Plan for Dan MacDonald

SUMMARY

Work continues on various fronts. If you read my last plan you'll know that I've been having problems getting art worked out for Katsu, in lieu of that I've picked up a few side projects. One of those is Little Soldiers, the game I posted about in my last .plan. The other is the Easy PocketPC Installer. The 2D game engine I use ( PTK ) has recently been "mostly" ported to PocketPC. The author and owner of www.phelios.com Patrice K. used it to port his game

Abracadabra to the pocket pc.

EASYPPC INSTALLER

I've known Patrice for a while now and he had an idea for a better PocketPC installer creation program, when he approached me about developing jointly I thought it was a good opportunity to actually finish and release software for a change, so I accepted. After 3 weeks of part time development we had the first version of the Easy PocketPC installer.





The EasyPPC installer is two parts, an application that creates installers, and the installers themselves. It has a few features that set it apart from other installers out there. For one, it has an easy to use drag and drop interface, the interface is fairly straightforward (we have plans to improve it). Creating an installer bundeles up all the files into a .dat file format that then get's embedded as a resource in the installer. The installer application itself is a lot smaller, but it knows how to copy files from the embedded .dat file to the Device. One of the nice features is that it allows users to specify any folder on the device. The PocketPC exposes a number of default folders which are identified by special ID's. The reason for this is "Program Files" might work on an English PocketPC but not on a german one. Our installer is smart enough to go and inspect the file system on the target device and allow the user to install to any location on their device, including sim cards etc.

There are a few other features that set it apart, but those are some of the main ones. If you do PocketPC development, feel free to check it out and let me know what you think, we are continually adding features based on feedback.

It has been doing pretty well for a version 1.0, it sold its first copy after only 7 downloads, and it's sold a few since then. We think sales will only improve as we add requested features.


KATSU:

With regards to katsu, one of my vanishing artist re-appeared and sent me some work samples for what he has in mind. This is great news, and it can only bode well for the project. I also spent some time this weekend polishing up some of our exsisting levels in anticipation of the new tile art.

Here's some work samples...





LITTLE SOLDIERS:





This project has been getting the most work lately, and recently has gotten to a point where I would say its gameplay complete. It had a really nasty memory leak that Patrice and I managed to crush after a day of bug hunting. Next up to add sound and music, I've been in contact with a guy who's currently slaving away on some mod type music for the game and I have some sound affects so I imagine things will go pretty quickly. After that it will be time to put in the shell UI and start working on refining the level design. About that time the Mac port will begin as well. I think it's reasonable to expect that this game will be finished for PC and Mac by the end of the month (depending on how crazy we get with level design).

I have a feeling that the market for PC logic games is pretty much saturated, but I expect the game will do pretty well on Mac and PocketPC. Only time will tell :)