mikesdevcorner.com - January 2015

I can't help myself, but I got the strong feeling that something regarding the content management system Joomla changed over the last couple of years. And I do not mean the good kind of change. Ok, it is true. I may have overslept some changes. And I may have missed some major releases. But should there not have been more release to miss? Does Joomla have such long release cycles? Or switched the former very active community with its component- module- and template developers to another cms tool like Wordpress? At least the graphic a quick google lookup revealed, suggested so. Market share 2015 up until now: 60.7% Wordpress, 7% Joomla, after all, second place in front of Drupal and Blogger.

Yet there is this feeling of solitude, searching the web at 3am for components and modules from solely canceled and discontinued projects of former major players, not even compatible for the last major Joomla release. Abandoned and deserted project sites with last updates mid 2013. Therebetween, fee-based components, promising god and the world while not giving me the opportunity to test or try them beforehand. At least, there seems to be some artists around which are publishing their Wordpress templates for the big J too. (Source)

Dear blog. It's me again. I had (and still have) the conviction that someday, I am going to design and implement one hell of an awesome 2d game. Until then, I kill my time wrapping my head around various gaming concepts and occasionally developing prototypes and proof of concepts. As chance would have it, Sebastian and me were working on a very promising idea the other day. So we decided to draft a quick protoype in libGDX. As you would expect from us, we did not finish it to a degree to pitch it somewhere. But in our humble opinion, it should be a pretty solid foundation.

We thought about it and came to the following conclusion: This blog will serve us as platform to document the process of development for this game. There will be examples, code snippets, tutorial videos and explanations to every part of creating the game. We will break bigger problems down to solvable, more understandable smaller problems. Since I often found the solution to a problem I had on various blogs and development sites, I thought it is about time to share my solutions the same way.

Here you can see the first video on this topic, which was already taken in october last year (one can easily realize how rarely there is time to advance projects like this).

It is time. This has been overdue long enough. The whole world forces their opinions and '2 cents' on the internet's mind about everything and nothing when I sit quietly beside and keep my mouth shut. This changes now. Hereby I officially start my own software development blog. I planned to do so for quite some time now. If it wasn't about time. So, what will be my topics? Since I work as C#.net developer and engage in 2d game development with Java in my spare time, this will be my first priority. I want to discuss various techniques, maybe dissect some code snippets and walk you through my/our game concepts and ideas.

The attendive reader has already noticed i switched from singular to plural. So, who is there else? It's simple: I work with several friends on various projects. There are graphic artists, other software engineers, audio people, hands for marketing and distribution and so on. And the many, many friends which keeps testing and reporting bugs and cheer us up if something goes the wrong way and a gameplay or concept blews up in our faces. ;) Thank you all. I guess it takes some more people than us core nerds in front of eclipse, which engage in the nitty gritty technical details. But first and foremost there will be articles and videos about game development.

So, I'm looking forward to the future, and should there be, against expectations, some human beings interested enought to keeps reading my blog, giving in to my bad grammer and worse spelling and enduring my wicked, inexperienced style of writing: You're the real mvp!

See you next time
Mike

public class HelloWorld { 
    public static void main(String[] args) { 
      System.out.println("Hello World!"); 
    }
}