I noticed ThinkGeek.com is running a haiku contest. Here are some of my recent entries:

DMCA sucks
our tax dollars are wasted
clueless lawmakers

Five, seven, and five
Such an odd metaphor means;
The mind accepts it

e-voting machines
pre-programmed results for us
it's double-plus good!

new PC price wars
squabble among the vendors
another price cut!

my new WIFI card
802.11b
beautiful surfing

TCP/IP
our favorite protocol
ties us together

George W. Bush,
Big Bird, Pluto, Daffy Duck
not much to choose from

from ThinkGeek Dot Com
direct to your cubicle
necessary swag

another haiku
enters me in the contest.
I want to win it!

XP SP2:
Safety inflicted on us.
Better test it first!

Game Development Status

It's been a while since I last updated this blog. Let me recap...no, that would take too long: let me sum up. Things were in an uproar at the office for most of the last month. A new head of IT came on board and there was some question whether my position would be eliminated. In order to deal with my rampant paranoia I began working hard on my MCAD certification. Things have since calmed down at the office to the point where I feel I dedicate more hours to the game.

July monthly effort was a total of 40 hours 39 minutes in 19 sessions.
August effort total to date 6 hours 24 minutes in 5 sessions. Yearly total 245 hours 22 minutes, give or take.

My most recent work on the game includes:

• Completed refactoring of the AI's artillery plotting code and the game exec's artillery fire execution code. As a result of this, the AI's artillery now plots and executes fire attacks.
• Added code to the AI movement plotting routines to place artillery in battery at the end of a move if there were enemy units in range and movement points remaining to do it.
• Fixed a few minor bugs.
• Added graphical markers in the form of medal icons to the Unit Info dialog to indicate leaders' special abilities.

Upcoming work includes:

• I have come up with a number of bugs in the past month. I will be addressing some of those in the next session or two as I come back up to speed.
• I will review the AI's cavalry charge plotting and execution code. This is the last remaining tactical building block.
• Chris has produced documents describing attack and defend doctrines for divisional level formations. Once AI cavalry charges are working, I will write code to implement these doctrines. Part of that effort will include giving some thought to making it easy to add new doctrinal schemes (formation/action combinations) to the game, along with a means of choosing among multiple doctrines.

As far as the schedule is concerned, I'd say we took a hit the last month. I feel renewed confidence that we will hit our alpha and beta milestone dates, but some of the slack has been lost.