the visual look of all the screens, just need to fill them with the correct data. But Core Data is still being stubborn…

November comes and I finally (with Contrail’s help) figure out what I’m doing wrong with Core Data. A rewrite of my loading code and things are working correctly, although it now takes twice as long to load. So I add in a loading screen. Also add instructions for how to choose the Pokemon you’ve caught as that doesn’t feel intuitive. I start testing the app, both on my iPhone 3G and her iPhone 4S. Black Friday gives me a chance to go out and present the app to some people and get their feedback. Comments like “this looks like a professional app” justify my design decisions. On November 31st, I stay up late, determined to get the app submitted to Apple and not let another month go by. The recruiters continue to email and call Contrail, wanting her services. Things are looking up, right?

December and my app is rejected. The message from Apple is written in some English derivative I call Applese. I think they are saying the name of the app infringes on a trademark? Okay, I disagree, but it’s not like I get a say in this. I change the name, update the logos, and resubmit. Rejected again. This one especially grates, as there are a dozen apps on the store with a similar name, but they managed to appeal to the voodoo gods of Apple’s submission process and I didn’t. I don’t get any feedback from Apple on if a third name (which takes a couple of days to come up with at this point) will pass muster, so we decide to try it anyway. Unfortunately, this is right before Apple closes up the submittal process for the holidays, so I won’t hear anything back this month.

Having the app (mostly) wrapped up, I look to the future. I still have that game in the “mostly coded” stage and would really like to make it into reality, despite the legal challenges. I finally come up with what I believe will let me bypass that hurdle, so my first project for next year is to implement that plan.

All this puzzling out of how to work around issues seems to have infected my Christmas shopping. I decide to present Contrail with a series of puzzles that hold her presents. Her first puzzle is a puzzle box. I find a cheap one on Amazon, but it’s a: incredibly small and b: almost solves itself right out of the box. So I scour the web for a replacement. I find a really nice looking puzzle box that a guy in Romania is selling. Once that arrives, I lay out her puzzle: the puzzle box contains a set of keys and a clue. The keys open a lockbox; the clue gives her the first number of the combination lock holding a bag closed. The lockbox also contains a combination lock clue. But it also has a set of keys, and there isn’t another lockbox…or is there? I hid this one early in the month and she had yet to see it. Fortunately the keys come with a clue as to where it’s hiding (in plain sight). She eventually figures out all the clues and the puzzles and has a nice haul: a set of mana potion earrings, a couple of manga volumes, two Diablo III t shirts, and the Professor Layton movie that I knew she would enjoy. This, along with the dozen other presents I wrapped for her means she is drowning in gifts. I made out pretty well too, with the new Zelda 3DS, some vinyl stickers to make the Wii look like a NES, copies of Sonic Generations and Skyward Sword, and a selection of books to add to my already too large reading pile Her mother also chipped in, giving me a couple of aprons and a saute pan along  with a couple of dragon figurines that are fighting for dominance on top of my monitors.

Looking back, the pessimist says I got nothing done this year, while the optimist says I laid the foundation towards building Silver Moonfire into a reality. This being the Christmas season, I think I’m going to listen to the optimist. Next year looks to be a great year, and I can’t wait to make the transition from “wannabe” developer to making money doing what I love.

Around March, I started working on my first game collection. Stepping back into C++ and SDL was a bit rough. I’m still not sure about the structure of my classes.

In May, I had a mostly complete first game. It was going to require some serious rework on graphics (as it had none, really), some sound, and all that polish that would be required to make it a game and not a tech demo. However, I was learning that this style of game was being pounced on by some lawyers for a certain company. Although they had the flimsiest of cases, they would go after those indies (like me) that couldn’t afford a robust defense. So after talking to my partner, I scrapped the idea.

This was also the time where our budget was getting really tight and we were having a hard time paying the bills. To relieve the burden, we managed to sell the Toyota Prius we had for the outstanding loan amount, and I slashed our expenses. No more WoW subscription, no more TV, only 1 cell phone plan, etc. I was really doubting that Silver Moonfire was a good idea.

Without a game, I needed a plan. I always wanted to target the iPhone/iPad market, so I took advantage of my birthday to get some books. Developing for iOS required learning both a new programming language (Objective C) as well as the iOS library, so this proved to be a challenge. I bought the first major business expense of Silver Moonfire: a Mac Mini to develop on.

I was feeling increasing isolated, having pretty much given up all social contact at the beginning of the year. Contrail’s income was starting to get erratic. They changed paydays from every two weeks to twice a month and then started missing the twice a month mark. I would have bouts of depression where I didn’t get anything done and felt useless.

Around July, I felt I had learned enough about iOS development to start a project: a guide to Pokemon locations for Pokemon Black/White. I rediscovered that there’s a world of difference between following examples in a book and designing your own project. Core Data in particular turned out to be nearly impossible for me to work with, due to a flawed understanding that wouldn’t be corrected for months. Was I really cut out for this?

September and the Pokemon app was starting to take shape. I was leaning heavily on Contrail for her iOS knowledge. Between that and my own laziness/depression, progress was slow. We had reached the point where we could no longer pay the bills every month; something had to be left behind and made up for later. Contrail’s paychecks have reached the point of “twice a month, sometime”.

October. The month everything hit the fan. Contrail lost her job. I didn’t have a working app, and just spent 10 months without anything to show for it, so good luck finding decent work. She was expecting two weeks of severance, though, so maybe we could scramble and get through the month. Had no idea what was going to happen in November, but crunching the numbers on her unemployment said we should be able to survive. Would have to apply for food stamps, but that should be easy enough to get approved for. Unemployment office says they won’t cover her severance period; expected. I get a loan from her mother to make sure we can pay the things we need until the end of the month. Hopefully she could bounce back into another job; being a talented iOS programmer has to be worth something in the current market, right? We had no idea…

Crafting is accomplished by what are called Crew Skills. There are 3 categories: crafting skills, gathering skills, and mission skills. Crafting skills do what you expect: these are the ones that make items. Gathering skills allow you to gather resources out in the world, but also allow you to send your companions off on assignments to gather types of materials. Mission skills arelike gathering skills without the gathering part: you send your companions out on missions where they bring back certain types of materials. These are usually your rare components for the higher quality crafted items.

The first thing you’ll notice about this system is that everything is done through your companions. Your character doesn’t do any of this (with the exception of gathering materials in the wild; you have the ability to do so although it defaults to your companion). And all of this takes time; time which your companion will not be at your side. This has the benefit of letting you craft or sending them on missions while you are questing, at least if you can handle the area by yourself. On the other hand, this adds a constant distraction as you have to micromanage your companion every few minutes. You can queue up to 5 items to be crafted, but can’t queue any of the missions. I would much rather allow some long term (up to 20-30 min) queueing so you can focus on what you’re doing instead of clicking windows every few minutes.

The categories themselves are a little odd: you have 6 crafting skills (Synthweaving for Jedi armor, Artifice for weapon mods, Armsman for weapons, Armortech for non-force armor, Biochem for stims and medpacks, and Cybertech as a sorta-engineering skill), but only 4 gathering and mission skills. On top of that, only 3 of the 4 gathering skills directly tie to a crafting skill. Slicing is seperate from the rest; it gets you recipes for the crafting skills and augments, items that go into a bonus slot on critical crafting successes. Also, Bioanalysis only aids Biochem, and Archaeology gets you force-related items, so Scavenging ends up feeding a lot of crafting skills. The mission skills are fairly straghtfoward; you can usually choose from 2 types of rare materials or some companion gifts/random treasure. Diplomacy is the exception as it lets your gain light side or dark side points in addition to materials.

Another component of the crafting system is the ability to reverse engineer your crafted goods. Generally, you are given a green quality recipe from the trainer. You can reverse engineer the items you make with that recipe to unlock a higher quality version (blue, then purple). There are two different types of reverse engineering: consumables just increase in quality with the purple teir being an item that has unlimited uses, where the equipment gains stats as your go up in quality. This, quite frankly, sucks for those making equipment. When you RE a green quality item, you have a chance of unlocking 3 different blue quality versions. Worse, when you use those rare materials that only come from missions to make the blue quality items and RE those, you are confronted with FIVE different purple versions for each blue. So each green recipe can eventually unlock FIFTEEN blue and purple quality versions; that’s a crazy amount of materials if you’re a completionist. In some ways it’s worse if you only want a certain set of stats as you’re at the whims of the RNG for not only the chance to learn one of these variations, but which variation you get. It’s entirely possible to unlock the four purple items you didn’t want!

You can also get a critical success, which opens an augment slot on the equipment for an extra enhancement. This combined with the reverse engineering system means bad things for the crafting economy. In Final Fantasy 11, you could get a crit success for +1 on a crafting item; these ended up being the only way to profit from your tradeskill. A similiar thing will happen in SWTOR where only the purple tier of items will sell, and only those with the augment slot will fetch a profit. I believe this will hit Biochem and the consumables market first; since the purple tier also has the benefit of unlimited uses for consumables.

All in all, the crafting system adds a couple of layers to the standard “grind till you reach the skill cap” model. While they seem like good choices for short term enjoyment/fun factor, I believe they will have detrimental effects on the long term and on the ability to generate a profit.

The staggered early access was a great idea and should be stolen by anyone doing a major MMO launch. They kept too much info close to their chest though. It took a fan made forum thread to get concrete info on who  was getting invite to each wave. This could have easily been revealed by the CMs without impacting their desire for flexability.

I’ve played most of the classes through level 10. So far, it feels like the Empire has a better storyline, although that may be a consequence of evil being fun. The Smuggler and Jedi Consular seem to suffer the most in this regard. The Smuggler storyline feels too light-hearted; there’s never a feeling that you’re there for any reason other than because you can and to get your ship back (which feels inevitable).

The Jedi Consular, especially compared to the Jedi Knight, feels inconsequential. The Consular is tasked with stopping a villager who gains access to some dark jedi knowledge. The Knight has to stop a powerful former padawan who is bent on revenge. Losing on the Consular side means you miss out on a chance to redeem the villager and  the Jedi lose their forge for making lightsabers. Losing on the Knight side means that the planet is overwhelmed by an armed and trained force of native creatures that overwhelm everyone.

The Empire, on the other hand:

• Sith Warrior: You set out to prove that you are the most powerful acolyte around, even though you were privileged with early admittance and favor. Your rival has worked hard to rise through the ranks, but you crush him anyway.
• Sith Inquisitor: The opposite theme from the Warrior; you’re a slave that  has a chance to prove themselves (or die) as a Sith. You use your cunning to outwit both your instructor and your rival; a pureblood that has spent all his life training to be a member.
• Bounty Hunter: You are brought aboard to gain fortune and fame from a contest known as the Great Hunt. You have to convince the local crime lord (A Hutt) to sponsor you. You eventually discover a rival for the Hunt is stacking the deck in his favor. You have to overcome both his plans and the highly corrupt denizens of Hutta to succeed.
• Imperial Agent: You are assigned to convince the Hutt to join forces with the Empire. You are given the identity of a ruthless pirate  to infiltrate the Hutt’s palace and get in his good graces. You follow a long line of intrigue and some setbacks in order to accomplish your task.

The Empire just seems to have more fun

The conversation system is great. As Gabe mentions, this really helps you to get a feel for your character instead of just being an avatar of yourself. I’ve always wanted to develop an MMO that would enforce role-playing; this seems like a great method toward that end.