Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Non-game apps, smaller ideas, android dev and rapid development


Hello once again everybody.

Today I want to talk a little bit about what I have been planning, what I have been working on and what types of projects I have coming up in the future.

More Android Dev:
I have been focusing on the android platform for the past couple game releases and plan to continue developing more and more apps and games for this platform. As I mentioned in a older blog post, the android platform and the mobile market have been a huge area of interest for me and I really enjoy creating applications that users can run off their favorite devices. Whether its their phones or tablets. It just feels nice to create something that runs on a portable device and can be taken anywhere with that user.

Another reason why I have recently been focusing on the android platform is because of the ease of access. Its different than web, pc, mac and linux platforms. What I mean is, once I create an app and publish it to the Google Play store or other app store, its really easy for tons of users to access it, download it and try it right away on their device. It feels more available to users. Having something published through the app store for mobile devices just seems more convenient than it would be if it was on a desktop type platform. There is a lot of other reasons why I am focusing on android now but I think I am starting to ramble now and I don't want to make this a long blog post. Bottom line is, I really love developing for the mobile platform now and see myself releasing many apps/games just for android in the future.

Non-Game Apps:
Speaking of apps and the mobile platform, recently I have been having a lot of ideas for a bunch of small apps I want to create. These new ideas are actually not necessarily game ideas but instead just various small interactive non game ideas. I have been creating games and only games for nearly four years now and I truly love doing it but I kind of want to start branching off from games and create non-game apps now. Just various ideas that I have that I think are really cool or would make really cool apps. I want to put the skills that I have acquired throughout these years creating games to use and try my hand in a different area of development.

What kind of non-game apps?
So I have a ton of ideas for a variety of non-game apps that I want to develop. There is really no specific way of explaining what type of app these ideas will be because these ideas vary from one another and each one could be described in its own way. But I guess that I could say that some of these non-game apps will be more like "toy apps", "novelty apps", "simulation apps", "random apps", "3d interactive apps", "interactive art", etc. They are just going to be these small, fun little ideas that I will pull out of my head and create in app form and then share with everyone.

What tools for development will you use?
Off course, I am going to continue using the unity game engine and blender3d. The same tools I have been using all these years. I think that the unity engine is a perfect tool for creating pretty much anything. Its not limited to games creation and already actually a lot of people have been using unity to also create non-game apps. Unity will always be my tool of choice when it comes to game development, app development, interactive development, etc.

On Rapid Development:
I have a lot of ideas and I want to pump out as much as I can in the fastest time. Through the experience and skills I have gained throughout these years creating games, 3d modeling, animating and publishing I have kind of adjusted, created my own workflow and became a fast efficient developer. Once you truly understand how to use the software and tools and spend years practicing everyday you naturally adjust, you learn how to do things faster and more professionally. I have also learned to down size projects. Keep them simple. They don't have to be some big complicated project that should take months to complete. They can be small and enjoyable. I never liked spending too much time working on one single project. I have done it before many times in the past with previous game projects. For example, "Hide-n-Seek Winter" one of my older games, was the biggest project I ever created so far. It took me four months of development to complete the entire game. And of course I am really proud of completing the game and finishing it and publishing it, part of me was really happy that it was finally over with. Four months of development on a single project is really long and a lot of work for one person. So now, I plan on spending as little time as possible creating my new games and apps. A week (7 days) will probably be the most. I plan on rapidly developing the app within a week time frame and publishing it the same week then moving onto the next idea. There might come a time where I release a new small app every week now and that is something I actually really look forward to doing.

Will you still create games?
No need to ask such a question. I will always create games. I love creating games and am very passionate about it. Just because I want to work on non game stuff now doesn't mean I won't make games anymore. It just means that I will be creating even more content plus games. I have a lot of non-game app ideas but also I have just as much or maybe even more small game ideas that I also want to create. Sometimes, I might even have moments where I am working on both a non-game app and a game app together at the same time!

So that is all for now. I am very very excited. I love developing and creating my ideas. Bring them to life and sharing them with the world. I look forward to showing what I have coming up and can't wait to get these ideas out there.

Thanks very much for reading. Stay tuned! More updates coming soon.