It’s been a little over three months since my last post. It’s been a busy time. I’m busier now than when I had a day job.
Brick Mill Games
My primary time sink is my ongoing work to build an online digital wargame with Brick Mill Games. We’ve made quite a bit of progress over the past few months. The UI is improving by leaps and bounds. We have begun migrating away from the unit test harnesses and into real game-playing testing. The user invitation cycles work flawlessly. Games in progress can be launched into a map tableau and counters can be placed and dragged around the map, creating stacks when needed. Individual counters can be removed from stacks and stacks can be merged. Additionally, casualty bin and graveyard tableaux can be displayed and counters/stacks moved between them.
Changes to the unit states can also be drawn / redrawn on the counters themselves. If a unit takes casualties, the combat factors and unit size information is redrawn.
The next large bit is to dynamically draw and support the OoB tableau. This will contain the setup and reinforcement schedules, as well as contain the initial counter placement, for each scenario of each module. This step will see improvements to the scenario compiler in order to provide the information necessary for the game client to generate the tableau. Following this step, the game client will begin to interact with the server-side database to maintain the game state, ie: the locations of each unit as well as the turn/phase information.
In other Brick Mill news, my friend and former co-worker, Pete Willey, has joined the team. Pete will be working on the MDK (Module Development Kit) to both come up to speed with Javascript and our code libraries as well as finishing the migration from our original client-side module development pipeline to a server-side one. His work will improve our ability to provide accurate information to our game model and finish the transition of our data pipelines that began years ago.
Winter’s Victory
My involvement with NES’ Winter’s Victory is drawing to a close with the game’s imminent publication this month. I’ve spent years of calendar time working on this game and it is finally going to be in the hands of game players around Christmas, though probably a bit after given the high volume of shipping that takes place around the holidays. I’m proud of the work I put into this game. It is my fifth(?) play testing credit and my first development credit in the hobby, though not as a full developer. We’ll see what the future holds in that regard.
Genealogy
My genealogical work continues, but at a much slower pace than in times past. I’ve been fleshing out some of Claire’s family tree as well as my aunts and uncles by marriage. Every now and then, I find a Wikitree profile that needs work or one that is locking me out that I need to connect to. It’s still great fun spending time, even when I get stuck. WT allows me to add research notes to certain profiles so that I can keep my notes where I need them. As of this writing, I’ve made 8,927 edits on the site.
One interesting bit of research involves Claire’s great-great-grandmother, Deborah Skidmore. The Skidmore name is an old English one, which might trace back to France via the Norman conquest of 1066, where the name was originally Scudamore. In the 6th Edition of his book, “THOMAS SKIDMORE (SCUDAMORE), 1605-1684, OF WESTERLEIGH, GLOUCESTERSHIRE, AND FAIRFIELD, CONNECTICUT; his ancestors, and descendants to the ninth generation”, by Warren Skidmore, he traces the the family tree of the Skidmores down through the ages. On Page 410, we find a John Van Nostrand Skidmore with a listing of his children on page 411. In that listing we find “i. [A daughter, born 1835-40.]”. Connecting these bits of information with more than a hopeful dose of confirmation bias has proven difficult given the dearth of surviving online records. A record of her birth or baptism and/or a record of her marriage to John Edgar Colkin would be beneficial, if her parents are named in the records, but I can’t seem to find them online. A trip to New York may be in the offing. This roadblock and others are showing that I’m hitting the limits of pure, on-line genealogy. Field trips may be in our future.
One idea that I’ve been toying with is giving a genealogy presentation at the town library. Given the number of Franco-Americans living in the Greater Lowell area, I think a presentation of this sort would be a good way of reintroducing us to our heritage and linking us with our cousins to the north. We’ll see.
The Old Day Job
Qualcomm laid off 60% of my old department about a month ago. The end has truly come for the product we all spent so much time developing and perfecting. To keep in touch, I installed a bulletin-board style website. It’s been pretty quiet, but at least it’s there.
I’ve also been organizing hikes with members of my old team, though we’ve only been on two so far. The weather this year as been very uncooperative. As some folks are still working, we need to schedule the hikes for the weekend, and yeah, this has been a tough year for weekend plans. Our next hike will be an introductory showshoe hike in January taking a route I’ve hiked before. It should be fun, weather permitting.