Mobile Development… No, Like Developed on a Mobile Device

Developing games for my phone, from my phone is something that i’ve been thinking about on and off for a few years.

I’ve been using the Obsidian app for planning projects, and for writing generally. I use it on my personal computer and on my phone. I knew that it was possible to get the collections of notes to be synced between devices, but i haven’t been interested in pursuing that for most of the time that i’ve been using Obsidian for notes. Eventually my interest in having the devices share a collection of notes did come though, and i managed to get it working without buying the service that is offered through the app by setting up a Git repository.

Using Git on my iOS phone felt like the big barrier there, but i used a Git client app called Working Copy for that.

I use Git every day for game development work. Having access to this tool on my phone finally felt empowering. It brought me back to the idea of developing games using my phone.

I haven’t made a lot more progress with the idea, but i can tell you that it’s a difficult concept to communicate to the Google search bar.

I started thinking that the next step to explore might be writing an HTML5 page from my phone, and viewing it. That thread brought me back to my own website.

So here i am writing a blog post from my phone, because Squarespace has a mobile app as well.

Object Placement Tool and Cloud Connected

Hey there friends, I added this blog to my website as a place to share a bit about what i am working on. I started putting more time into my own projects again recently, and i’d love to tell you about what’s been growing from that.

Earlier in 2020, i picked up a VR headset (an Oculus Quest), and just felt a really strong compulsion to incorporate VR tools in my game development workflow. I may write some more about what i am dreaming about here, but after some experiments, i settled on a goal that felt realistically achievable and wrote a design document for a tool centered around arranging 3D models. The idea is essentially for a 3D modelling tool, except the models are created out of existing pieces. The pieces themselves would need to be created beforehand, with another 3D modelling tool. Though this concept is simple, it is surprising how creative people can get just combining objects. I’m not trying to create a modelling tool that competes with existing ones, but one that leverages the advantages of VR, for a small set of uses (that can help me create games).

After getting some main features working for this VR object placement tool, i wanted to put it to use (really to look for what’s missing, or not working), and picked an old project that is a simple game that i could make new levels for. This project also had a set of environment models already, which was perfect to start with. In August 2014, i joined Ludum Dare 30 and made a game i called Cloud Connected

cloudConnectedScreenshot.jpg

I’ve started making new level layouts from existing pieces, and the results are promising: when it’s intuitive to arrange the pieces, level design is playful and easy.

Working on these two projects together is certainly not faster than focusing on just one, but the feedback between them seems worth it.