It's a Gas

I'm hosting this guest post by Toby at the request of someone who shall remain nameless. This post IS NOT ENDORSED BY ANY COMPANY, IS A PERSONAL OPINION AND IS HUMOUR. now that we've got that out the way ...

We at Boss Alien have been excitedly watching CSR Racing's progress in the charts; and we're all pretty chuffed. From the small beginnings of the first line of code, to a veritable behemoth; we've released to a furore of acclaim.

Reading the App reviews, and various forum posts from around the world has been de rigueur for a few weeks, and believe me we are paying attention.

One of the more contentious issues has been the idea that you require Gas (Fuel) to race.

Believe it or not, the Gas (Fuel) mechanic arose not to enhance monetisation; but to protect users from unhealthily long play sessions. One of our testers, Jim, was brought to the brink of ruin after having played the game non-stop for 4 days. He was a mess.

At this point we realised we had a hit! Also, that we had a problem.

After much deliberation, we realised that we couldn't unleash something so dangerous into the wild. This isn't China. So, we developed a variety of ideas on how to solve the problem. One involved having a "Play Session" timer always on screen. Another, would go through your Facebook and Twitter feeds, keeping you up to date with the real world and showing pictures of your loved ones.

Neither truly dealt with the problem. Thus the solution was to limit the amount of time you could actually play in one session, hence: Gas.

We are all aware of how difficult it is to be released from the vice grips of compulsive, addictive and satisfying gameplay. So, we've come up with a list of things that you could do, whilst you wait for your next Pip of Gas to arrive.

Eat: The list of things you can prepare within 8 minutes isn't a lot, but Beans and Toast should contain enough sustenance to keep you going.
Sleep: Just a quick nap, you'll wake up when your fuel is back. You'll be fine. Your body needs it.
Go outside: It's at least mildly sunny here in Brighton right now. Go catch a few rays.
Talk to your family: Remember, they love you very much. Maybe they can play the game whilst you go and have a shower.
Write an article about Gas, and post it to a blog.
Errmm…..

Anyway. My 8 minutes is up, I've got to… you know….

I'll remember this weekend

I have something of a fetish for stats and metrics, and this weekend has been wonderful for watching graphs of numbers. Hopefully I'll be able to extrapolate some useful information from our current set of numbers that will apply to our first title. I might sound coy here, and hopefully all will be clear in a few more weeks. Interesting times!

Thanks EA!

A year late, but as they say, better late than never!

Toddlers

Are all toddlers crazy, or is it just mine?

Code

Code
Is a poem
Meant to be read
Meant to be read swiftly
To the world
Meant to be read
Langourously
Querulously
In whispers
To friends and self
Meant to be written
Over and over
Until it works
And occasionally
It appears
Beautiful

Engineering

In Science Fiction, there's really only two types of engineers that matter - embodied by Montgomery Scott and Geordie La Forge, respectively. (Sure, there's Kaylee from Firefly, R2D2 is good in a fix ... but you'll see where I'm going in a second).

You either get stuff done, or you don't. Anyone who doesn't get stuff done simply should not be calling themselves an engineer. And of those who do, you have the ones who say "It'll take a week" and then do it in an hour (the Scotty approach) and those who say "It'll take a week" and it takes a week (The La Forges).

While I have great respect for the Scot, that's simply not how I roll - padding my estimates leads to a scenario where all estimates are simply ignored, because everyone knows they are padded.

Which leaves me in the current situation, where nearly every estimate I give appears to be met with incredulity and ridicule - even when they are repeatedly borne out, as any later analysis can demonstrate.

So - how do you, as an engineer, handle your estimates? And when you give an estimate, and someone argues with the numbers - how do you approach that conversation?

Those who can, teach

I'm probably coming pretty late to the party, but I've been working through the Udacity online "Introduction to AI and Robotics" course ( http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/cs373 ) the last few days, and it is, in a word, fantastic. This is truly the best way I've seen or found to learn something technical. The tools and website are absolutely fantastic. The first course unit takes a couple of hours to work through, and it is split up into bitesize (1-2 minute) youtube clips, interspersed with "enter your answer" pages and programming tests, in the browser IDE. Everything is done in the browser window. If you don't understand a section of the presentation - simply rewind or restart that youtube clip! If you need to refer back to a previous section - click on the link! If you don't get what's required for a test - look ahead, see the answer, then go back and re-take the test!

As a platform for education, it's a fundamentally revolutionary step - yes, I know, Khan academy is moving us in this direction, and MIT do online courses, etc - but try it, you'll see what I mean. However, this isn't the most important part of the course - the most important part of the course is the content and the teachers.

These courses are being taught (and introduced) by the people who are at the top of their field - literally the best people in the world right now to teach the material. For example, the CS373 course on artificial intelligence and robotics is being taught by Sebastian Thrun, who has been a driving force behind the Google AI car team and the Darpa challenge winners for automated vehicles. This potentially shifts the adage from "those who can't ..." to "those who can ...". It's a hugely efficient use of their time (given anyone in this situation will certainly be passing on some of their knowledge to their team and upcoming replacements at some point) to be able to, instead, pass it on to anyone in the world who wishes to learn from the masters of the art. This replaces books, written by people at the top of their game, hopefully disseminated to some degree (but invariably at cost in time, space and money) with a "record once, play back infinitely" course for all.

It's bleeding great.