It's nearly here. My massively multiplayer football management game on Android is nearing its first release. To get there, I need 12 testers for two weeks to install the game and run it once or twice then Google will let me release it. If you're interested in trying it out, here's the blurb about the game.

I'm building a massively multiplayer football management game for people who don't have the time for Football Manager and maybe want to buy a player while they're sitting on the bog. Y'know, like real managers do. You don’t have to be a management game nerd. This has more in common with Fantasy Premier League than Football Manager. In the game, you are assigned a pub or village team in a gameworld in one of the bottom two tiers of a 4 tier football pyramid. Your team is a bunch of drunks and village idiots aspiring to be rank amateurs in the world of competitive football. Train your players, pick the team, search for new, less drunk footballers, sell players, buy players and compete to finish top of your league. Then get promoted and try not to go backwards. On the way, you will have to deal with suspensions and injuries to key players. Fixtures are played twice a day and a full season is complete in 7 days (faster than a season of Football Manager!) The game is available on Android at the moment in closed alpha and I'm looking for testers to help me take it into open testing. There are bugs and unfinished things. Like the UI. Looks a bit bland, yeah? I know. It'll go in the bin at some point. The art is AI-generated. I know. I feel dirty. It is intended to preview the style that I want for the game but that should also go in the bin at some point. Click enough ads and I'll have enough money to pay an actual human with fingers and stuff.

To get access to the closed alpha, use the link below to join the Google group and then you should have access to the link on the Play Store.

Google group to join: https://groups.google.com/g/jfg-alpha
Play Store Link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rwsoftware.jumpersforgoalposts

I also have a Discord channel set up which you can join here.

I started work at the beginning of this year on a mobile game that has been in my head for about 15 years. I've finally got to a point where, with the help of AI and everything I've learnt working in AWS for the last few years that I can actually build it.

It's called Jumpers for Goalposts and I'm hoping to have a playable closed beta available soon. I'll share more details when that happens. I'm really excited about this. I think it could be a lot of fun for a lot of people.

I've been working on a personal project for a while now off and on. It's a computer game version of Ravensburger's "Labyrinth" board game. My kids really enjoy this game. We've got the Harry Potter themed edition but my boys were wishing there was a Lego Ninjago version.

Well, it got me thinking... "how hard can it be". And of course it turns out, harder than I thought of course. My main blocker is time and patience as usual but I'm making some decent progress. The board is setup with some fairly decent artwork (given I'm a programmer and have no 3D or digital art skills)

The game has two states. The first lets you click one of the arrows and a tile will be inserted into the board, pushing out the one at the other side of the board. That becomes the "spare" tile which you can rotate by clicking the tile icon in the top right hand corner.

The second state is the player movement state which I'm fighting with a bit. To find your way from your player to the "treasure" tile you need to click the tile your player is on and drag a line through the maze. The game will highlight your path as you drag. The tricky part is getting the "pathfinding" to respect the walls. It's more tricky because while each tile has a valid set of directions (up and right for example) it can be rotated so up and right becomes right and down and all the logic has to consider that.

Still, it's getting there. Whether I'll figure it all out before my boys grow out of Ninjago, I don't know.

First new update to SIncLib for a while. I've added a new QOL feature that takes the micro management out of stock control. Admittedly, this may defeat the point of a management game but if you want to think less about stock control then this may be helpful! Once a product has been released and you have purchased your first batch of stock, this feature will monitor your stock levels and check if last months sales are greater than your current stock level + x%. You can set the percentage to whatever you want, say 200%. In this example, if you sell 10,000 copies last month, the mod will order enough new stock to take you up to 20,000. If you set the percentage to 50% then the mod will ensure you have 5,000 copies in stock. If you have product printers then it will send a job to the printers, otherwise it will just order copies. This also works for software that you have acquired through takeovers or IP purchases so can be quite useful at making sure you're not missing out on any extra sales! Get the mod on the Steam Workshop, here https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2885461480

My Software Inc. code mod has been updated to be compatible with the Beta 1.3 version of the game. It can be downloaded from Steam Workshop here.

SIncLib (or Software Inc. Library) is a bunch of game play enhancing tools. This is the third release and the first for Alpha 11+. It has two features currently but I have plans to add more over time.

The first feature in this library is Team Manager. This is a tool that will optimise a software team by pulling staff from other teams if they have staff more suited to the current project. So, let's say you have a team developing a game that requires System, Audio and 2D specialised developers. If the team doesn't have those skills your game is going to suck. But what if you have those skills in your company already in other teams but you don't know where. The game currently doesn't make it easy to manage staff and find the right skills and this is where our tool comes in. Simply select the team you want to optimise, the teams you want to draw developers from and whether you want to adjust the HR settings to match. The tool will now move out developers not up to the job and replace them with employees with the right skills and in the right quantities.

The second feature enables out of stock notifications for products you didn't develop, such as products acquired in a takeover or products from an IP trade

Feedback and ideas very much appreciated.

GitHub for the project is here: https://github.com/realworld666/SIncLib