The past months have been very busy ones – taking care of a toddler eats up time. It also makes it hard to get in the kind of concentrated periods of work that I thrive on, and work on Imperium has suffered as a result. Not being the type who is able to run on idle, I have instead focused my efforts on work that is a better fit to the reality of the work conditions I currently face, where I can do work for an half-hour here and there, as well as being able to run tests in the oddest of circumstances. In short – developing for my Android phone. This has resulted in two games so far – A Brief History of Rome (a port of the Java stuff I released last year) and Pirates & Traders.

A Brief History of Rome is pretty much done (though I still have some improvements to the framework that I plan to incorporate), but Pirates & Traders is a concept that I intend to expand on further.

Where does that leave the Imperium project? Although the actual code work I’ve done has been less than I had hoped, I’ve actually done a lot of work evaluating and working on the core game mechanics, trying to figure ways to streamline the design even further. In some ways, I am actually more optimistic about the game than I’ve been for a long time. Finding time to work on it is a problem, but I remain committed to getting it done in some form. I am hoping that I’ll be better able to structure my time (and thus be able to work on Imperium more consistently) once the little one enters daycare after the summer.

I will also try to return to regular monthly updates from now on. Until next time, have a great summer.

As you may have noticed, I recently released my second Android phone game – Pirates & Traders. Pirates & Traders is a pirates themed combat and trading game; you get to sail around the Caribbean in a Sloop or Barque and fight or trade as you like.

The game is currently still in its early stages; as I get the time, I intend to expand it with quests, more upgrade opportunities and a whole bunch of other ideas that I have in mind for the game. For now, though, my focus is heavily on bug stomping. Once that phase is over, I will start to do more gameplay improvements (on a slightly more relaxed schedule than the current frantic update pace).

More thoughts on development and future plans when I return to the regular update schedule in May.

Hope all of you had a merry Christmas and that your year has started well.

As you may have noticed, I have hardly been idle. I spent a little time this January porting Imperium Mini over to the Android just for the heck of it. It went very smoothly and easily; the benefit of working with Java. I doubt there is much of a market on there for strategy games more complex than Risk, though; so it’s not likely to make me rich any time soon. Nevertheless, it’s the type of game I wish there were more of on phones (and I was bored at the time), so…

Despite getting sidetracked on that, I did work a lot on Imperium throughout the past two months. I completed the basic game version, but ran into a few bugs along the way (now mostly solved). Work right now is focused on figuring out how to make the AI work well, as I am not very happy with it right now; it is too passive. It was while I was working (on paper) with ideas for how to solve this issue that I did the Android porting.

I’ll be having some time to think through such issues over the next couple of months, as I’m off on maternity leave until April. This also means that I am likely to be less active online for a while; so if you don’t see any updates on progress before May, that will be the reason.

“Imperium Mini: A Brief History of Rome” is now available for Android phones. Idleness is a terrible thing, and when I had a spot of idle time between Christmas and New Year, I got so irritated at not having anything worthwhile to play on my Android phone that I started to port the game over. So now you can recruit Legions and Auxilia, conquer and civilize the known world and preside over the rise and fall of the Roman Empire all at the tip of your finger.

The game is available on the Android market under the name “A Brief History of Rome” and is free (ad-supported).

Merry Christmas (or Seasons Greetings) to you all, and have a Happy New Year.