It can be a struggle getting back to an old project when the code has been left dormant for so long (well, it’s been weeks and weeks and weeks, you know). Code rot is real, you know. But I am keen as anything to get back into making a componentised entity system, so we’ll see how things go. Tonight it’s just preparatory work – I’ve been upgrading to the latest release of Airplay SDK (which now supports iPhone app signing on the PC without having to run a klunky signing server on a Mac), actually getting the PC app signing working, fixing a few memory bugs and basically making sure I actually know what I’ll be doing tomorrow night when I dive back into things.

It’s good to be back :)

Then Global Game Jam suddenly loomed, and I decided to put the Postal Worker project in pause mode so I could hack out a game in 48 hours. I took the opportunity to learn ActionScript, and made a dinky little flip-screen arcade adventure called Bogus Quest. I spent the week following GGJ adding new features to the game and fixing some bugs. I still have a list of things that I want to do, including adding a proper loading screen and adding sound effects.

Then Mike Turner came and raided the Interzone offices, and I became involved with spreading the word about what happened in an attempt to get the Australian government to actually do something about it.  A lot of people have been seriously disadvantaged by all of this, but, at the same time, there was a great sense of camaraderie, and it was quite a lot of fun analysing documents, editing video and basically getting the word out to journalists.

Tonight I realised that I’ve got three hobby projects on the go. I’m a self-proclaimed procrastinating perfectionist, by which I mean that I have a bunch of crazy ideas but never actually get around to completing any of them, out of fear of failure. Ask me about Magnate, my web scraper cum news aggregator, or my procedurally generated text adventure, or MegaHAL10 (the next version of the chatterbot I wrote 15 years ago), or Thrust Harder, or dBoard, or SpeedReader, or Fanglr. All projects that I’ve been incredibly excited about, and all terribly incomplete.

Well, no more. I’m going to manage my push-down stack, and make sure that I always go back to and complete projects that were interrupted. I won’t stop the interruptions. They’re fun. But I will make my default activity finishing the current project, whatever that might be.

So look out for a blog post about Bogus Quest soon. And, after that, keep your eyes peeled for Postal Worker 13. I promise!