In the last 5 months, I’ve got a new job (with radically different technical requirement but still game development), worked on several Flash (client-side) games, I’ve partially moved two times in Paris, I’ve been trying to fix a lot of problems I’ve cumulated since then.

Yet, I managed to get involved in several new projects. I’m crazy. Or totally dumb.

Some of my friends already told me before that I like to cumulate several projects at the same time and that it’s a bad idea. Today I fully agree and really need to cut something to allow some projects to be released.

So today, as I’m finally in a fixed place and starting to have a more peaceful life, I’ll list the projects I started since September and will set a status on each one of them.

(I don’t count my dayjob projects but they often take me more time than I wished…)

Pow & Co

Between September and the beginning of January I’ve been working on my spare-time on a little Pac-man “clone” (if you can say that) for and with a friend for an advertisement company. It was a good first Flash game experience but it took way to much time for what it was worth. I had some rush at my new job in the same time so it was not a very good moment to work on a little side project. But, oh well, it’s finished (with some minor bugs–got to catch them all!) and playable online for free!  If you want to try but don’t want to put your email in the form, just put something that look like an email.

So this one is finished.

NetRush

This one is my special baby project. It’s long and hard to grow, I’ve been working on it for a long time now,  but I cannot stop it. I know it’s a good project (for instance nobody else did try something similar — I often take time to search, just to be sure) and will keep it going until I finish at least the first public version.

However, I didn’t work a lot on this when I first moved on Paris and still didn’t work a lot since Februray. In fact, I’m pausing this project for some time. It will be my only project once I’ve finished the first version of…

Art Of Sequence

This one is a project I’ve been thinking about since February 2009, when I first discovered Balak’s experience with digital comics. I had a tool project idea since then but I was aware that it was a too big project to work on with NetRush in the way. So I didn’t started it. Then I got some discussions with Balak and other people involved in digital comics and I was (and still am) convinced that it’s a project that is necessary for the online comics community.

So, to be short it’s a tool to help make digital comics. More about that … soon (certainly when the website will be online, in few months).

This project is my main focus currently. I’ve been hampered until now by some problems and moving so I didn’t get far for instance but I’m making enough progress to hope I’ll be able to release the first version in the summer. Then, as it’s a free open-source project (my first!), I’ll certainly let the community work with it and will then almost totally focus on NetRush. (will only supervise the AOS project).

That said, sometimes I need to get back to NetRush just to “breath some (personal) game code”. I just start Visual Studio, fix some code, add a minor feature and feel better after that.

Now, I don’t have only software projects. In fact I really need to make my other brain parts works, most of the time by drawing some comics…

Three Storms

This one is a wecomic project I started some years ago but still didn’t manage to get the first page out.

In fact, several pages are ready but I never finished “really” the first episode and really wanted to publish it in one time. I guess it’s a project that was also something like a “wall” in my mind for some reason. A project I’ve been delaying for so much time that it seems ridiculous. I was bothered by the quality of the pages, by the way I wanted to make the colours etc.

In the end, I’ve found a “simple” coloring style that really works. It’s not a big project but a “long” one so there is no other problem with it than the perseverance problem.

I’m still thinking for this one. Should I kill it? I don’t feel like it because it’s an important project. Maybe I’ll let it sleep some months before getting back to it. It’s more likely that I’ll just finish the first episode, publish it and get back to it once I’ve finished…

Mekta Shtae (The Way of The Theorician)

This one was a paper comics I’ve been planning to finish at the end of 2007. At the start of 2007 I had 70% of the story-board ready. Today, I just have some more artwork pages, but no comics pages yet.

However, it’s a really important project for me, a special challenge. So this one is my main focus on the drawing-comics side today. It’s a one shot around 60 pages novel and I’ve planned to finish it by the end of the year. So far, I’m not yet at a good speed to achieve this goal but I’m still trying hard.

The Inner Singularity

This one is a little webcomics “label” I wanted to create. The idea was to gather some webcomics talking about the “robot condition”, very Asimov-style.

For instance I consider this project to be dead. It’s a very good idea but I’ll never have time to manage it while making another comics (Mekta Shtae). Maybe I’ll reconsider it when I get back to Three Storms, if I find that I can get a reasonable publishing rhythm. So maybe next year.

Summing up

So I’ve got:

• Art Of Sequence : going on
• Mekta Shtae: going on
• NetRush : paused (until the v1.0 of AOS is out)
• Three Storms: maybe will soon publish the first episode but then will pause it until Mekta Shtae is done
• The Inner Singularity  : abandoned for instance
• Pow&Co: done

Yes that’s still a lot. Still working on it.