Happy New Years!

End-of-Year Report

First and foremost, a very happy new years to everyone and their families. Another year flew by, which means another whole twelve months of opportunity and potential are just waiting to be had. 🙂

At the end of every year I like to go over my own accomplishments during the year, my goals for the year ahead, and take the time to offer congratulations to some of the developers that I know who have been making some killer progress during the year (or are just generally awesome).

Accomplishments and Fulfilled Resolutions of 2007

I didn’t do too bad on fulfilling the resolutions I made last year. Although I didn’t accomplish all of them, I think I made up for it with some other accomplishments along a slightly different vein.

• Learned more 3D graphics programming. I made this resolution last year, and I think I’ve managed to fulfill it. With completed projects like the Voxel Renderer and the Raytracer, I’ve made considerable strides towards gaining competency in 3D graphics and math.
• Completed Membrane Massacre. I spent the first quarter of 2007 developing and finishing Membrane Massacre, of which I am still ridiculously proud of. I learned heaps about applying polish to a game, and about managing larger quantities of code.
• Finished my first co-op term. Commuting to Toronto every day was a pain, but I somehow managed to pull through and learned a heck of a lot in the process.
• “Almost” finished my first article. Ah-heh. I feel a little guilty adding this, since I technically haven’t completed my Metaballs article just yet. However, it is literally at the brink of being finished, so writing this here should spur me to finish it up and get it online. 🙂
• Finally got into serious development with Project Skirmish. A project that you’re all probably familiar with by now, Project Skirmish is really and truly on the road to completion. This year saw five months of development on Skirmish, and things are only looking up.

Developer “Awards” for 2007

These ‘awards’ don’t really mean anything, but I really like to point out a handful of fellow developers every year and congratulate them on their excellent efforts. Being a hobbyist game developer isn’t usually a job full of thanks, so why not proffer a pat on the back for some great work, and for being a medium for motivation for myself as well. 🙂

• Jonathan Chung. Once again the first developer on my list, Jon has worked tirelessly for the last few years on Stencyl, a suite of easy-to-use game creation software. His unwavering dedication to the project still leaves me staggering, and I wish him the success that is surely headed his way.
• Mike Stedman. Mike has dedicated his whole year (and then some!) to Novarunner, an Elite-like space exploration game project. It’s come a long way since its conception, and Mike’s dedication to this game after such a long period of time has been a huge inspiration.
• SteelGolem. SG has put a good portion of the year into his Action RPG project, which he’s made some very solid progress on over the last several months. He’s considering restarting a former project, Space Fortress, but I’m sure he’ll end up with something great irregardless of the route he takes.
• Jussi Lepistö. A hobbyist developer thoroughly dedicated to the marriage of Python and game development, Jussi has been working non-stop on his 3D engine and his current game project: Red Nebula. He’s been making solid progress over the last few months, and it will be exciting to see what developments the new years will bring.
• DarkCampainger. DarkCampainger (also known as “The Visible Man”) has been working hard over the course of 2007 on more than one project, such as Cosmic Peril and his own online action game, Final Horizon. For what it’s worth, I’d like to also mention that DC has been a supporter of Skirmish since the early days, and his thoughtful ideas and efforts into Skirmish have been greatly appreciated.
• David McGraw. A dedicated student and developer. David is just completing Snowball Fight, an interesting online game project. I’m eager to see what the next project is that he will tackle in the new year.

Resolutions for 2008

My aims, goals and ambitions for the 365 days to come:

• Continue development of Project Skirmish. I’m committed to seeing Skirmish through to the end, so a goal of unwavering development of Skirmish throughout 2008 is certainly a fair goal. To be a little less insubstantial, let’s say a goal of being in open to the public by the end of the year, at least. 🙂
• Complete a 3D game using OpenGL. With plenty of experience in the small 3D demos I’ve made in 2007, I think it’s high-time I write and complete a fully 3D game. I’m putting no minimum on how ambitious it will be. Even a Wolfenstein 3D-èsque game would be a sufficient accomplishment.
• Get a personal gamedev website online. I’ve been wanting to get my own personal website about game development up for ages upon ages. This year is the year that I get on this, and learn some more HTML and CSS in the process.
• Resume creative writing. I used to be hugely into writing stories and such in my spare time, but programming and real-life have come to consume that hobby years age. I’ve been bugging myself to get back into this, and I think there’s no better opportunity to do so than now. We’ll say a fairly light goal of at least 10,000 words and a minimum of one completed story. 🙂
• Write another gamedev article. With my metaballs article just about done, I’d really like to push myself to finish another article this year as well, if not more. Fingers crossed!
• Continue my language studies. I’ve been learning German for the last two terms at university, which I plan to continue. I’ve also been very interested in learning Japanese, which I will also be spending time learning independently.

My goals never feel too excessively ambitious, which I suppose is a good thing. I don’t want to weigh myself down with more goals than are humanly possible. So, a light load that gets mostly completed within the year’s time is far better than a mammoth list that receives little more than a dent in it. I can hardly wait to see what items I’ll be checking off while I’m writing my resolutions for 2009. 😛

Have a safe and ambitious New Years, everyone. 🙂