One of the first things my wife said to me after we got married was “I knew you played video games, but I didn’t know how much you played them.”  The thing you have to know about programmers, no matter what they are or what they do today, they probably started out as a kid playing games on “something” with a video screen.  That kid is still in all of them, yearning to topple empires, win dogfights with a starship, or hack zombies to bits.

Which brings us to our most recent entry in the “Future Products” category.  You can’t swing a dismembered limb in a GameStop without smacking into a game with zombies in it.  Vampires may be in vogue with all the tweens  and moms, but zombies have the hearts of nerds around the world (take that Edward Cullen).  So why shouldn’t WE get in on the game.

Let’s think about this for a second…what kind of zombie game would *I* like to write? I’ve seen a lot of things done with (and to) zombies, but I’ve never seen an  RTS zombie game (NOTE: if there is one out there, please don’t tell me…it will spoil the illusion…I’ll have to buy it instead of dreaming about writing one…I’ll have to hide it from my wife…and my kids (who love zombies)…it won’t be pretty).  A few quick pen strokes and …

Zombie Apocalypse XXVII - 10,000 ft View

There you have it.  The 10,000 ft. view of the game.  The last “bastion” of humanity, trapped in…well trapped someplace and trying to survive.  All they need are some motivation to venture outside…like food, equipment, exercise by running away and screaming very loudly.  Let’s zoom in the camera a bit and take a look at what it might look like up close….

Zombie Apocalypse XXVII - 1,000 ft View

NOTE:  Please excuse the crudity of the drawings in both cases.  If I’m going to do a formal presentation, I will use formal tools.  But for informal brainstorming, I can crank out ideas on pages about 10 times faster this way.

A full 3-D world…but a small one.  To make up for the lack of artistic skills (and the lack of an art department for that matter), we (that is to say Nonlinear Ideas and its amazingly dedicated staff who follow my every whim…except when they don’t) will use the equivalent of cardboard cutouts for our “agents” moving about the board.

We’ll also avoid needing a path finding engine (and the tools to post-process the geometry files and create path nodes)  by using a simple terrain and simple flocking behaviors (i.e. seek) for moving agents about the game.

As for plot, we’ll re-imagine existing plots that (seem to) have worked for others in new and bold ways the originators would never have thought (i.e. steal what is not nailed down, dress it up, sell it fast, get out early).

Well, that’s it then.  Right.  That’s all you need to get a game started.  Nothing left now but to write the code, demo it to EA, sell the rights, retire to private island and fight off real pirates with our own private army.  Sort of like the game we’re talking about, but with real people.

Some time passes….

Well, I’ve submitted the drawings to the marketing department.  It seems they’ve wasted no time and jumped right on top of this with their (usual) crack analysis skills (see their response below).

Zombie Apocalypse XXVII - Response from Marketing

Maybe next time…

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine called me and asked me how he could find out if somebody had been reading the e-mail at his computer.  I asked him why he thought somebody was reading his e-mail.  He works as mortgage broker and one of his co-workers started calling up his clients.

I asked him if he had any anti-virus software (he does, pretty good stuff), if the computer was his or the company’s (it’s not his), and what his password was (one of his children’s names).  After the third question, I told him (a) his co-worker had almost certainly broken into his files and (b) he needs to change his password to something less obvious than a marquee screaming “come steal this”.

I also told him if he was worried about somebody being on his computer again in his absence, he could pick up one of those programs that suspicious significants use to check-up/catch their significants.  You can find them just by searching Google with keywords like “software catch cheating spouse”.

Now it also got me thinking about a product we could produce.  Just about every laptop shipped these days has a camera.  What my friend really needed wasn’t just something to take a shot of the screen that his co-worker was looking at, he needed a picture of his co-worker as well shot at the same time.  Let’s lay out some basic marketing requirements of what this “thing” should look like:

1. The program/project name will be “You Are So Busted”.
2. The software should automatically start when the user starts the computer, logs on,  etc., unless it has been configured otherwise.
3. The software should be stealthy.  Maybe a tray icon (at the most), but nothing in the task bar unless the owner is actually configuring it.
4. The software should take a picture of the desktop (or focus window) periodically.  Maybe every 10 seconds.  Same thing with a web-cam if it is present.  We don’t need high motion video here…people searching through your mail, surfing for porn, or hanging out in chat rooms aren’t exactly switching screens that fast.
5. The software should NOT need a key logger or any of the other (hacker-like) and complicated features I’ve seen in some of the other “catcher” programs out there.

The interface and use model must be very simple.  Most of the other ones I’ve seen look pretty complicated.  People are using them (obviously), but I think our competitive advantage comes in simplifying the system, not adding a million options to it (Time Tracker aside).  It should be one main screen with the following options:

1. Start Automatically (default to “yes”).
2. Use Web Cam (default to “yes” if a web cam is found).
3. Set Storage Location (default to “somewhere”…doesn’t need to be changed).
4. Set Password (default to no password; if set, must be used for configuration as well).
5. Use Password (default to yes if the password is set).
6. Watch Captures – Look at capture sequences by date.  Show both the camera and the screen shots in sequence.  Let the user increase/decrease the view rate.

On the drawing board for now.

A version of Time Tracker for your iPhone or iPod touch.

Basic Feature Set

• Create Projects, Tasks (assigned to Projects) and Records like you can in the existing Time Tracker application.
• Allow you to filter records like the existing application.  You would be able to see roll-ups of the time for viewed Records as well.
• Send the data via e-mail so it can be imported into the PC version of Time Tracker.

This is going to get a little nerdy…and long…and possibly be slighltly less boring than clipping your toenails…feel free to nod off or bail out at any time.

Time Tracker has a “multi-user” option already.  This feature is somewhat crude (but effective), in that it requires the users to send their record files (with a “tag” for each user) to the “manager” who collects all the record files in one instance of Time Tracker.  This has been in place for some time (and since complaints about it have been ZERO, we’re assuming everybody is reasonably satisfied).

However, this is not what people really think of when they think “multi-user”.  What people really think of as multi-user is “connected”, either through the browser (i.e. web page interface) or an application (i.e. a program you run), but connected in a way that changes made by other users are immediately visible to you.

Let’s start with the basic goals that this program would need to satisfy:

1. The program would need to maintain a list of Projects.
2. The program would “general” list of Tasks, any of which could be used in the Projects.
3. Records are generated by Workers.  Each Record is associated with a Project and Task.
4. A Worker could work at any computer to create Records, as long as they can access the system (e.g. Log In).
5. A Worker could create Records while not connected to the system, but could upload their Records (and download any changes) when they are connected later.  Workers could be put into Groups.
6. A Manager (who is also a Worker) can create Records, but also see any Records created for any Project/Workers that have been assigned to them by the Administrator.
7. An Administrator adds Workers, Managers, Projects, Tasks, and other Administrators to the system.  They also configure what Projects/Workers are assigned to Managers.
8. The system must be easy to install and update.

The statements above reflect only the bare minimum the system would have to do.  On top of this, you could build a pretty nice system.  For example:

1. Costs could be assigned to hours worked, by individual Worker rate, by Project rate, by Task rate, etc.  It could even be a dynamic (e.g. scripted) so that for each “System”, we would create a custom billing model to match up with your particular business model.
2. The current Time Tracker system for generating reports (filtering by Project/Task/Worker) could be expanded to include graphs, “cheat checking” (this is a whole other topic).
3. Limits could be placed on Projects, Tasks, Workers, etc., which would be pushed down to the creation of records.

Implementation Quirks

In order to create this kind of system, the data for the system has to “live” somewhere that every user of the system can see.  Looking over the competing products for this system, it looks like the “first” choice is “just use the web” for the system.  That is to say, everybody gets to see web pages and use web pages.  This has some really good advantages:

1. All the data and code lives on a machine somewhere that the clients don’t have to configure and the developers don’t have to test for.  This also avoids the problem of creating a central server at the customer’s site.
2. Updates are immediate to everybody in the world at the same time.

On the other hand, there are a few disadvantages as well.

1. You don’t have to support every type of machine, but you do  have to support every browser.  There are LOTS of browsers.
2. If their access is down (as a company or as an individual) they can’t track time.
3. Updates are immediate to everybody in the world at the same time.  Sometimes, when you deploy an update, you want to test it at a control site (with some benevolent and forgiving users) before unleashing it on the unsuspecting general populace.
4. Developing for the web is extremely limiting.  It’s not hard to get text, some images, etc. up on a browser.  It is very hard to get dynamic forms to work correctly (without Ajax, Flash, etc.).  Doing these kinds of things is relatively easy in a desktop application.
5. If your site is hacked, EVERY customer is in danger of losing their data.

Business Questions

1. How much of a market is there for this product?
2. Can we produce a product that is competitive with what we see on the Web already (but at a lower price or with some other factor that provides an advantage)?
3. Is there any other product that we can pursue with a better chance of either (a) making us money or (b) making us happy?

From Here…

Right now, this project is still on the drawing board.