legacy, in java

We've decided to focus on Legacy, and to do it in Java.

Java was a bit of a tough choice for me. But it has several big advantages over c++:

• I'm familiar with it enough that I can be effective immediately, so is Nick.
• It ports easily to mobile devices (trivially, in the case of Android), and to the web.
• It's a great language to write a server in.
• Faster iteration, and higher overall development velocity.

It has a couple disadvantages too:

• Not quite as performant.
• Can't release on consoles.

But fact is, we are a two man shop and we don't need the extra speed; we won't hit those limits. And consoles were never going to be our primary market. Java makes sense. We'll be using the libgdx game library to bootstrap our efforts. It won't be a perfect fit but it seems to provide enough value to be worth the weight, and it should make our path to mobile very simple.

I am so, so excited to be working on Legacy. It almost doesn't feel like working at all. But there is a big change for me. Up till now, Legacy has been purely a passion project. I could work on whatever interested me the most and avoid the things that didn't. But now that we're on a clock and burning resources, we need to be very focussed on making something fun that we can show people, as fast as possible.

More on that soon.

C++

If I'm going to become a game developer, I better start learning C++.

What to make?

We're currently in the planning phase.  What to make, what to make it in, ground rules, that kind of stuff.

Some of the questions we asked ourselves are, "What are our values?", "What do we do if one person flakes out and the other keeps going?", "What are the risks?", "What would success look like?"

One of the first ground rules we decided was that we are going to make something for ourselves. One of the most critical pieces of building anything is that you have direct and solid interaction the customer. If the customer is yourself, well then it's that much easier to know what they want, and it's easier to keep the excitement up.  When working for yourself, keeping the fires burning is crucial.

There are many things that I value in software. I value being able to be creative, to rapidly iterate, and to have fun.  Someone with whom I share a common mindset is Bret Victor, who has been an inspiration to create tools that allow you to quickly iterate. I've been thinking about tool chains a lot over the years, as I've worked at various companies I've advocated heavily to increase creativity and quality by reducing iteration times.

Then of course there are video games. A light to moderate amount of gaming is often an amazingly positive experience. Video games challenge you, they engage your mind and imagination, and they are immensely fun. There of course is a dark side to gaming. Overindulgence and addiction can have terrible consequences. What was fun and immersive for a while turns into obsessive and manic. In my life games have played both an extremely positive and extremely detrimental role. Growing up, games were my inspiration toward programming, they were my motivation to learn mathematics, science, art. Some of my fondest memories are in gaming: playing Doom 2 on a snow day, playing Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance with my wife as she smashes every barrel in the game, and getting a job at Riot and playing LoL in the PC Bang with hordes of other gamers. Video games have also played a darker role. Obsessing over Warcraft III for 16 hours a day, trying to make it as a "pro" gamer, living off ramen and cream of wheat for months on end, losing friendships to gaming.

Trying to decide which path to take, an interesting question we came up with was, "What would we rather succeed at?" We both felt that our personalities better suited the Indie Game developer role.  It was easier to picture myself explaining my business strategy with a giant nerf gun than with productivity graphs.

Time to go make a game!

Website is up!

http://nsquared.us is now live!

This site will be dedicated to showing our progress and state of mind as we continue our endeavor. Eventually we will add music and galleries as we build our product.

Having been out of web development for several years now, I'm finding that making a website is both easier and harder than it was half a decade ago.  It's easier because browser differences aren't quite as bad as they used to be, namely modern IE didn't give me much trouble like it has in the past. It's also easier because there are a million free and useful tools out there, as long as you know what to look for.  The ways that it's harder is that CSS is as strange as ever, and there are a way more ways to do things than there used to be.

The technology used to make the site is very simple. We're using blogger to host the blog, PHP with the Zend framework to read and display the blog.  The layout of the site is kick started with foundation. The art is by Annie. And the contact form is simple PHP tied to Akismet for spam prevention.

Overall the site took a bit more than a day to build, and was a quick and easy win. Small bites, small bites.

well said

I don't have much to add. I'm happy. This is an incredible opportunity and I intend to seize it.

The funny thing is that I don't really know how, or what's that's going to look like yet. But we'll figure that out.

A New Beginning

Today is the first day of my life as an entrepreneur.  This blog will be that story. 

I am both excited and terrified at the same time -- yesterday I was let go by Riot Games.  A large part of me wants to scream at the injustice, to rage and vent and dwell.  I know the truth of it though, after three years at Riot I've built up a hunger in me.  That hunger was my discontent, it was my downfall, and it will now become my ascent.

Riot tells the story of their humble beginnings every year.  They talk about Marc and Brandon getting a team of awesome talent together to build a game that would rapidly grow to the most played online game in the world.  They started with very little, they joke that their investors were Visa and MasterCard.  These stories were inspiring. 

I was fired the same day as my closest colleague, Nate Austin. We were let go with the reason that, "There is no future for Nick and Nate here at Riot."  While I am sad to leave, and I will miss the daily interaction with my amazing co-workers, there was truth to that statement.

I will let Nate speak for himself, but I believe he has the same hunger to do something grand. It was his idea to call our new business N², as both a little bit of programming humor and a play on our names.  If we can fuel each other's enthusiasm and keep each other honest, I have every bit of confidence we will succeed.

Last night at O'Brian's pub a group of Rioters and Riot alumni gave us the best send off I could hope for.  I'm sorry if I embarrassed anybody :).