Year in Review 2016
Twenty sixteen. What a year, right?
New city, new jobs
In June, my wife was accepted into a 1 year program at UNC. Since we lived 120 miles away, we knew right then that life was going to get hectic quick. I was terrified of going back on the job market. But I did find a new gig and it was a big learning experience. I got exposed to a slew of technologies I had barely touched (Git, Grunt, Jasmine) and learned a ton about ones I thought I knew.
I decided the most cost effective thing for me to do was spend weekdays living with my mother who lives close by. As a millennial, it is of course my God-given right.
Fucking millennials
— Jeremiah (@humbit) October 24, 2016
Fortunately, my wife just this month got a part-time job offer and we found an apartment near the new jobs. We've been wanting to make this move back "to the city" for years. After 5 months of living with my mother (and watching hundreds of hours of Fox News), we made it! ☺️
My diet and exercise took a hit over the last few months, as I lost access to a gym and had little time, but I hope to correct that going forward. At least I did start rock climbing again, something I haven't done since college.
Steam
Holy shit, I released a game on Steam Early Access! Even if releasing on Steam doesn't mean what it did a few years ago, it's still unbelievable to me. One reason this is such a big accomplishment is that I don't have a great track record of finishing big projects. Game jams I can deal with, but I've never stuck with a game for years. It's a challenge sometimes. There's a lot of self doubt, but I'm staying with it. I've already released the first post-release update and am working on a second.
The feedback has been awesome. Golden Krone Hotel is currently sitting at 19 reviews, all positive. If I'm being honest though, I do worry about the depth of the game. It's an intentionally streamlined roguelike experience and I try to be honest about that. I see a few people have put in 20+ hours, but is it engaging for most people? I have no idea! The feedback I hear is certainly positive (getting a write up on Rock Paper Shotgun was more than I could have hoped for).
But it's the people that bounce off of it that I wonder about. Maybe players are wary to engage fully because it's in Early Access? Who knows. I plan to make the game deeper and more engaging in 2017.
Tiny projects
Waifu Showdown A bit of weird one this, but lots of fun to make. My friend Calico had a silly project going on where people voted for their favorite characters through Twitter. I made a bracket website for it and added twitter integration.
Who Dis Pokemans Equally weird I guess. When Pokemon Go came out, I played the crap out of it. I burned out quickly, but for a few weeks it sure was magical to walk into a public park and see dozens of people playing the same game. From that I was inspired to make a twitter bot that combined Pokemon and photos from the British Library collection.
Trash Tree I've admired procjam from afar but never joined until this year. Inspiration struck when I saw this nifty pseudo-3D technique. I'm still in shock at how 3D and (sometimes) realistic the trees turned out.
Time travel
I entered the Seven Day Roguelike Challenge for the 4th time with The Only Shadow That The Desert Knows, a time travel game about hunting down ancient artifacts.
I wrote a blog post about the development and it hit #3 most popular post of all time on /r/roguelikedev.
I turned that post into a talk, which I gave at IRDC this year.
Whether or not the game succeeded as entertainment, based on the feedback I've received, I can say it turned out to be an interesting game. The time travel theme seems to have struck a nerve. This is definitely fertile ground that others should explore...
Miscellaneous
I very rarely write blog posts, but I think I came up with a few good ones this year:
The Simulation Hypothesis Is Nonsense
7 Reasons Save Systems Are Garbage
Finally, I worked on a SECRET-TWITTER-PROJECT which has finished producing its 250,000 tweets. More on that in 2017.
Vote on HNDiscuss on Hacker News, you know, if that's like your thing.
Hitherto
Make America Procedurally Generated Again!The Simulation Hypothesis Is Nonsense
Dr. Wrong and the Art of Digital Misdirection
Permalinks
Short: http://jere.in/19Pretty: http://jere.in/year-in-review-2016
Oh hi there. I'm Jeremiah. I like to make stuff with code.
