Natural Selection: Project Status Update

It is the start of a new month and it feels like an appropriate time to write a project status update for my Natural Selection iPhone game project.

I've been keeping keen records for this after-hours project which may interest number junkies:

• I started the project (tracking time) 44 days ago on March 18th 2009.
  
• I have worked a total of 109 man-hours on the project, which is 13.64 man-days (nearly 3 man weeks).
• I have averaged 2.48 man-hours a day and peaked at 8 man hours on some weekends
• I have spent 46 man-hours (5.75 man-days) on the code base and the remaining 63 man-days on documentation and R&D, although this ratio is sure to correct with time
  
• I am (under-)charging my time at a graduate salary ($25AUD/hour) totalling my time at $2,725.00.
  
• The sum of expenses to-date is a little more than $5,000AUD (2 iPhones sadly, apple dev program, phone case, and chargeable time).
• Weddings and other random commitments aside, a first cut by July with a launch soon after would be reasonable.
  

Progress has been reasonable, although could have been better. Efforts on the code base did not begin until a physics engine and game engine were selected. I spent a fair amount of time (nearly a calender month or approximately 42 man-hours) researching, testing, and evaluating physics engines, graphics engines, and game engines. I think my saving grace was my support network.

At the start of the project (20th March) I organized an on-going developer meet-up with the other mayhem guys. The goal was to spend 2 hours, every fortnight to discuss progress with our respective side-projects and offer ideas and support. We had our first meeting on the 25th March, and by our second meeting just before Easter (8th April) I felt self-conscious still chatting about requirements documents and my progress on engine evaluations. It was this second meeting that kicked me into gear. I got pragmatic over the Easter break, started the build, and real-progress has been steady since.

The following two images are screenshots of my app taken from my iPhone. The first (left) is an early version of the prototype taken April 20th and shows basic rendering of a two shape creature in a box world with functioning physics. The second shot (right) was taken today and shows a simple background (thanks Gimp) and a functioning creature and world definition/management and the start of an evolutionary process (goal is to reach the flag).

My medium term plan is to elaborate the evolutionary process some more and then start to flesh out the 'game' features. I am going to add some basic menus for selecting the proto-creatures from which to start an evolutionary process as well as the environments (levels) where the process will take place. Longer term, I want to start to develop a 'look' for the game, and start seriously developing/acquiring the assets (images, sounds, music). I'm thinking creative commons and sites like 99designs might be useful.

Most importantly, I'm having fun. Classical ANSI C and C++ memory management is still as painful as I remember, although objective-C is new to me and interesting as a different take on the OO paradigm.