The last year (and a bit)
- Posted on: 19/04/2017
Post Type: Site Update
Well, it's about time I wrote this blog post.
Being a solo indie developer can be hard. If something else crops up in your life that requires your full focus then the dev WILL suffer, there is no team to carry it and no one to cover for you. The last few years have been some of the hardest in my life.
13th of Nov 2015 I received a phone call whilst at my day job (I am a orthotics technician) asking me to rush home and drive my father to hospital (my mother is disabled). The next day he was diagnosed with liver cancer. The next few months of my life were spent looking after mum and visiting dad as they assessed treatment options. At first it looked like they may be able to do a life saving operation which they EVENTUALLY (march) attempted after many ridiculous delays (such as surgery computers crashing, doctors strikes, etc) but they had found the cancer had spread and there was nothing they could do. He was still fairly strong and started a course of chemo which he was responding well to.
During May that year my mother went into hospital for a "routine operation with complications". That it to say my mother was a complex example of the situation but the operation itself should not pose too many risks. Sadly, during this operation there was an accident and part of her bowel was split. They performed an emergency repair, stitching the wound closed and transferring her to more long term care. That evening whilst she was laying in the ward the stitching came undone and NEARLY resulted in her death. She was moved to intensive care after another emergency operation and somehow made it back from the brink. Just. At one point we were told it was probably time to say our goodbyes. But slowly her condition improved and her strength slowly returned although she is still, to this day, bed bound at home unless carried to a special wheel chair. Prior to the surgical accident she had limited mobility using walking supports.
But as she grew stronger my dad sadly grew weaker. On the 28th of January '17 his story ended and we said goodbye. That is still a hard thing to write and has made me put off this post for several weeks.
As you can imagine, during this period I have not got an awful lot done. I can thankfully say it has not been a complete stand still! Work has been going on whenever I've found the mental strength. But the limit of my strength has mostly been reserved for looking after my family and myself.
On to more positive things then.
I love game programming. I love working on projects that I have designed. Even before 2015 hit I was not feeling satisfied with the level of time I had to work on these things. This year my wife and I decided it was time for me to go part-time at my day job so I could focus on my passion more "officially" rather than just in the evenings where I had some energy left. This is starting with just one day a week, an arrangement that began last month. Having an extra whole day where I am fresh to work and ALLOWED to work is liberating and making a massive difference to the amount that is getting done!
The discipline required is hard - absolutely. But VERY rewarding. You can expect to see more regular blogging and more progress updates from here on out.
There IS a slight shake up in the roadmap however. As I am now earning less money from my day job I need to try and make up at least some of that ASAP. Some small trickle funds. As such, Drop is getting a much more featured, more polished sequel which is nearly ready. I may be releasing a few other simple, but fun, mobile apps after depending on how the bank balance looks. But my more structured development time is allowing me to plan and prioritise coding tasks in a much more managed way so Dodeka STILL has it's slot and is probably coming sooner than you think.
In the mean time, welcome to the new website and hopefully a fresh breath of life for HS! It feels good to be back and finally moving forward.
Being a solo indie developer can be hard. If something else crops up in your life that requires your full focus then the dev WILL suffer, there is no team to carry it and no one to cover for you. The last few years have been some of the hardest in my life.
13th of Nov 2015 I received a phone call whilst at my day job (I am a orthotics technician) asking me to rush home and drive my father to hospital (my mother is disabled). The next day he was diagnosed with liver cancer. The next few months of my life were spent looking after mum and visiting dad as they assessed treatment options. At first it looked like they may be able to do a life saving operation which they EVENTUALLY (march) attempted after many ridiculous delays (such as surgery computers crashing, doctors strikes, etc) but they had found the cancer had spread and there was nothing they could do. He was still fairly strong and started a course of chemo which he was responding well to.
During May that year my mother went into hospital for a "routine operation with complications". That it to say my mother was a complex example of the situation but the operation itself should not pose too many risks. Sadly, during this operation there was an accident and part of her bowel was split. They performed an emergency repair, stitching the wound closed and transferring her to more long term care. That evening whilst she was laying in the ward the stitching came undone and NEARLY resulted in her death. She was moved to intensive care after another emergency operation and somehow made it back from the brink. Just. At one point we were told it was probably time to say our goodbyes. But slowly her condition improved and her strength slowly returned although she is still, to this day, bed bound at home unless carried to a special wheel chair. Prior to the surgical accident she had limited mobility using walking supports.
But as she grew stronger my dad sadly grew weaker. On the 28th of January '17 his story ended and we said goodbye. That is still a hard thing to write and has made me put off this post for several weeks.
As you can imagine, during this period I have not got an awful lot done. I can thankfully say it has not been a complete stand still! Work has been going on whenever I've found the mental strength. But the limit of my strength has mostly been reserved for looking after my family and myself.
On to more positive things then.
I love game programming. I love working on projects that I have designed. Even before 2015 hit I was not feeling satisfied with the level of time I had to work on these things. This year my wife and I decided it was time for me to go part-time at my day job so I could focus on my passion more "officially" rather than just in the evenings where I had some energy left. This is starting with just one day a week, an arrangement that began last month. Having an extra whole day where I am fresh to work and ALLOWED to work is liberating and making a massive difference to the amount that is getting done!
The discipline required is hard - absolutely. But VERY rewarding. You can expect to see more regular blogging and more progress updates from here on out.
There IS a slight shake up in the roadmap however. As I am now earning less money from my day job I need to try and make up at least some of that ASAP. Some small trickle funds. As such, Drop is getting a much more featured, more polished sequel which is nearly ready. I may be releasing a few other simple, but fun, mobile apps after depending on how the bank balance looks. But my more structured development time is allowing me to plan and prioritise coding tasks in a much more managed way so Dodeka STILL has it's slot and is probably coming sooner than you think.
In the mean time, welcome to the new website and hopefully a fresh breath of life for HS! It feels good to be back and finally moving forward.
New website!
- Posted on: 04/10/2014
Post Type: Site Update
It is way overdue but here it finally is - heavenlysoftware.co.uk 2.0!
The new website should offer a much better user experience for everyone and is now touch screen friendly.
We have dropped all the forums as although they were created to allow you to connect with us and the rest of the community they actually ended up preventing that when the spam became so great it was just not possible to administrate it. I have no idea how many people tried to connect via the HS forums or the duo-game.com forums but I am so sorry for the terrible user support you would of experienced!
To keep things more manageable we have opted to now use a facebook page as a means for you to chat with us and others. Feel free to connect with us straight away!
The final new addition to our site is this blog. I (Dave) hope to be able to bring development updates about projects I am working on rather than a couple of years of silence between each release. Let's see how that goes ;)
The new website should offer a much better user experience for everyone and is now touch screen friendly.
We have dropped all the forums as although they were created to allow you to connect with us and the rest of the community they actually ended up preventing that when the spam became so great it was just not possible to administrate it. I have no idea how many people tried to connect via the HS forums or the duo-game.com forums but I am so sorry for the terrible user support you would of experienced!
To keep things more manageable we have opted to now use a facebook page as a means for you to chat with us and others. Feel free to connect with us straight away!
The final new addition to our site is this blog. I (Dave) hope to be able to bring development updates about projects I am working on rather than a couple of years of silence between each release. Let's see how that goes ;)