It’s been hellishly busy as of late, as I’m knee deep in Tilt to Live HD. Now on with my quick blurb: This tip is kind of a “duh” much in the same way version control software is for most developers. The thing is I still meet a lot of developers who don’t use any form of version control. And automated builds simply weren’t even in my own tool set initially....

It’s been busy, busy, busy as of late. We’re in full swing trying to get Tilt to Live HD ready for the iPad. It’s looking amazing thus far and plays a lot better than just the 2x mode for the original Tilt to Live. Frostbite mode just went out the door a few days ago, and the response has been positive so far. We’ve been getting some responses from users saying the game has become too easy in the other modes....

Markus Nigrin wrote a great follow-up to my previous post on managing one’s burn rate when going independent. His post touches on some really important information that I completely left out of mine, namely, being educated about investing and not ignoring it. I’m guilty of this as well, but only since “cutting the chord” have I become much more concerned about my lack of education about investing, and it’s something I’m currently working to improve....

While I was working at a day job for the past couple of years I was gobbling up any info I could find on going fully independent and the what it takes not only from a business perspective, but what you have to change about your personal life, ideals, and expectations in order to make it sustainable. One of things that stuck out a lot was managing my burn rate. Minimizing the amount of money leaving my account wasn’t just a matter of not buying a Starbucks coffee (I don’t even drink coffee, but you get the idea)....

When your profession empowers you to design literally just about anything, it’s easy to rationalize just about any game design decision. Hell, I somehow managed to rationalize that our new power up for Tilt to Live have a screeching hawk sound effect. Bad idea? You’ll have to wait and see. When Adam and I are working on design details for how a particular system or game mechanic will work, we bring a lot of assumptions to the table of how we think people think....

Ahh, my first idevblogaday post! For those that don’t know, idevblogaday is a group of indie dev bloggers started by Miguel Á. Friginal of @mysterycoconut games to get developers blogging more regularly. So we’ll see how that goes :]. After finishing the initial release of Tilt to Live I had been wanting to gather up my thoughts on what I had learned about making a game that is heavily dependent on accelerometer controls....

Looking back at some of my old blog posts where I contemplate and muse about long term career goals; I would have never guessed 9 months later I would sitting here having accomplished one of my ‘loftier’ ones: Become a full time independent game developer. It’s been 23 days since I cut the chord and went full time indie. And the range of emotions are wild and varied as I flail about trying to get settled into a new and super exciting lifestyle....

…it’s so calming. I remember registering this domain in similar weather conditions, hence the name :). I submitted an update to Tilt to Live earlier this week, after crunching for a few days to get it done. So much to say and so little time :[. Heading up to New York City this weekend with family, which’ll be enjoyable. Went there for the first time a couple weekends ago since middle school, and it was so captivating....

Here I was thinking that once Tilt to Live was out the door, that it’d calm down a bit and I’d get a breather to rest for a few days. Wrong. Running off the early buzz of Tilt to Live we took it as an opportunity to generate some extra excitement for our upcoming updates. It was a very weird shift going from a mostly ‘quiet’ development cycle of just spending days coding away to suddenly spending the majority of the next few weeks doing PR, marketing, chatting with players, etc....

Tilt to Live has been unleashed on the unsuspecting public! So far the general vibe has been extremely positive! Adam and I are both pretty excited about getting our first app store game out the door. What’s interesting is the workload went from “lull” to “overdrive” in a matter of days as we ramped up for release and still are trying to coordinate things for a bigger media push in the coming weeks....