A few weeks ago I put three or four nights worth into making a Snake game (in Clarion no less).

Along with the snake game, I stumbled over some larger concepts. Profiles, Games, Stats .. I’m gradually building a very simple statistics application that holds games within it.

Here’s the plan:

• The primary focus in on the Profile.
• You must select a Profile before you play a game.
• The stats are linked to the Profile.
• The stats can be sent up to the servers for global rankings (again, very simple).
• The game(s) respond to various intelligence on the stats.
• Haven’t played the game, get Message 1
• Have played the game five times, get Message 2
• Have played the game a hundred times, get Message 3
• There are a number of simple games. Clones of existing ones to begin with. The Snake Clone is mostly done. Tetris. Jezzball.
• The Snake Clone
• Has completely modifiable levels. These are incredibly simple though.
• Food needed to finish Level.
• Number of Walls in the Level.
• Levels are built within the database (Official) OR from XML files (Non-Official).

Of course, these are really simple elements. Trivial.

The point is to get complex pieces of functionality done within a simple system. In a simple and clean manner. Without hundreds of variables.

At least, that’s the plan at the moment. Might be different tomorrow.

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Every spare moment of late on my laptop, when I’m at home, kids in bed and wife-time spent .. I’ve put into development.

It’s not that I don’t like writing, i _love_ to write. To express in words, or through voice and video.

But right now, my brain is being taken up with a few projects, namely finishing my first paid Web System, and the Twitter CRM.

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I think I really get Google App Engine. Not so much in a technical fashion (although it’s pretty simple on the surface), but in a _global_ sense.

Earlier this evening I watched the first video of their revealing of Google App Engine. As I watched, a couple of thoughts started popping into my head.

They coalesced into the video above.

So watch what I would have said if I were Google.

I’m still having trouble with the whole video process. Tonight the sound just wouldn’t sync. I had to try a number of configs before getting it right. I even uploaded to Viddler a whole file before I watched it and it wasn’t right.

Here’s to getting quicker at doing these things.

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