New Year Goals (2025)

Alright! NEW YEAR! So, it's time to hit the gym, take up yoga, go to loads of like, business conventions, give up everything I enjoy, and work 25 hours a day. Never fear, SUPER PRODUCTIVE MAN is here! Right?!

lol, nah. That ain't me, it never will be, I'm not going to pretend it is, for anyone, and I don't feel guilty about it.

That said, I would like to get a little more done on my projects and site than I did last year. So my over-arching goal, for this site, for the new year is to make it part of my daily routine to dedicate at least one hour to working on whatever my current project is at the time. Up to this point I've just sorta worked on this stuff if and when I've felt like it, but I think this way I'll get more done. Besides, sometimes if you give yourself a push when you're perhaps not in the mood, it's that which gets you back into it.

Bubble VS

Last year I started work on a web browser game called Bubble VS. You can play a very early version of it here. It's a "match 3 bubbles" game with a focus on battling the computer. It's now ended up being three projects in one! Which leads me onto the next project, which will actually be finished first. O_o

JavaScript Game Library

Prior to starting Bubble VS, I had a look around so see if there was an existing game library to suit my needs. Why re-invent the wheel right? I was astonished to find nothing out there was *quite* what I wanted. Like, the existing JS game libs all seemed to want you to use their entire system and way of doing things and be really, super integrated into your game. I just want to be able to look at a single JS file with a buncha procedural functions in it, and instantly know how to do the following:

• Load resources and know if they loaded
• Draw an image from a sprite sheet and specify its rotation, size, RGBA prior to doing so
• Check for input on keyboard, mouse and game controller (don't care about phones or touch screen - sorry not sorry)
• Play/stop/pause sounds and music

As such, I'm now reworking the library I made for Superdeb!, which already does all that, but making it more simple and MAYBE even good enough for others to use, which brings me to the next project:

DrawLib Site and Demos

As part of developing this library, which is now called "DrawLib", I've ended up making a sorta mini-site/set of documentation which shows how to do stuff. This enables me to test all the functions work as intended, but also might help others who want to have a mess around making some 2D games.

Although, there will be a disclaimer advising people to use one of the existing libs lol.

What Else

Well that's the main focus for a while. But here's some other stuff I'd like to do this year and fit in when I can:

• Blog More Often - Simple as that. I have some ideas for blog entries and would like to do them.
• Tidy Up All my Themes/Layouts - I recently reworked my site's main theme, drastically simplifying it and would like to do the same for the free themes I offer. I also plan on having the Static Ultra free themes page just point to the Free Themes section on this site and have one place for all of them.
• Make Another Rat Edition Video - That series actually started getting some views and engagement when I released the first few videos. Then all the sudden, the fourth one was a dud, and I just gave up. I'd like to do one or three more and see how it goes.
• Paginate my main Blog Page - Maybe.
• Add RSS to this site - I think that will be good ✅ Done

That'll Do

That's plenty to be getting on with for a while. xD