"Ivanine"

Hi people, I am back writing for a few days ... or maybe even for a few weeks ... :-P

I was a "little bit" busy the past three months doing my latest web game thingy. But it is finished now and before I start working on my next project I am giving myself a few holiday hours ... yes, I know, my boss is a bit of a slave driver :-( So I decided to spend them updating this blog.

Just for you to imagine how busy I was I can tell you that the game has 5500 effective lines of code (8000 with comments and blank lines, yes: I comment my code!) ... does that tell you anything? No? Nothing?

If you put that magic number on a software estimation cost model like the COCOMO II, developed by the NASA (the people that went to the Moon, you know?), then you get that it should take 16.5 person-months to develop the game ... meaning that you need 1 person to work for 16.5 months to complete the project. 2 people a bit more than 8 months and so on. I did it in 3 months ... coffee breaks: who needs them! ... working all night long: bring it on! ... if Buddhist monks can spend days meditating without eating and moving (or going to the toilet) so can I spend them in front of a computer! That was the spirit! :-D

So I finished this poker based dice game, O General, put it online and showed it to a few people for final tests and to check their impressions. Apart from one or two comments about the game flow itself (... and one person complaining about a score before even taking a quick look at the instructions manual where it is all clearly explained! >:-( ...) I was told that the game, even though nice and fun, was not "Ivanine" enough. And that comment came from a person that knows me quite well, so it must be true.

But ... not being Ivanine enough?!?!? WTF that means? I couldn't sleep thinking about what makes a thing Ivanine enough! (I swear it is true!)
I was also told that the first game I did, Ditch'em All, was a lot more Ivanine. So, what does Ditch'em All have that makes it more "of the nature of Ivan" than O General?

After a lot of thinking I managed to find out: O General is more on the safe side. Even though nice and fun O General lacks this Monty Python surrealism, it lacks this Weird Al Yankovic craziness and it lacks Steven Seagal's acting skills that are the essential ingredients for any good Ivanine thingy (like a certain Ivanine video that wanders around the Internet).

So, even though I am going to do normal (non Ivanine) games from time to time, I changed my original plans and my next game is going to be all about WORLD DOMINATION ... and it clearly needs to feature the four greatest forces of the universe: NINJAS, PIRATES, ZOMBIES and ROBOTS ... and also STEVEN SEAGAL, of course ... all presented in a coherent way ... scrap that last comment: all presented in an IVANINE way ... muhahahaha haha ha!