Three Projects... Four Projects... Five Projects!?!

Yes, well (conservatively) counting what I'm up to at RIM. The project I'm wrapping up is a particularly fun and rewarding one, creating a tool for providing detailed code coverage tracking for the various testing efforts within the OS Group. Sadly, the details aren't all that exciting. Mostly it's just processing gobs of similar data into an easily queried form. The majority of the work is in the logistics of collecting the data in a way that doesn't interfere with testing and manages to collect as much information is possible given the limitations of the testing environment. My other project(s) relate to some internal OS Group initiatives. I could tell you about them, but then I'd have to kill you ;)

So that's two...ish. Where's the other three? Well...

1. Space Combat Sim
   Yup, that thing is still going. Adding bots, improving the graphics, cleaning the code up and generally learning as much about 3D networked games as possible.
2. A shmup game developed from scratch for XNA on X-Box 360 and PC.
   Something simple for building a strong C# codebase that I can port to other projects. Goals here are making a programmable effects system and some decent GUI widgets.
3. Another shmup, using FlatRedBall
   Why? Because screw you! That's why... Actually I figured I'd just start messing around with plugging tools together just since that's normally not the way I make games.

Actually, to go on a boring long monologue...

I have finished only a few game projects, mainly for school. That tends to be because I approach the subject by first building tools and such, then building the game using them. I end up having so much fun making the tools that the project devolves into adding new features and refining code that I lose focus on making the game. Then I get bored and start a new project.

Now, I'm a tools developer professionally I can finally spend all hours of the working day making all sorts of exciting tools for a moderately hardcore development environment. This means that I'm not getting quite the same buzz from making yet more tools at home. So... time to make some fugging games!

Later d00dz! I'll try to keep the interval to next post to less than a month this time.