So here we go for 2012, I am about to finish a personal game and a contracted game, so that is good. I have another game that is about 45% completed, so I will be working on that next. My goal is to complete 3 personal games this year, not including the one that is almost finished. Don’t know if I’ll be able to make it, but it sure would be good. I would also like to post 2 times a month, to be realistic, more would be better but I am not sure I will have the material to write as much. I will probably also try to look into HaXe, I am very curious about this tech, what it can do and how to use it so we will see.

So happy 2012 for everyone!

Ya, right now, on a phone, with its screen size, it is not the best way to consume Flash rich experiences like Aldo Shoes for Life. The screen is too small, you don’t get as much as what you get on the desktop. But the same goes for HTML rich experiences; would you interact with the Wilderness Downtown on a mobile phone? I don’t think so. Where I think it is more problematic, is on tablets, where the screen has more real estate. Most rich experiences would work pretty well on that. The problem is that the only tablet worth the name is the iPad (well that will change in time) so no one could see rich flash experiences on them and realize that it is working quite well.

So short term, no biggie, doesn’t really change much, nobody was doing Flash sites for mobile anyway. Long term, it’s hard to say. Phones are gonna get bigger screens that I am sure off, be it foldable screens or some other innovation, screens will get bigger. Also, there will be more tablets out there and their uses will be more defined. For that alone, it would be nice to have Flash on mobile. Then, there is the new mobile application paradigm, where instead of building web experiences and apps, you build native apps. I don’t know if this is a trend that will last forever. I mean the desktop is slowly moving toward web and cloud, shouldn’t mobile do the same too? So I think it might be a mistake to stop mobile development.

But I also understand a bit, I mean Adobe was already developing 3 Flash players : PC, MAC, Linux. Now with mobile, it would have to develop one for every mobile operating. So here it is, my views on the topic, one more in the sea of web.

Building games is not building websites

It is quite different to be franc, mostly because the challenges are different and because of that I haven’t found much topics to write for this blog. I think it is my fault a bit, I chose to do a game that is very close to an application and doesn’t rely so much on the graphics. I thought this would be a better idea, because I could save a lot of time by doing so. The good thing also is that it is based on a lot of interfaces (visual, not code) and I website building made me very good at making interfaces. The challenge that I face is more about where to put the logic and how to organise my code.

Finding how to make it work (or make me work)

My trick right now is to go to a coffee place and work from there. That has been working quite well for now, but starting Tuesday I will have an office space and I really look forward to it. Working from home is just not doing it for me, I watch TV or do some other random stuff that I won’t do if I am in a working place. Now all I have to figure out is how to wake up earlier in the morning.

But why o why?

Well, really nothing against B-Reel, these guys are awesome, but it has more to do with the realization that I might not be at the right place. I mean B-Reel is the best production company in the world and they paid me a trip to London and the Alps, so if I’m not happy there, maybe the problem is not them. But I do have a lot of gripes with the Advertising Industry in general, a lot.

First, the more I do it (build marketing experiences) the more it grows futile. Secondly, it’s a pretty savage industry if you consider how it handles it’s people. Yes it pays well, but the hours and the pressure are pretty high, which is very alienating. I don’t think I have any power to change this and I don’t feel the urge to participate in this system. Thirdly, I’m pretty tired of being told what to do, part of that comes from the fact that this industry is stuck in a old model where the creative director is the rockstar and tech people are tools (it is getting better), but also as long as there will be a client there will be someone to tell you what to do.

So what is next?

Nothing really, or everything I guess. Haha, if I wanted to be more vague I wouldn’t know how to write it. I won’t be getting a job, that I know for sure. It’s a funny thing to tell people, they don’t really get it. The thing is, I have a plan, now I just have to do it. I want to make games. It’s been something I have been wanting to do for a long time, I even started multiple ones (mutant farm, doodle destroy, a nameless rpg) but never got to finish any of them because of time and life constraints. Well now I am giving myseld the time to finish them properly. While in New York, I was able to put some money on the side, so it only make sense that I return to Montreal, where life is cheaper, and spend some time doing personal projects. I am at a good place in my life to do so.

The plan in detail

Basically rent a desk somewhere not to expensive and get things done 7 hours a day, go to the gym, take some mix martial art class, pass my driving licence test (cause the joke as gone on long enough, I’m 30 and I don’t know how to drive), write more on the blog and finally maybe do some freelance if I really need to put bread on the table ( I think I should be ok on that side, at least for 6 months). If I can do that and get a game or two out, than I don’t care about the outcome, the worst that could happen is that I find another job, but let’s hope it doesn’t come to this haha!

You see if I look back in time ( with my time machine glasses) at first there was byte code, which was the summum of being cryptic, after that there was assembly code, which I manage to pass the class by acting as if I knew wtf it was meaning. C code was already more readable but still pretty hard to juggle with and I ended up with Java / ActionScript / C# which were the most readable in all the languages I had learned. When I say readable in all this I mean closer to the English language. That for me should be a primary value when creating a new language. I think the more readable a programming language is, the less barrier there is to creating code. You wouldn’t need to translate what you think into something else, you think, talk, write and program in the same language, that would be the best I think.

There is all lot of really easy thing we could do to turn Java into something already more readable without changing the syntax. Most of it would just be replacing shortcuts like for if statements “==” would be “is equal to” so

if (myCat == yourCat)

would become

if (myCat is equal to yourCat)

I mean this is a pretty simple example, but push this further and say we add a lot of these changes where we remove symbols like > < =  / ! || && and put words instead, I think it would make code really easy to read. I think that if it is easier to read, it is easier to grasp and if it is that way you can build more complex programs more easily. When all those simple swaps are done we could work on the syntax to make it more like English and then we would have a new programming language. I would like to reclaim the dot (“.”) to mark the end of a sentence like Latin languages.

So yeah I think we should create a new programming language where you have to write more code to get things done but that has less abstractions. That might sound stupid but I think it doesn’t matter, where the language gets longer to write the code editor should pick up and do code completion to speed things up, like FDT does so well for ActionScript.

Anyway, I will probably never do so because I am not a compiler genius, but I think it would be great to head in that direction and see where it leads. Anyone thinks the same? Anyone knows of a languages that tries to do this as its primary objective?

So yeah, here I am, asking myself how long I will still be a programmer and if that is what I really want to do in life. I think the last couple of post I wrote kinda show that, they are more about concepts and ideas than about code. Another thing that is pretty funny, as much as I hate the Creative Technologist title, I think it applies to me pretty well. I like the ideas, the concepts, not so much implementing them (except if it is my ideas). I guess I could also become an architect, I like shaping a project, just not finishing it. I don’t know…

That being said, even if I am reflecting on this right now, I am stills confident about my future, it has always been good. I am not too stressed, I will end up in a nice place.

The first idea is about the fact that some 3D printer can actually print all the parts that are needed to build themselves. Pretty neat! Now all they need is arms to assemble themselves and they are ready to take on the human race. We should not fear the time that the computers will challenge us, but the silent threat of the printers is way more dangerous. Haha, I find this pretty funny, not that it bears any truth, but it would make for a nice animated short, where the printers tired of being seen as subjects to computers, would rise and build an army of themselves and show the world what they are made of. Anyway, on to more techy subject.

Example of a 3D printer

The interesting thing about 3D printer is that it is becoming cheaper and more accessible to anyone. I remember being young, being shown a prototyping printer, being very impressed and wanting one but there was only a few being made and very expensive. Now, the technology is becoming available, that means that more and more people will start doing crazy stuff with it, things that we never expected, that is what is making me very excited about it.

I came up with an idea of my own about what I would do if I had one of those 3D printer. I would make an installation for like a gallery or something. It would be a booth where people go in and they would have a screen in front of them. Now that screen could give instructions or ask questions but the important part would be a camera and a microphone above it. Based on the person’s movements, clothes’ colors, sounds she makes and the answers she gives, the installation would start shaking and produce (3D print) a unique object for each person. These objects would be shaped like spike balls where the length of the spikes and the amount and the pattern would be determined by the characteristics mentioned earlier. It would be like a physical oscilloscope representing the uniqueness of everyone ( You are a unique snowflake; Shut up Tyler Durden!). I think it would be kind of fun and people could go home with something tangible, a souvenir representing themselves.

What would you do if you had a 3D printer?

Timeline having you in sight

If you think about it, developers are at the end of the production chain. This is a known fact and I still chose this job. This mean that if anyone fucks up before you, it is your time that they are eating up. By fuck up I mean designs not being ready when you’re supposed to start, bad management,  bad estimate of time (ok dev can be blamed for this, but I have never seen a place where they actually sit down with you at the end of a project and tell you how you did with your estimate), too many clients reviews, etc. And these things happens; a lot.

You’ll always have to say NO

Yeah, creatives say yes all the time, but they don’t get to actually do the work (ok, ok they do, but creative director offload the work to designer so). They can go crazy with ideas and that’s pretty fun. On the other hand a developer can go crazy with ideas but there is always a little voice in his head telling him that he his shooting himself in the foot. In the end, because of the project timeline, you end up saying no a lot. Way more than you say yes. And after a while, it gets to you. I want to build the best experiences ever too, but not at my expense (or not so much at my expense). I am willing to stay long nights and weekends, but there is a limit.

So that’s why I was asking myself if developers are masochist. Maybe we start out with a taste for pain and hard work. Maybe it’s in our personality. The other question is how long can you put up with it. I have been to a couple places and I have never seen old web developers. Maybe they couldn’t stand it anymore and switched to software dev… I don’t know.

Will I go on being a web developer? Yeah for a couple years. Am I thinking of what comes after? Hell yes!

Now that this is done, what comes next? A real race where the real cars are controlled by users? An helicopter test flight? The possibilities are endless!

I came to think about this because, some of you might know, six months ago I started working at B-Reel NY. At the time that I was looking for a new job, my main benchmark was exactly this profile page; I wanted to work in one of the best agency (or production company) in the world. I think that at the time, B-Reel was 7th or something, just below 2Advanced Studios. Now you see I have nothing against 2Advanced Studios, I think they were amazing in their time and I remember being baffled by their hi-tech interfaces, but I don’t think they are still leaders in the rich experience website area. I mean they won an FWA in 2009 and the one before that is in 2007.

I know that the FWAs are not the end-all be-all metric to determine if an agency is good or not, but for me, as a developer, it sure was my main metric, and it is pretty accessible.

So, what I am proposing is that someone build a data visualization application that would enable the user to create different graphs based on the metrics that are currently being saved in the FWA databases.
These metrics are:

• Year
• Agency
• Town or country
• Client (not in the database but can be deduced)
• Front-end Technology (not in the database but can be deduced)

There is a lot of information that you can get out of these metrics; it would be interesting to see which agency was the best in 2009 or 2010, it would be interesting to know which country was the best at a certain year, it would be interesting to notice the rise of HTML5 in 2010, it could be really nice to know which client you can push more because they accepted crazy ideas before.

How to do this? Well the simplest way would be to pay an intern to recreate a database for you by going by hand and redoing the data entry of all the FWAs won. You could also do a script that will scrape the data from the current site, I mean there is an html page under the Flash site. Hell, you could ask Rob Ford himself, I am pretty sure he would willing to give more exposure to the FWA and would give you access to the data (well maybe, I mean, I never talked to the guy).

So, am I ever gonna do this? Nah, I have no time. Would I be happy if someone did it? Hell yeah! It would show the world that I currently work for the best  rich web experience production company in the world (haha, yeah I am a bit biased in all this). So here you go, a good idea, go ahead and do it! Please…