Sunday, August 29, 2010
Reece turned six this year and for his big birthday bash he wanted to have a super cool, super fun super hero party. So Wifey and I sat down and tried to plan a birthday party for a bunch of super hero six year olds. We had it ALL mapped out and our battle plan ready and then two days before the big event I had a thought.
A crazy geek dad thought.
I should make a game. A SUPER HERO game. A game that all the kids at the party could play. And not only could they play it, but I should make it so that they could draw their own super heroes and then battle in the game as their own super hero! I was pretty jazzed about the idea. And got SUPER EXCITED (which I thought was fitting being a super hero party and all that)
But then reality set in. I had two days. And as many of you may know I’m also attempting to write a book on game development for Windows Phone 7. So I did what anyone would do. Squeezed more hours out of my day and stocked up on 5 hour energy drinks.
I kept the concept SUPER simple. And I really cut back on prettiness and features. But in the end, I totally did it. My son’s helped out on Saturday morning playtesting and finding any major show stopping bugs. And by party time that afternoon they had a workable game called Super Hero Battle. And man o’ days was it a hit! The kids loved drawing their super heroes and they were so stinking excited to see it in the game. Wifey has been informed by the other moms that their kids won’t stop talking about it and want to buy the game. So much fun to do.
Here’s the source if anyone wants to see what rapidly thrown together game code looks like. I borrowed from other projects when I knew it was fairly modular code that would require little work to fit in and coded things myself when I couldn’t think of any easy code to grab.
In the end there still were some pretty large bugs. One you couldn’t de-select a character, so if you accidently chose the wrong one you had to battle with it first before getting another chance to pick a new one and then two, my code to detect who the winner in is apparently basically just random or something (I actually haven’t even looked at it yet!). Funny enough the kids didn’t seem to care. In fact they didn’t care about most anything, they just kept playing and playing…
To be honest there’s not much to the game. All I did was make something I knew kids would have fun playing. And who DOESN’T want to make their own cool game character as a kid? Isn’t that why we became game developers in the first place?
Here’s the boys helping me playtest on Saturday morning.
Here’s some of the kids super hero concepts (look at those imaginations!) I just took the pictures, scanned them in and then added them to the game project. Took about 10 minutes from the time the kids were done drawing to seeing them on the Xbox 360 and selecting them to play as.
Here’s some in game screenshots (Character select screen and then the battle screen)
And here’s the super heroes yelling and cheering as they play SUPER HERO BATTLE! Up up and away!!!!
Now if only I could have that kind of success with an actual game someday…
Sunday, August 22, 2010
I was sitting watching my son play Transformers:War for Cybertron today (it’s 4x XP points today you know, so he’s got to play 24x7 this weekend…) and I saw an email come in from GoDaddy. I immediately clicked just in case it was one of those titillating GoDaddy girl commercials but instead it was an automatic renewal notice for one of my websites. That’s right XNADevelopment.com was renewed today for another year!
It’s really hard to believe that I’ve been writing tutorials and been part of the awesome and incredibly mind blowing Xbox LIVE Indie Game community for over four years now. Where has the time gone?
I wish I had planned something momentous, but I really don’t have anything. I’d give away something free, but everything on my site is already free. I’d upgrade all my content to 4.0, but 4.0 isn’t out yet. And I haven’t had time to write any NEW content because I’m busy writing an XNA Windows Phone 7 game development book.
But I did want to take the time to acknowledge it. I’m pretty proud of the work I’ve done on that site and the small part I’ve played in this wonderful XNA community I’ve been a part of these years. It’s been crazy fun and I can’t wait to see what’s coming this next year…
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Wifey is walking in the March of Dimes this coming weekend and needs some help reaching her donations goal (last I looked she's only just over 1/5th of the way there). If you have a little spare changing and a heart for giving, just head on over to give a donation and make Wifey happy. A happy Wifey is a happy me. Please make me happy....
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Saturday, April 03, 2010
I’ve always enjoyed using Nick Gravelyn’s exception handling in all of my games. You’re always going to encounter those unhandled exception that your players are going to ferret out and having a method to display them rather than just crashing to the dashboard is definitely more of an elegant solution. But the other day I got to thinking…what if we could do more? What if instead of just displaying the error, we could encourage the players to send us the error. So I started playing with that an expanding upon Nick’s sample code to see what I could come up with.
I got close to what I envisioned, but unfortunately there were some limitations to just what the XNA API could do. In my head I was picturing the players hitting “Send Message” and a 360 message would just be sent to the XBLIG developer. Unfortunately, you can only send messages in an XNA game to someone you’re currently in a network session with. Since I didn’t want to have a 360 server running all the time, virally connecting to players just to get error messages, I did the next best thing and just open up a 360 message and encourage them to manually enter the gamertag. Maybe someday we’ll be able to do that a little better, but this works for now.
In the sample, players can hit the “A” button or key to generate in an exception. If the debugger is not attached, then the Exception message screen will be shown explaining what has happened and giving the player a chance to send a 360 message to the gamertag provided or maybe even just send an email. Nick’s code has been changed just a bit. It now accepts any PlayerIndex (no longer hard coded to just PlayerIndex.One) and it no longer uses a MessageBox to get the users selection. The code has also been modified so that it works both for the 360 and for the PC.
Check out “Tell me what’s wrong!” and let me know if you have any thoughts or suggestions. I really do appreciate the feedback.
Saturday, March 06, 2010
I’ve created a new sample called “Would you like my Input” for XNADevelopment.com. This sample demonstrates a simple yet effective input wrapper to be used in your game. If your game requires input (and which game doesn’t?) then at some point you’re going to want to create an input wrapper. Hopefully this sample helps demonstrate how to go about that or at least gives you one that you can use in your own game.
I always appreciate feedback (even if it’s just a simple Thank you!) so don’t be bashful about emailing or leaving a comment.
Friday, February 12, 2010
A short while ago I became a REAL game developer with the release of an XBLIG I helped create called “Kissy Poo”. Overall this game has been a huge success. It has far exceeded my original expectations of sales and was just a really fun project to work on. (In case you were wondering I was expecting to sell around 500 copies and we’re right now hanging around 1200 copies sold!). Now though, I want to take some time to reflect a bit and share what went well and what I would have done differently. I think it’s good for any project to take that time and who knows, maybe it will be useful for someone else besides me!
The Good
Let’s start with the good. There were a lot of things that went really well on this project. Here’s a short little list I made of the ones I thought of when looking back.
* We spent an appropriate amount of development time on an Xbox LIVE Indie game title. This may seem like a strange one to have but it makes sense when you understand the current state of XBLIGs. XBLIG is a new untested system. There are developers who are making a lot of money but most developers are only making a couple thousand dollars off their game. That information should definitely be factored into how much time you’re going to spend making your game. If you’re making a labor of love, that’s great. But just realize you’re most likely NEVER going to make the money back from all the time you poured in. We had a short development cycle. It went just the right amount of time for the game we were trying to make and we did a great job maintaining feature creep and staying true to our original vision. I was very happy with how long it took to make Kissy Poo. The original coding of the basic gameplay took about a weekend and then we spent the next several months adding polish. Put a decent amount of time into the development, but we didn’t go overboard. I was really happy with that.
* We used a real artist. I was really happy with the way the artwork for Kissy Poo turned out. I consider myself something of an artist. I can draw and I’m slowly learning how to create art in the digital world. But I’m not a REAL artist. People that spend time every day working with Photoshop know how to do things I’ll never have the time to learn. Much like artists will probably never code like I can (well except for Noogy, but he’s a freak of nature!). I did the original artwork for Kissy Poo and it was decent, but then I swallowed my pride and turned to my wife and begged her to make it pretty. She rocked it. The artwork for Kissy Poo has a great style and flavor and I think it helped make the game stand out. Art isn’t something XBLIGs should be paying a lot for (remember, you’re probably only making a $1,000 tops!), but if you CAN find an artist who is willing to help out treat them well.
* We understood our target audience well and made a game perfect for them. I’m a father of four boys. I’ve played games with them from the time they were an infant. And every time I did play a game, I kept a little running checklist of things I’d wish that game would have done differently so my kid could have played it. Kissy Poo implemented every single one of those little thoughts and ideas. I made a game that kids 4 years and younger can play all by themselves. And I made a game that wouldn’t frustrate the parents WHILE the kid was playing (well, maybe my singing might start to make their ears bleed but that’s all!). There’s a lot of little things it takes to make a game for younger kids, but we figured those things out. Since the release of Kissy Poo we’ve gotten nothing but positive feedback from parents. Kids love it. We made a game that was perfectly designed for our target audience and I’m pretty proud of that.
* Working with Andy “The ZMan” Dunn. I worked really well with Andy and I would definitely work with him again. We weren’t complete unknowns to each other. We been friends for quite a while now (met him at a Portland Code Camp many moons ago where he was giving a talk on shaders that was so over my head I felt stupid mentioning that I didn’t understand a thing he was saying). He’s got a laid back style much like myself. We kept on each other to get things done but neither of us are too terribly particular about things. We had a fast style and a fast pace, but we both had times where we took long breaks from working. I liked how we worked on the project and I liked collaborating with him. There aren’t many people I choose to work with but Andy is definitely one of them. Without him Kissy Poo would have been a flop in all honesty.
* I learned how to write shaders. This was a good on a couple of levels. One because I firmly believe that anytime you’re working on a project there should never be more than one or two things that you don’t know how to do. With more than that you honestly have no way of guesstimating just how long the project might take. You need to seriously limit just how many “unknowns” there are in a project. Unless of course the whole purpose of the project is just for learning. Then toss in as many unknowns as you feel like. If it’s a project you want to complete however, you need to keep trimming back on your features and ideas until there’s only a few things that you’re not quite exactly sure how to do. Shaders were the one I didn’t know how to do in this project. I was able to limit how much this unknown hurt me by working with someone who DID know how to do shaders. It was fun learning how to do them and gaining some confidence in that area. I’m still not an expert on them, but they’re starting to drift into a category where I could give you an estimate on how long it might take me to do a project that involves shaders.
* We proved a point. I can’t elaborate on this one too terribly much. But those involved know what I’m talking about. There’s a bit of a history to how the idea of Kissy Poo came about and how Andy and I decided to tackle it. We met the deadline and would have met the deadline. We proved our point. I was extremely happy about that.
* We had fun. At no point was I dreading working on Kissy Poo. It was fun from start to finish. Was it my kind of game? No. Was it the most exciting project to work on in the world? No. Did I think it was going to allow me to quit my day job and form a game company? No and I actually don’t even WANT to do that :) But man, did I have fun making that game. We did something small, but we did it well and I was proud of the job we did in the end. Had a blast doing it too. If you’re not having fun, you might as well can your project now and move onto another one. Life is short, there’s no point in making yourself miserable trying to make an XBLIG.
* Fantastic support from the community. Andy and I are actively involved in the community. Sometimes as moderators on the XNA forums, our involvement isn’t always well received. We have responsibilities and we both take those responsibilities fairly seriously. In doing so we can sometimes piss some people off. There’s been times when it’s felt like the entire community was against us. Not a fun feeling. Especially since we often agree with the community, but as moderators and MVPs we have certain guidelines we’re required to follow. When we first released our game into playtest, we both held our breath. We weren’t sure just how exactly the community was going to respond. We were both blown away and pleasantly surprised as just how positive and helpful the feedback we got was. Kissy Poo would have been a flop without the communities involvement. Playtester made Kissy Poo a MUCH better game and we couldn’t have done it without this great community that has been built around XNA and XBLIG.
* We have a decent code base. Kissy Poo is a smaller game and my guess is if we had started to make it much larger it would have started spiraling more out of control but overall it’s not too bad. We got a little sloppier towards the end as we were adding the last features, but I believe with some minor clean up the code base overall isn’t too far off from something I’d release to the community as a sample. Who knows, maybe we’ll do that someday….
* We used good collaboration tools. If you’re an XBLIG developer and you’re not using some kind of source control. Stop whatever you’re doing and get that hooked up. Don’t code another line without one. In our case, it was the first thing we went looking for and at Nick Gravelyn’s recommendation we chose XP-Dev.com. I honestly can’t recommend it highly enough. The support there is fantastic and they have met and exceeded all my expectations for what I expect from a good source control service. The other tools we used worked well too. We used Google docs for most of bug tracking, tasks lists. Kind of used an agile mentality there as we formed tasks and then signed up for them one at a time. Marking them complete as we finished them. With the document being online and shared it made working together remotely quite easy. (You did know Andy and I live in two different cities right? This was a complete remote collaboration form start to finish!). Google talk was our primary means of communication although we did send each other the occasional email as well. And although we do have each others phone numbers, we never found it necessary to talk to each other. Like I said, earlier. We worked really well together.
* Met and exceeded sales goal. We weren’t planning on making it big, but we did have some sales expectations. Realistic expectations based on the game we were making, the typical audience on the Xbox 360 and how well games were selling on the XBLIG service. We knew what we were releasing and who we were releasing it to. I was expecting around 500 sales and Andy was predicting around 1,000. We’ve exceeded both of those expectations. And I’m pretty dang happy with that!
The Bad
Now that we’ve covered what went well. Let’s talk about what I would change if I had a chance to go back in time all Marty McFly style with the knowledge I have now.
* I didn’t take the time to animate the animals. It was on our list of things we might do. The thing was that I KNEW that the target audience didn’t care. In fact, too much animation can be over stimulating for that younger crowd. So I crossed it off the list of something not really investing the time in. It was something older kids expect and want, but kids 4 years and younger could care less about. I firmly believe now that we could have had more sales (and a better rating) if I just would have animated the dang animals. The problem is that although we hit our target audience, not everyone understands kids and they assumed that lack of animation just indicated a bad game. When making a kids game, you still need to sell it to the people who have the money. If I had it to do over, those animals would have animations.
* I should have never made the cover art. I had Wifey do all of the images for Kissy Poo. She’s good at digital design. It’s what she does every day and makes a decent amount of money off of it. But for the cover art I didn’t want to bother her so I slapped a bunch of the in-game artwork into a rectangular area and called it a cover. The first thing every single potential buy ever saw was a piece of art that someone who was NOT an artist slapped together. Big mistake on my part. I will never ever make another cover art for my game. I will either spend ALL of my game development budget on paying someone to make one or I’ll try and see if Wifey has the time to help a poor indie game developer out. Do NOT, I repeat do NOT make your own cover art. This is the one area where you can’t afford to fail in. Pay for it, get it done by a REAL artist.
* We shouldn’t have named it Kissy Poo. It was a cute idea, but it just doesn’t translate well. Heck, even in America tons of people didn’t understand it. For me it’s a cute pet name, all lovey dovey. My Kissy Poo. For others it seems like a game about kissing poop. I was actually told by quite a few parents that their kids wouldn’t say the name because they felt like they were saying something naughty. We probably should have changed the name early on. But we stuck with it and I thin it hurt our sales not just here, but definitely internationally where they didn’t even know that “Kissy Poo” might have another meaning. Big mistake on that one. I will definitely think about my name a bit more for my next XBLIG.
* We should have had a better trial experience. The few review sites that do review XBLIG review trials. Most of them got REALLY annoyed by Kissy Poo. Our nag screens made them feel like there wasn’t much to the game. And there’s not, it’s a kids game. But had they reviewed the purchased version they would have seen more of it’s cuteness. I would definitely change the way we chose to implement the trial mode for a future version. We made it an ugly experience (my fault!). Next time I will make sure that the trial experience showcases the game better while still encouraging people to purchase the game.
* I should have bought an actual microphone. I sang all the songs for Kissy Poo and my kids helped make most of the sound effects in the game. I don’t have a real microphone for my PC however. I just used my gaming headset. It worked, but I know the quality of the songs and the sound effects would be much improved if I would have just but a moderately priced microphone. Next time I’ll make sure I’m using decent equipment when making things for my game.
* The Exit Screen is ugly! We threw the Exit Screen in towards the end. We wanted to direct people to our website and point out a little secret in the game. We should have taken the time to make the screen look better visually. It’s one of the ugliest parts of the whole game. Really jumps out at me every time my son plays and I really should have fixed it. Next time I’ll make sure all screens in my game have a similar style and are a visually pleasing.
* We should have added an actual attract mode. Little kids like to just hold the controller and watch the game. Having an attract mode would have made even the youngest gamers feel like they were playing the game. Kissy Poo has such simple gameplay there’s really no reason we shouldn’t have added an actual attract screen. The game could have looped between that and our title screen. It would have improved the experience and made it much better for trade show demos! The next game I make will definitely have a proper attract mode.
* We should have added local multiplayer. With four kids I’m not sure how I overlooked this one. We did make it so that all the controllers can participate in the game (pressing button on any controller will actually make sounds in the game), but there’s only one character and only one controller that can control that character. Kissy Poo really would have benefitted from local multiplayer. Four different Kissy Poo characters floating around the screen would have made it a game that families could have enjoyed together. Every game I make will have local multiplayer. I LOVE games that let me play with my kids. There’s no reason I should ever make a game where I can’t play with my kids and friends locally.
* We should have made the discovery zones more discoverable. Every single scene in Kissy Poo has little hidden “discover zone” spots. If you hover over them with Kissy Poo and press any of the button, it activates that discovery zone and various things will happen on the screen. The whale blows hearts, the cabin chimney has smoke, the mountain makes it snow and so on. Most people that own the game have never discovered those AND I de-activated them all in trial mode. I definitely should have made those more discoverable. Our attract mode would have helped with that and we even could have mentioned them on our Exit screen!
* We were unable to make the general 360 audience understand that the game wasn’t for them. We probably could have done a better job in the description and probably while the game was loading explaining just who the game was for. I think if we could have gotten that message out, our rating would have been higher and our sales would have increased. Instead quite a few people thought we made a really crappy game for them. We didn’t make it for 16-30 year olds. We made it for their younger siblings and their kids! We could have done a better job explaining this. Next time I will.
* We should have changed the way we tracked game and screen state. When thinking back to the code the one major thing that jumps out at me is all the complications we had with the way we were tracking game and screen state in the game. We made life difficult for ourselves by never changing it. Most of the code that I’m not proud of in Kissy Poo stems from us never addressing this. Next time I make an XBLIG I’ll implement a better way of tracking game and screen state. One that’s more global and easier to modify.
There you have it. Those are my thoughts on making my first Xbox LIVE Indie game. It was a fun process and overall was a success but with any project there’s always room for improvement. It was fun thinking through the things I’d change and I’m looking forward to taking those thoughts and doing even better with my next Xbox LIVE Indie game…if I ever finish it!
Saturday, January 09, 2010
There's a new XNA sample I've posted on XNADevelopment.com that demonstrates a method of detecting collisions between 2D rotated rectangles. I'm hoping to someday build a tutorial around this (maybe if I get enough requests for one!) but for now I've just made the source code available. I commented the code fairly thoroughly and made some attempt to write the code as readable as possible. It may be with those efforts that the sample will work well enough for most people without an accompanying tutorial.
I hope it's useful! As always, I welcome any feedback anybody might have and I hope this is useful to the XNA community.
Monday, November 30, 2009
I hope you do own an Xbox 360 because I have exciting news to share. You may have heard the rumors. Well, I’m here to tell you they’re absolutely, 100% true! Wait, what rumors where you talking about? No, that’s not true at all, I mean it was only one time…anyway, I was talking about the rumors that I’m officially a GAME DEVELOPER!
That’s right. I really have a game for sale on the Xbox 360. It’s not an MMORPG, it’s not some crazy fast paced, action packed FPS. It’s a game I wrote (well, co-wrote with Andy ‘The ZMan’ Dunn) for an audience I know pretty well. Little kids.
The game is called “Kissy Poo” and it’s designed for your little gamers. The ideal age range is 4 years old and younger, but we have some hidden goodies in the game so that even some older “kids” might spend a little time playing around with the game.
Go buy it now, it’s only 80 points (approximately $1) and is available right now for your Xbox360 so you can download it today. Check it out and let me know what you think! I’d love to hear your feedback.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
I try to spend a little time every day brushing up on my developer skills. Some days I have more success than others. I might attempt to brush up on my skills by reading a tech book (currently working through "Working Effectively with Legacy Code" by Michael C. Feathers, I'm loving that book!), practicing some new language features (I'm still wrapping my head around lambda expressions and LINQ) or just browsing tech blogs and listening to tech podcasts. I do this partly because our industry changes so rapidly that you HAVE to do this just to stay relevant but mostly because I just like learning new things. I love what I do.
Well, yesterday I stumbled across an older article by Scott Hanselman. It's not the first time I've seen it. I've read through it before. It's called What Great .NET Developers Ought To Know (More .NET Interview Questions). Last time I read through this article, I took it as a challenge. In fact my small little team started meeting to work through these questions so we could try and answer them. The ones we didn't have answers for we were researching. We were able to meet about twice before the pressures of deadlines and heavy workloads caused us to abandon the goal and the meetings just kind of died out. We had barely started on the list.
It's been over a year now since I last read that article and started on that goals (maybe almost 2 years?). I'm a better developer than I was two years ago. I know this. However in just reading that first section of questions, the ones in the "Everyone who writes code" section, I realized I couldn't answer ANY of them off the top of my head.
Sure there were a few I could probably bluff my way through. I might "generally" know an answer, but in an interview type situation if anyone leaned on me to speak a little deeper about my answer it would be pretty apparent that I really didn't know what I was talking about. I don't REALLY know the answers. And that's just for some of the questions. For other questions in that little "Everyone who writes code" section I wouldn't even know where to start answering the question and this is with me dimly remembering that we had almost covered all these beginner questions in those two meetings years ago with my team.
What does that say about me? The post says "Great" .NET developers. Kind of a blow to my ego, but I can deal with that, I'm not great. But then these questions are also suggested as interview questions. So am I not worth hiring as a developer? I mean I couldn't even get through the first section of questions.
I have a Math/Computer Science degree. I went to a fairly well respected private school and it's a pretty tough one academically (we even had Saturday classes!). So I think I'm at least semi-intelligent (maybe? pretty please, at least give me that!). I've also been programming in the work force for just about 10 years now (so I have some experience doing what I do). And it's not something I do just for a day job, I code at home as well for hours every night (so I'm not just a clock puncher). It's something I love to do. I even managed to snag a Microsoft MVP award for a few years (although to be honest that has less to do with you as a developer and more to do with you as a community member!). And like I mentioned, I try to learn something new everyday, I like to think I'm staying current with the industry (so I'm constantly actively trying to better myself!).
Yet I can't answer the questions in the "Everyone who writes code" section of a list of questions for things every Great .NET Developer ought to know and might be interviewed with at their next job....
So what does this mean? Are those questions really representative of things every .NET developer should know off the top of their head or is Hanselman just so awesome he no longer can identify with "GREAT" .NET developers and has instead made a list of questions for What FANTASTICALLY INCREDIBLE GOD LIKE .NET DEVELOPERS Ought to know?
To be honest I'm not sure. I personally think I just learned I'm a sub-par developer. Guess I have some more work to do...
Friday, May 15, 2009
I can’t express enough the appreciation I have for everyone out there. (yes, it’s YOU I’m talking about!) The prayers, thoughts and support has been incredible. It meant a lot. So I just wanted to take some time to say thanks for letting me share and thanks for all the incredible feedback Wifey and I have received over the last month. I also just wanted to give everyone an update of what happened and where we are at now (well, wifey is much faster at updates than I am so she’s already done a few posts so this is old news if you’ve been reading her blog).
We went in for surgery last Wednesday (5/6/2009) for thyroid cancer. We were ready for cancer because that’s what all the tests and the biopsy said. Her thyroid was enlarged (you could see it visibly on her throat) and had a huge mass on it. Our surgeon (man, what a surgeon! I thought her handshake was going to crush my hand but I guess strong hands are a great thing for a surgeon to have!) was still skeptical. She really didn’t want to take the whole thyroid unless absolutely necessary. She was prepared to take it all if she had to, but if there was any chance that it wasn’t cancerous she only wanted to take the half with the mass.
As she began the surgery, she drew her lines for the incision as if she was going to have to take both but she started with just the bad half. After removing it, she had them do a quick test to see if the result came back cancerous. Her plan was if it preliminary (but not conclusive) test results were questionable or a no, she would stop the surgery at that point. However if it was a yes she would continue.
She got a no so we only lost half a thyroid. That was great news but still a little nerve wracking because those were just initial tests and not necessarily 100% accurate. So we were excited but still not ready to celebrate until we had the official all clear.
We then had to wait a day while they did the 100% all conclusive test and it also came back negative. Oh frabjous day callooh, callay! Wifey DOES NOT HAVE CANCER! :)
Pretty dang good new! So now we’re only dealing with one of those two things I mentioned last post. We’re still battling with depression, but we can totally do this. Wifey’s chemicals are pretty out of whack right now (with losing half a thyroid and all), but we’re hopeful they’ll stabilize soon and then we can see even more progress in this struggle with depression.
But no cancer :)
Thanks once again to everyone for…well everything! I love you all :)
Sunday, May 03, 2009
I wrote a post a bit ago that was kind of a bummer. If you didn’t like that one, I suggest you move alone right now because this one is going to make that one look like rainbows and unicorns. I’ve already mentioned this has been a rough year, but well, I didn’t go into a lot of details. Now I’m going to because lately I’ve been having to pass on a lot of speaking opportunities and I’ve been dropping the ball on a lot of things that I normally help out with (Code Camp and PAXNAUG just to name a few). Rather then trying to explain to each person individually what’s going on (although I’ve already done that for some of my closer friends), I figured I would just lay it all out there for all of geekdom to enjoy.
My wife has been battling depression for a while. It’s been something we’ve learned to deal with over the years and we had all sort of strategies for getting through the rough spots. Well this year has been a little different, when she felt the oncoming symptoms of another round of depression and we begin to bunker down to get through it, rather then dropping into a little (albeit serious) depression, she nose dived off the 1,000 foot platform and plunged deep and fast into the murky black tar pits of despair. Since then she’s been contemplating suicide on an hourly basis and couldn’t get her mind off thoughts of taking her life.
Kind of a bad place to be and it happened fast. Oddly fast.
We started dealing with it right away however. Psychologist visits two days a week and daily checkins with the psychologist as well. We also met with the psychiatrist and got started on some Zoloft and Ambien (so she could actually fall asleep at night instead of shaking and trembling all night long). Per the psychologists instructions we went through the house and gathered up all the items Wifey had considered using to take her life. Talk about one morbid pile. I then removed the items I could from the house and hid the rest. She’s not even allowed to shave without me watching (not a bad thing though, I’m definitely not going to complain about having to watch my wife shave her legs! Sexy!). We also came up with ways for her to communicate how close to suicide she was feeling without having to use a lot of words. Days where she’s hanging around a 5 or 7 are good days. Days at an 8 or 9 I don’t leave her side much and if we hit a 10 I’m probably busting down a door and calling 911.
It’s been a bit scary, but we’re dealing with it. The Zoloft has finally kicked in so the number of times she’s hanging out a 8 or 9 on the suicide watch scale are rarer. Things are getting better. And we’re hoping this week gets even better. Let me explain what’s special about this week.
You see, the week I went to the MVP summit (which I almost didn’t, but luckily got friends and family help watch for me and I checked in hourly up at the summit with my wife), Wifey came down with strep throat. She had to go into the doctor so he could confirm it and prescribe her some antibiotics.During the visit the doctor noticed visibly that her thyroid was enlarged. A couple of doctor visits and one biopsy later and it was confirmed that she had thyroid cancer. So there’s some hope (I know crazy that cancer gave us some hope!).
The hope is that the thyroid cancer was causing her chemicals to go all out of wack (an official medical term I’m sure) and that’s why she spiked so quickly into suicidal waters. At least that’s what her psychologist, psychiatrist and I are all theorizing. We’ll soon know though because the surgery is this week.
That’s right, on Wednesday my beautiful, suicidal and cancerous wife will go under the knife to have her thyroid removed. It should be a pretty straightforward surgery but it’s definitely still something that’s pretty nerve-wracking (especially for someone already dealing with depression…).
If you’ve been paying attention you’ll notice that I’ve covered two of the three things I love about my wife. Suicidal and cancerous. But radioactive? That’s the last bit of fun that we just recently learned about. Apparently if you’re going to get cancer, thyroid cancer is the way to go. They remove the cancer and then lucky you, you won’t need to go through chemotherapy or anything. In fact, all you have to do is take these iodine pills. These radioactive iodine pills. We’re still not sure about all the details of these pills but from what we’ve been reading online (and depending on state laws) she may have to be placed into isolation for a period of a few days to up to a month. If she’s allowed to come home she’s apparently not supposed to have human contact or even sit on the same couch with anybody for any length of time.
Those are going to be fun times. Especially with 4 young boys all wanting to give their radioactive mother a hug! We’ll know more after the surgery, but I’m expecting this month to get very interesting! We’re still debating over what type of mutation she’s going to grow. She was hoping for something cool like flight or laser beam eyes but I’m convinced it’s going to be some useless or lame mutation like being able to speak with a perfect British accent whenever she wants. No one ever gets the cool mutations anymore!
So things do sound a bit rough, but on the bright side, things could be a lot worse. We have great insurance that has been covering all of the mental health issues we’re battling. We’ve been on top of and dealing with each thing coming our way and really we’re doing ok. It could be a fast growing cancer and it’s not. It could be a cancer that requires chemo and it’s not. The kids have been adjusting but they’re great little men and have always been a help out around the house and they love taking care of mom. They’re really sweet with her and I’ve always taught them that she’s the queen and we all serve her. We’ve had lots of help from friends and family and the doctors. So really even those things seem like an overwhelming mess, we’ve had the strength and the resources to deal with them.
Anyway, I know I don’t want to keep writing these depressing posts, I really wish I could show everyone that things really are going well for me, I’m actually smiling and happy right now. And Wifey *IS* getting better. She’s really been great. (If you want to check out a couple of my wife’s posts from her perspective read these ones here and here. She’s a great writer and pretty brave just to be sharing.) Even battling with depression she still try's to do nice sweet things for me when she’s having a “clear” moment (thanks again for my comic books the other day!). So yes, definitely not everything is bad and I don’t want everyone feeling sad, but I did want to explain why I might be being a flake in other areas right now. I’m kind of internally focused right now so if you’ve been waiting for a response from me or wanted me to speak or help out with something, I seriously apologize, but you’ve been re-prioritized right now (down in case you hadn’t figured that out…).
I think if anyone else out there is struggling with anything like this, I would just say make sure you’re being proactive. Don’t put off getting treatment. Mental illness is a serious thing and don’t lose a love one because you’re embarrassed by it or you think it will just go away. Tackle these things head on and get the help you need. Lean on friends when you need them. People in your life care about you and let that care and love re-charge you and give you the energy you need to get through it.
But there you have it, that’s what is going on in my life and I love my suicidal, cancerous and radioactive wife.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
I've been resisting doing this post. Really I have. With how poorly the world is doing (Economic Crisis 2009!) and all the sad sob stories I'm reading everyday, I really didn't want to be adding to the "woe is me!" noise out there already. But yeah, this has been a pretty crappy year so far. And honestly, I haven't had worse. All is not lost however, so just so it's not *ALL* bad, I will say, it's really not as bad as it could be either. (I at least still have some perspective!).
I mean really, overall I'm doing pretty well. I'm happy and life is treating me pretty good, I'm not really a complainer (ok, maybe I am...), but yeah, lol, this has been one doozy of a year so far. I don't even know where to begin.
We started this year off with getting a nasty round of the norovirus. I personally lost about 6 pounds from wrestling with that hell I wouldn't wish upon anyone. And you truly haven't experienced misery until you have five other family members all puking up stomach acids around you. It was a truly horrible experience. I want to share the details just so I'm not trapped alone with them in my mind...but I won't. I'll be nice to you this time. But oh my gosh the smell.
So yeah, that was the start of the year. It just kept going from there.
This year we've been dealing with depression. It's gotten really bad for wifey again. I feel like I could write a book titled "Married to Depression". There's been just so much I've learned about depression over the years and how to deal with it when you're not the one who actually suffers from it. We're taking all the right steps though and we've been through this before so we're hoping to see the light soon on this one. Unfortunately she's got other stuff going on. Cysts, a dead tooth and wisdom teeth that aren't going to come in. Going to be a lot of dental work this year and in my opinion she already has a great smile! And she has even more going on (poor little Wifey!)
Currently we have a little scare going on. You see while I was up partying it up at the MVP summit she came down with strep throat. The strep wasn't so scary, nothing some antibiotics couldn't handle. However when she went in to get the subscription the doctor noticed she had an enlarged thyroid. A little blood work and an ultrasound later and we're now dealing with concern over a mass in her thyroid. Still waiting for a trip to a specialist to know just how serious that's going to be. Yeah, our minds are on that first thought you all had as well. We'll just have to wait and see though.
On a less serious note, this has been the year for little car fixes. The van needed new brakes and tires so that was a nice little chunk of change. And I've been driving with a broken windshield, a car that overheats anytime I'm stuck in traffic (I carry water in the trunk) and a headlight I have to wiggle before I leave anywhere or I won't have two. Not super serious things, but man all that car stuff has sucked this year. Especially because those things all hit the pocket book. And well, we know the big scary economy deal is going on. Some we'll pay for and some I'll just have to put up with for a while longer.
Work has been pretty rough this year as well. The economy is obviously impacting everyone's place of business (even Microsoft had some layoffs) and mine has had it's up and downs as a result of changes in the economic climate. We've had a lot of changes that have nothing to do with the economy as well. Some of those have required adjustments on my part and almost all have been affecting my stress level. It definitely hasn't been the most relaxing year at work. I'm hopeful though because I think we're turning a corner so I'm still excited about the rest of this year.
Let's see, what else has happened this year...oh, here's a fun one! So we started noticing our windows in our house were fogging up. It felt like there was really moist air being blown out all of our heater vents. Calling in some heater guys we got the fun news. The heater is out. And not only that it was a really weird heater. It was water based...odd right? Basically it was hooked up to a hot water heater and the heater unit itself worked as a heat exchanged to blow hot air through the house. *AND* that was installed in our ceiling. Yep, a water based heater in the ceiling above our bedroom and not only was it out, but it had been leaking. Leaking for a long time. Replaced the heater (another LARGE chunk of change) and that's when the real fun began. That's when we got to call the home owner's insurance because when the heater guys replaced the heater they noticed we had mold throughout our attic as a result of the leaking. Yep, mold. MOLD. Run for the hills. A homeowners worst nightmare.
So we've had guys in hazmat suits wondering in and out of our house trying to clean up the mold damage (luckily we don't have to pay for that, homeowners insurance will cover that part). Nothing like talking to a guy in a hazmat suit and thinking to yourself, why am *I* living here? Where's my suit? So when my kids start growing extra toes eyes or developing really lame super powers, we'll know it's because I didn't buy them little hazmat suits for their birthdays to protect them from the mold.
We've had various other little house issues along with the heater and mold. The toilet is flooding constantly (and always running), the outside faucet isn't working (did the heater guys break something?), the fence is falling down...the list goes on. Sigh. Quite a bit of work and it all happened this year.
Then yesterday we had one of the most exciting moments of the year. I've been expecting this one since I am the father of four boys, but I was still taken by surprise. Yesterday Owen (my 5 year old) broke his arm. Not a good break either, they're talking like he's probably going to need surgery. Yikes! Wifey wrote all about it here. Definitely a pretty stressful time and I was really impressed with how Wifey handled it all. She's such a great mommy! We're hopeful everything heals ok and no permanent damage was done but we'll just have to see.
So yeah, all in all hasn't been that great of a year. I'm still smiling. I know things really could be worse and there's lots and lots of people worse off than me and I really feel for them. I'm sure things are going to be turning a corner though and there's lots of other things I haven't mentioned in this post that are going great and amazingly well. It's definitely not all bad and I've got a lot going for me.
Either way I just really needed to get that all out.
Wait a minute! What was that I just saw walk across the kitchen counter? An ant? Yep, there's another one. Definitely an ant. Great we have ants. LOL, what a year so far! I'm sure it's just going to get better from here. Hopefully everyone else's years aren't looking like mine. It'd be nice to hear some good stories out there to balance out all these sad ones.
Anyway, that's all I had for now. I'm sure I'll have some more positive posts coming about games, tutorials and fun stuff. Here's hoping your year is a good one! Now where did I put those ant bait traps....
Monday, March 09, 2009
I've posted a new tutorial up at XNADevelopment.com. I'll warn you now it's a doozy! If you're up to it, head on over and check out "The State of Things". I think this one has been sitting heavy on my heart for quite a while and when I finally sat down to write it up, everything just started pouring out. This tutorial doesn't just introduce one little way of managing screen state in your game, nope, this tutorial walks you THREE DIFFERENT SOLUTIONS!
(and one of them uses event handlers and polymorphism..yikes!)
And well, I'm tired now. I've been working on this tutorial for three days straight now. The only left to do is for you to head over and check it and please if you do check it out, let me some dang feedback. The good, the bad or the ugly. I really just want to hear what you think. If the tutorials aren't useful, I want to know. If you wish I would change the format, let me know. If they're just at the right level for you, LET ME KNOW!
Oh, and I think I'll add the picture of my comic books to this post. No real reason for it to be there, I took it (well, technically wifey took it) for an example I was making in the tutorial and well I just like it.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
So I've been doing a lot of drawing lately. I've been doing a little bit just about every day. Sometimes with the boys and sometimes just by myself. I'm planning on scanning some of my drawings in and sharing the progress I've been making improving my art, but I haven't gotten around to it yet (hopefully soon!). But with all that time spent drawing with pencil and paper, I haven't been doing a lot to work on improving my digital art. Well today wifey linked me to a great tutorial for creating some super cute ninjas in Illustrator. With cute ninja's like that, I couldn't resist giving it a try.
There was just one little problem. The tutorial was for Adobe Illustrator.
You see, I made a decision a long time ago when I started writing tutorials for my site that I would force myself to always use free tools. I wanted to encourage people just starting out and when you're just starting out, it helps when the tools you use are free. So I create my own sound effects, I beg for free music from friends (thanks Nick!), I use Visual Studio Express (it's free) AND I always do all of my own work in a free digital art program. So although I own and am learning to use Illustrator, it doesn't really fit that whole "free" thing (it's like way on the other end of free, it's in the "expensive" category in fact).
And that brings us to GIMP. I decided to tackle the tutorial just using GIMP and while I love GIMP, it is free and like all free tools it sometimes lacks the features that the professional and expensive tools have. But, staying on course, I still managed to walk through the entire tutorial and produce my own cute little ninja in GIMP! (yep, that's my Ninja you see!) There were a few steps that took a little more work than using Illustrator. And I'm sure there's things I may have been able to do easier or smoother if I knew how to use GIMP a bit better (my lines always look so jagged). Overall however, I think it came out pretty good for a quick bit of work.
I'd recommend giving the tutorial a try yourself in your favorite art program. It's pretty quick and simple, but teaches you some pretty nice little tricks. Link me to the image if you feel brave enough to share. I'd love to see how it turns out!