Lori M Olson OPED — Lori’s Unvarnished Opinion
I have so many thoughts about this tweet which resurfaced a couple of weeks ago in a retweet.
You may think that this tweet has nothing to do with you, because you aren’t working on a massive million dollar application. I beg to differ. Just because you have a small app doesn’t mean you don’t need to study human beings.
Our industry is famous for its acronyms. Let’s look at one. UX. If you didn’t already know, that stands for User eXperience. We fling the letters UX around and have checklists to follow, and tools to check our apps against, but sometimes it’s necessary to just stand back and think…what is the user experience when using my app? Do people complain that it’s hard to use? Do you shrug those complaints off, because your app is ‘feature complete’ and that is ‘not a bug’?
Stop doing the ‘easy fix’. Start thinking about what prompted people to report a problem, and how can you make things better for the people using your app.
FITS — Featured in the School
But we can’t share it. Yet. 😔
So let’s move to some news we can share. Work on the new DragonRuby course is progressing well. If you’ve taken the existing tutorial, you know that it covers the basics of using DragonRuby. This new course will show you how to create an entire game, from beginning to published on itch.io. We’re very excited to see this finished, and get it out into your hands.
In school app news: Lori will be delivering her 6 Pack Apps for Entrepreneurs course over six weeks, live via webinar, for the Rural Women Entrepreneurs In Tech (RWEIT) program. If you live in rural Alberta, Canada check it out!
TALK — Talk of the Tech
For this issue, a couple of items from the DRGTK Discord:
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A New DRGTK Release! — DragonRuby Game Toolkit v3.19 is out in the wild. The big news is that HD rendering capabilities have been added for the Pro version. Amir posted the release notes with all the details.
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Wait/Resume Blues — If you are having trouble using
wait/resumein test specs, you’ll want to check out this brief thread where it seemed kind of broken but in the end turned out not to be.
And keep in mind the other DRGTK/RubyMotion chat space is on Slack.
SPOT — Spotlight On…
We’re happy to bring some welcome attention to a couple of new game offerings:
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Our good friend Akzidenz has just released Creepy-Uppy, a browser game created with HTML5 which is a creepy twist on hacky sack. Great sound effects, best enjoyed with headphones.
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Then, if you’re into sneek peaks, there’s Hal & O.A.F. by Xed Industries. And if you’re also into providing constructive feedback to the creator, you can do that too.
GAME — All Things Gaming
One thing we know with absolute certainty is there is always room for another tutorial. They always out trend accompanying stories. So how about making a sprite flash in your game? Kevin Fischer-Okarin shows us how.
APP — All Things App
This is your regular reminder that Ruby is cool and flexible in many ways you don’t necessarily expect. The latest example: did you know you can override operators? Now you know!
TWIL — This Week I Learned…
…alligators walk underwater. Which, as the tweeter said makes us “forever unsettled”—that image is coming back in a COVID dream, for sure. Maybe with them wearing top hats and monocles and twirling umbrellas, for example, like a Hendrick’s Gin ad.
With all that said, we also began to wonder…how would we make a game with that image as the cornerstone? Inspiration can come from the most unlikely of sources even without chemical assistance.
HAHA — And They All Laughed
Okay, in Ruby it’s nil not null, but that’s a distinction without a difference. It’s no less funny and no less true.
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“Most business models have focused on self interest instead of user experience.” — Tim Cook