#1GAM the first 3 months
After 3 months I can say One game a month is a great stimulant for building games in the most optimal manner. Also the use of best practises helped me a lot and still is. I am having fun with one game a month and I sold a few copies of Bouncing Alien Pixel. Not bad for a little game which mixes a few classics into one. Also this game was featured on the iTunes store within the Arcade, Action and Game Center sections. For coding this means reuse of code. At the current time I am working on 3 new games which all use the Cocos2d-x engine. Using an not in house made engine saves me a lot of time of course, but the engine did not come with the social media integration I wanted to have. So I wrote a small code base for this purpose. The code is not done yet, but the finished code will ship with the next update of Bouncing Alien Pixel. Also I have to redo a small part of this code so I can use it in on Android also. Another issue which hold back Bouncing Alien Pixel up until now is how collision detection is done. The ball now does not go really fast, well it is fine for beginners. I want to make this game a real challenge for every gamer out there. So I wrote a collision grid which uses the inner workings of a ray caster. This grid really helped with speeding up the gameplay of Bouncing Alien Pixel. The grid will also be used by two upcoming games. Also I could use the grid for all kinds of collision checks within a 2d space. Some of the other code from Bouncing Alien Pixel is also reused by the three games which are in development. Code for settings and saving high scores are all reused without redoing any of the code itself. I did not only wrote games with Cocos2d-x. I wrote two games or tools for helping out my son with his schoolwork and I used Javascript. The first game was to make an easy to use game for learning to read a analog clock. The tool is really easy to use, but the parent must also be actively involved. Since the parent must check the answer and must handle the input. The reason why the parent must be involved is I believe a kid should learn as much from the parents as possible. The parents shows they care about their offspring when the parent is actively involved. The little math tool/game is written with the same mind set as the clock game/tool. Still there can be some improvements to this game. Like an overview of all (in)correct answers after all questions have been answered. It only shows how many correct answers are given. I did use both tools and made games out of them. My son learned his maths and how to read a clock, so for me those Javascript games were perfect. Check my profile of one game a month here: http://www.onegameamonth.com/SmallGaming And remember: "You can do it!!"