List of Personal Projects as of August, 2008
Tags: My Work | Written on 13/8/08
A list of what personal projects I have going on.
- Rent Update - Rental property listing web application - I have high hopes for this project.
Status: Well-Underway - backend data entry developed, design complete, UI development started.
- jQuery Datepicker v4 - Rewriting jQuery datepicker on top of the jQuery UI core.
Status: Started - initial code structure is complete.
- CakePHP jQuery Integration - Integrating jQuery and jQuery UI into the core of CakePHP.
Status: Concept - digging into current code. Thinking ways to integrate helpers to follow jQuery mindset.
- Carcassonne Online - Board game converted to JavaScript on top of jQuery UI and Comet.
Status: Underway - much of the game interaction has been developed, some difficult parts left.
- Family Reminder - Web application to help those of us with bad memories to list family events and birthdays, members of a family can subscribe to reminders and get invitations, address where to send cards, etc.
Status: Started - database structure and concept complete.
- Open Ad Sense - Open source ad system which gives more ad revenue to publishers instead of Google/Yahoo taking most of it.
Status: Concept - industry professionals are excited about the concept after I explain it.
These are all unpaid (at the moment) and for my own personal career development.
Comments
I wish you the best times to work on this and self-motivated!
Herus: yes, CakePHP + jQuery will be great and I can't wait to see it in action.
As far as Rent Update's planning, I've been working on it for over a year now - so there has been more planning and work put into it than any other project that I've done.
Mike Branski: I'm excited about Open Ad Sense and have been planning it for a long time. Though, I need to release Rent Update before I tackle this project.
Ben Fraley: the time? I started doing these things during evenings and started getting burnt out... so I decided to quit my full-time job to focus more time on developing my ideas.
Wow, sounds good. I can't wait for the CakePHP / jQuery integration stuff.
Like you, I also have a few personal projects that are on the go, but they have been that way for a while now, I.e. I have been doing lots of planning and not much programming.
I guess thats just the way I am. But I am getting fed of myself!
My wise old mum has a saying: "Good enough, for now". I think it means just do whatever you can, then as soon as you've got something useful, get it out there, get people using it, get their feedback. Then take their ideas and feedback and implement the most important enhancements.
The idea has been reinforced by the research I've being doing into Agile development methodologies recently, which focus on working software over comprehensive documentation (=planning). After all, you can plan for ages, and still get wrong. Better to just do it, in little iterations, then review it, and change it if necessary.
What do you think?
[BTW, this is a blatant attempt to get you to do the CakePHP / jQuery stuff asap ;-) ]
As far as planning goes, if you are good at planning and have built many web applications before and can plan it all out, Great! But I have only found that detailed level of thinking and planning in those who's professions is just that - planning (major corporations who have $$ to spend on planners). Planning and developing are two separate professions in my opinion.
Software developers are poor at planning (so I've seen), so for most of us the advice is if you can think of it, then try to make it. I don't try to plan much anymore, instead try to break the next steps into bite-size pieces and do what I can with it.
Ultimately, there is no secret formula because this industry is new - if someone claims they have the answers (for anyone else but themselves) than I am very leery of what they are saying. It comes down to finding out what motivates you and work with those motivations, just like any other job.
I feel there is a LOT of great room for expansion with JavaScript games.
I do worry that all your work into Carcassonne online will be for naught (aside from personal gain in bettering your skills) since it's all copyrighted by another company, thus you'd get sued probably if you ever released it.
Still, I'm 100% for more JavaScript game development :)
As far as being sued, I don't think I would get sued for releasing a game that I don't get any money for. This would be a bonus for them, because I would be spreading their game - helping their sales in a market that they are not interested in being in.
At the end of the day, Carcassonne is being built so I can play it online with my friends. Even if I can't show it publicly - it will always be ok to play with friends and other developers.
Where did you get the art for the tiles? Did you scan them in? Find them online? Get an artist to do renderings for you?
Which comet solution did you end up going with?
I'd love to hear about how you set up your architecture (which web server, comet server, database, authentication system, etc.)
As far as the images and assets - I set all the tiles on white paper and took a picture. Then I brought the picture into photoshop and touched it up. I then rotated each of the pieces and exported the sets of four to make CSS background images for each tile.
Paul: cool, I'll keep you in mind if I decide to reach out for help on the project.