What I was up to

An overview of stuff I was working on or other stuff that kept me occupied in October 2020. Inspired by the movement of /now pages.

Projects

At Boords, I’m currently working on a new way of looking at the frames in your storyboards. It’s a tricky complex combination of features, so it’s taking a bit longer than ideal.

In my spare time, I’m still learning iOS development. At this point I’m pretty comfortable with Swift and some of the patterns that I’ve learned, and I’m applying those directly in an app that I’m making.

Games

I’ve been gaming a lot in the last month, splitting some spare time between Cities: Skylines, Star Wars: Squadrons, and Ooblets.

Cities: Skylines

I’ve been working on a circular city. That’s the idea. Because growing your city is the only remaining goal you have after a while, I’ve added some other cities to the map as well.

An aerial view of my main city, and the surrounding cities

Star Wars: Squadrons

The single player mode is a lot of fun, and has some interesting writing and characters (hurray for including a non-binary character). I’m not doing so well in the online matches. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m using a joystick, if the matchmaking is bad, or if I just suck. We’ll see.

star wars squadrons
The pretty view from a Tie Fighter. Playing the bad guys is part of the main story, but it's rather well done. You can just smell the brainwashing going on amongst the imperials. Yuck. Give me a nice A-Wing and I'll be happy

Ooblets

Ooblets is a new game currently in Early Access, but even though it’s not complete it’s proving to be a delightful game. It’s cute as heck, and quite relaxing. In a way, it’s a combination of many of the nice parts of games like Pokémon, Stardew Valley, and Animal Crossing. You can collect cute creatures through Dance Battles, grow all sorts of crops (and the Ooblets themselves) on your farm, and befriend the local quirky villagers.

ooblets
After adding a new Ooblet to your collection, you can have it scanned for research (and money)

Other entertainment

We’ve been playing a Dungeons & Dragons campaign with a couple of people since the beginning of the pandemic, and that’s one of our weekly highlights.

TV show wise, I think we’re running out of stuff we want to see. That’s tricky. We’ve been enjoying the Moominvalley TV show, though. It’s a lovely thing to watch when you need some distraction from these interesting times we live in.

Reading

I’m still making my way through Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Series. Currently I’m listening to Night Watch with my wife.