Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Bloodied but Unbowed

Last post, I mentioned that after a difficult-but-necessary architecture change, I tested all 100 games and discovered some previously-unnoticed bugs. This little status update is to reassure you all, once again, that I'm still working on Solitaire Till Dawn, and to report that I have once again descended into the pit of monsters that is concurrent animation programming, and once again emerged victorious.

I really hate working on the animation stuff. It has to look good (and it has to just plain work), and I'm not an expert on this kind of coding. This latest bug fix took me several days of studying old code and trying to remember how it works, watching the animations fail in veeeerrrryyyy sssssslllooooowwww mmmmooootttiiiooonnn so that I could see exactly what was happening, and experimenting with fixes.

By the way: if it surprises you that I can't remember how my own code works, then you've simply never coded anything very complex yourself. Every experienced programmer knows that within three months, any code written today will become as unfamiliar as if it had been written by a Martian. That's why good programmers comment their code liberally, and write it for clarity even if they don't expect anyone else to ever see it. And I do that; but There Are Times when even that is not enough, and you wind up spending significant amounts of time trying to figure out just exactly what the hell you thought you were doing when you wrote some bit of code or other.

Anyway, I won this round. But there are still more bugs to fix, so I'm going to cut this short and get on with fixing them. Happy Autumn, everybody!

7 comments:

  1. Thanks for the update, and thank you for doing this. What an undertaking.

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  2. Just the occasional update to let us know you're still slaving away is all the assurance I need. There really still is nothing to compare to what STD offered on the mac (or even on iOS!) and so we patiently await and appreciate your efforts!

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    1. I searched for Solitaire Till Dawn on the iOS App Store and I could not find it. To what are you referring? Is there another similar game?

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  3. Glad you still have your sense of humour. All the best.

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  4. Hi Rick,

    Is there any ETA even as vague as how many more months? I upgraded my grandmother's computer to Mountain Lion and she almost killed me. I am not looking forward to Thanksgiving dinner where all her kids including my mom will no doubt tell me not to ever touch her computer ever again...

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  5. No pressure, but I would give this to at least five people for Christmas if it were available ...

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