Well.. the past month or so has been interesting, to say the least.

I-ve had more good days than bad days recently, which has meant I-ve been able to get a couple of prototypes done ‘ Grim-s Christmas List for LD25, and a reboot of Germies! for January-s One Game A Month, with February-s entry planned out and shall be starting on that soon.
I-ve been keeping my hours to 15 per week ‘ 5 hours Monday to Wednesday; and the first “full” day of work I did floored me for a couple of days! So I-m obviously not quite ready to go back into actual work as yet, but I-m getting there. And we-ll see what ATOS thinks shortly…

In the meantime, I shall be doing some One Game A Month prototypes under the Arcade Badgers banner, and reworking GLESGAE.

GLESGAE-s goals are going to be reset. The next push shall change the current LGPL license to the MPL.
It-s also going to focus pretty heavily upon JavaScript and HTML5 support for Canvas and WebGL.
This may sound like reinventing the wheel, or even superfluous since modern browsers have decent support now ‘ but what about weirder platforms? Not all Mobile platforms are exactly fast enough to render the whole DOM + Canvas and get near a playable frame rate.. and the vast majority of games don-t really need much of the DOM to begin with anyway. And what about homebrew platforms like the GCW Zero, or the Pandora? Even the RasPi may have a bit of fun with a full browser and getting playable frame rates on HTML5 games.
And yes, there are a few implementations out there ‘ AppMobi has one, there-s Ejecta, Titanium, CocoonJS, and a slew of others… but some of them are closed source, tied to platform specifics, or pull in everything and the kitchen sink when for games we really just need Canvas, WebGL, and perhaps some networking support and other minor things.. a full DOM isn-t really necessary for us.

Some of the work has already been started ‘ it can currently compile for Android, but doesn-t actually *do* anything ‘ so the seeds have already been planted. However, some of the major restructures will be that the focus will be on GLES 2 compliance, and a total overhaul of the infamous resource system ‘ to the point that it effectively will no longer exist. Should be fun!
I-m also changing the current JavaScript implementation from JavaScriptCore from WebKit, to SpiderMonkey from Mozilla… which is also MPL licensed and is thus a bit nicer to deal with should I ever get around to doing commercial software.

Anyway, enough ramblings.. there-s guinea pigs to clean and feed tonight!

2012 was quite a turbulent year.

A couple of bouts in Hospital, getting married, suffering a breakdown and having to leave my job, going on to benefits, and trying to turn things around by making another push on Arcade Badgers, by taking part in LD25.

So, a very up and down year - but hopefully the following year should be better, especially as we’re starting on such a low point anyway!

First things first, is that I need to get better, and then figure out a way from the financial pit we’re in.
Ideally, this will be via starting up Arcade Badgers properly.. but if that falls through, I’m sure I’ll manage to get a job somewhere.
As for anything else in 2013, we’ll just have to see how things work out!

Though it would be nice to finally finish some of these projects I have a tendency to start but never

So I, along with my wife, will be entering this weekend’s Ludum Dare Jam.

This is scary.
I haven’t done any programming since I had to leave Atomicom due to ill health - which had been up and down all year with the breaking point being in August.
If things go particularly pear shaped, then it’ll likely crush my confidence and I’ll have to have a sit down and think whether I’ll be able to work as a programmer again.

But, this is also exciting.
We’ll be working together on something we both love.
And, if it does goes well, it’ll also set the grounding for myself getting better, as it’ll boost my confidence.

Bit of a double edged sword really…; as it can go either way, but without risk there is no reward.
I am at least being somewhat sensible about this, in using Impact as an engine, and JavaScript as a language. While it’s not my usual go to, what with being out of the world of programming for a while, it’s perhaps the safest option for now! OpenGL, SDL, C++ et al aren’t the friendliest of things to deal with after a long break from using them :)

Additionally, we’ll be working together under the banner of Arcade Badgers.
This has been a little sideline thing I’ve been planning for a while, and if this weekend does go well, it may well give me the kicking I need to actually go forward with it - and seeing as I’ll be stuck on benefits for the foreseeable future, I’ve not got anything to lose in trying - especially as there are Test Trading and Permitted Work clauses I can poke at.

Now to do some tests… what’s a variable, again?