Ask HN: What's You Life's Work?
Closest thing I have to a life&#x27;s work is probably my Proximity game.<p>* I released the original[1] as a flash game on Newgrounds eighteen years ago and it blew up, played millions of times across a bunch of websites<p>* Worked on a J2ME version for my mobile phone (it worked but never released it, probably should have)<p>* Worked on a sequel in Flash, then started learning about XNA and being able to put games on Xbox 360 with it, so I used that to learn C# and submitted to a game dev contest Microsoft hosted (and was a finalist in it. They also invited me to be one of the first demos for their Xbox Live Indie Games service - 1 of 8 - and was briefly shown during their keynote address at GDC that year, and was playable at one of their kiosks there. I happened to be at that GDC and got to watch people trying it live, it was surreal). I was at that GDC because the game got me a game producer job in the video game industry for a small publisher.[2]<p>* Saw iOS starting to blow up and decided to port my sequel to iOS and learn Objective-C and some OpenGL ES at the same time. Did okay but not amazing, I didn&#x27;t really know how to market it on there, just kind of got lost amongst other games. It&#x27;s not up there anymore as eventually it wasn&#x27;t worth keeping up with the required updates. I plan to support an iOS version again with Proximity 3[3]<p>* Remember when Kindle had games on it? You could apply to be a developer for that, and I did, and I was accepted. I got pretty far along in development (mostly just working on game options and menus still), but got distracted by college just long enough that Active Content was starting to be on its way out, so it never got released.<p>* Mostly made a Pico-8 version. Once again core gameplay was done, but got distracted at menus. At some point I want to sit down and finish it finally.<p>* Ported that Pico-8 version to PlayDate in a couple weekends since they are both Lua. Still waiting to receive my PlayDate so I can test it on the device. The graphics are super basic though, since I don&#x27;t know how to do 2-color graphics well (white&#x2F;black and dithering), and I&#x27;m worried about releasing it without some help there because I&#x27;m already seeing some beautiful puzzle games (comparatively) being released on that system.<p>* Worked together with a friend to make a physical board game and pieces prototype using a laser cutter. Talked to a couple of publishers but most are too hesitant to release a straight abstract game (just hex tiles with colors and numbers), despite its past popularity. Hoping to release a new version out there and maybe that will help them change their mind. Either that or get some other board games designs of mine released, which may convince them to take a chance on it. One other game design is signed and in the publisher&#x27;s queue (still a ways back, unfortunately).<p>* Working on Proximity 3 right now, using Monogame. I originally ported my Xbox 360 version of 2 to Monogame, and was just going to clean up and upgrade and add new features to it, but after a while I started getting really annoyed by resolution issues and having to redo art a bunch since it was all 2D art, so I decided to restart from scratch using 3D. Core gameplay loop is done and I&#x27;ve been spending my spare time working on the surrounding interface and options and redesigning some things so that a Twitch streamer can play it along with their viewers via the chat. Hoping to get that into Steam early access within the next 6 months.<p>* Have an idea for Proximity 4 already that makes the game a lot deeper. I&#x27;ll probably switch to Unity at that point, because I want to make it VR-compatible.<p>* I also need to make a new web version at some point, and I&#x27;d love for it to have room codes so people can join from anywhere. I&#x27;d also love to store the stats in a database and slowly build up a lichess style database of moves.<p>I work on other games as well, and that&#x27;s part of the reason why there was such a gap between Proximity 2 and Proximity 3 (over 10 years at this point), because I took a detour to try my hand at designing a bunch of other board games (also I was in the video game industry for a while with companies that had contracts that may not have looked too fondly on new video game releases by me), but I think it&#x27;s time for a sequel.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newgrounds.com&#x2F;portal&#x2F;view&#x2F;183428" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newgrounds.com&#x2F;portal&#x2F;view&#x2F;183428</a><p>[2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;Yqe0hS7AvOE" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;Yqe0hS7AvOE</a><p>[3]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;uy08ohBLGhE" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;uy08ohBLGhE</a>