It was an exciting journey but I believe that all the localizations have been QA’d and are ready to go live on the Big Fish Games foreign sites.

It’s live in Spain (www.BigFishGames.es) and the others should soon follow in Germany (www.BigFishGames.de), France (www.BigFishGames.fr) and last but not least the Netherlands (www.BigFishGames.nl).

There weren’t that many translation issues but occasionally I needed to tweak the translations and I usually didn’t do it correctly. Google Translate is awesome but is no substitute for a bi-lingual person. For instance, “Matches” can mean “Matching two objects” (the Clutter way)….or it can mean something that lights a cigarette. Two very different words in other languages. ( Fósforo vs. Pares – Guess which is which.)

That was Spanish, in German I learned that you can translate Score into “Note” or “Punktestand”. Here’s a clue, one means “standings” and one means a “musical score”. Also, apparently when you abbreviate a word it can change from the masculine form to the feminine form under the covers. (I think that’s what happened).

The Dutch folks handling the localization were the only group that wanted me to change the name of the game to Rommel. Just wasn’t going to happen.

All in all I made 3 rounds of changes for German and French, while only 2 rounds of changes for the Dutch and Spanish versions.

Since I believe that very few players actually read the story and self-help-isms in the game, then I’m not too worried about other translation issues.

Curiously though, the Dutch translation changed my Mayflower fun fact to something about the Titanic. I laughed until I cried on that one. It was in the Plymouth Mass. part of the game with a picture of the Mayflower II showing. I was so drained at that point (and because I thought it was funny) that I let the translation stand.

I don’t know if they have forums for the game like they do in English (I’ll know tomorrow, I think they do), but I’m looking forward to dropping the comments into Google Translate to see what they say. I’m hoping that I’ll be like Jerry  Lewis (in France), David Hasselhoff (in Germany), or The Monkees (in Japan). They were all hugely popular (arguably even more so than in America) in the specific niche foreign market.

I can still hope and dream can’t I? Was Weird Al Yankovic a Genius in France or did he just write a song about it. Billy Joe Bob Jack says…Check ‘er Out.

For starters, the details of the bet are as follows.

I have two years to reach 180. For every day before two years that I reach 180 and maintain (going no hire than 182)…my son will pay me $1. If I am over 180 in two years, I owe him 10 dollars for every lb. I’m over.  The bet started on July 26th.

The lowest I’ve been since 1997 was around 200 lbs. I’ve been up as high as 245 and recently hit 210 this past June. (That was 35 lbs in a year). I plan to get a good start and be back to 210 by the end of August. That will leave me 30 lbs. to lose to “win the bet”.

I had slid back to 215 just after June…and then was “bad” before my Jamaica trip and rose to 222. Jamaica wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be…hitting only 228 on my return. I am now at 226…so it’s just 46 lbs left to go.

The main thing I have to do is go back to the Weight Watchers formula as well as write down everything that I eat. The Weight Watchers formula (old one) is simple.

(C/50) + (F/12) – (R/5).  C is calories, F is grams of fat, and R is grams of fiber.

I’m allowed 32 points a day (until I hit 200…then I might cut that back a little).

For me, this usually means….A Bagel for Breakfast, A small sandwich for lunch…and a very good dinner (without really pigging out on steak or other high fatty foods).

I’ve tried other methods, but the Weight Watcher points works well…mainly as a way to focus on what I should be doing. Chips, French Fries and Popcorn at the Movies are really the only sacrifices I’ll be making. Everything else is manageable.

For snacks it will be mainly fruit-cups. They do the job. Not too bad for me points wise and they do satisfy my late in the evenings cravings.

I’ll report back here at least once a week. Wish me luck.

First and foremost, the statement is absolutely true in the sense of the usual interpretation that “Good” means “Good Enough”. When completing something; if “Good Enough” is the goal, then Perfect/Excellence/High Art/Awesomeness will not be close at hand. Also, the converse is true. When we strive for perfection, good enough will not be our stopping point.

I would love to write perfect code and find the perfect artist to help me create my perfect vision of what a Casual Download game could be. I would love to clone myself, so that the other copy of myself could spend a couple of years creating the perfect programming language, just for me, that would help me create that perfect game. I’d love to clone another copy of myself just to spend years to become the perfect technical artist that can do more than just Bevel a box and call it an interface. Ok, so now I need a third clone so that I could do professional recording of my own music in all my games. And, while I’m at it, I need a fourth clone (and please don’t tell him that he’s just my minion clone) to do all the little tasks that are really kind of annoying, but still need to be done right. Oh, and maybe one more clone that does all this blogging as well as story design and final text.

“Perception is everything, reality is incidental”
“The interface is everything, the implementation is irrelevant”
“A difference that is no difference is no difference at all”

Those are three of my favorite quotes from a friend of mine, Malcolm Michael, who I learned quite a bit about choices from while making my first shareware game called “Modern Problems”. (What a sentence that was. Where is that cloned better writer guy when you need him?)

A computer game is first and foremost “an interface to an activity to provide entertainment”. Some folks would be shocked to hear me say that, but for me, that’s the bottom line. Clutter is entertainment in the form of a game. It has puzzles within it, and solving puzzles is part of it but it’s mainly an activity. You can get better at the main activity and you can choose to enjoy the puzzle aspects of it (or not), but it’s mainly an activity to provide enjoyment. The main activity is matching identical objects and although it’s not truly a Hidden Object Game (HOG), it appeals to that market demographic. Because it’s trying to compete in the HOG market, Clutter has to have a Story, Music, Mini-games, and a host of other requirements. (scoring, Full Screen and Windows, Sound FXs, simple install, etc…)

For me, “The interface is everything” means that the “game mechanic” is what matters most. This is the one place where I do seek “perfection”. The game mechanic must be so intuitive that players doesn’t really notice it; they just play. I think the main Clutter mechanic is close to perfection although a couple of the mechanics in the mini-games could be a little better. I’m going to allow dragging/flicking in Clutter II and I’m looking forward to perfecting that mechanic as well. If it’s not close-to-perfection the game won’t work.

As to the other elements, I settle for “good enough” with a small caveat that makes all the difference. That caveat is that I add as many personal touches and choices in the “good enough” areas to make them distinct from other games. The music in the game was hand-picked to remind me of Oscar Peterson’s Canadiana Suite – an album I loved when I was first listening to play the piano. Leon Poncelette’s story has many, many elements that were picked from my life. Even the advice side of things comes from a lot of personal experience. I’ve always wanted to write a self-help book and that was close. The sense of humor (which a lot of people seemed to get…while a lot of other people seemed to miss entirely….was just “Joe being Joe” as a friend of mine would say).

There is one other area where I settle for “good enough”….and that’s in the variations that I offer in all of the mini-games. I try to pick and choose the best variations and I think I mostly succeed in that area. I try to have easy levels that act as tutorials without being boring and then a couple of levels to challenge anyone and then a few levels that are very, very challenging (crossing the line from activity to really hard puzzles). I offer 5 styles and 5 difficulty levels per style for all the mini-games. The hardest part is to trim the variations down to just 5 (but luckily there is always sequels and more mini-games to come).

And that brings me to today. I’ve decided I’m going to release Rack’Em Too as a stand alone mini-game only on Puzzles By Joe. It’s not perfect, by any means, but I want to start the feedback process. I’ve put it off long enough, and today is going to be “good enough” for at least other people to start seeing it. I think the game itself is excellent, but it may be too much a puzzle instead of an activity (although the tutorial levels (level 1) are definitely just an activity). I think it will appeal to the Sudoku crowd but I may be wrong. The interface isn’t quite perfect, and some will complain…but I’ve decided to tweak that after I get some feedback.

So today, Good Enough triumphs. I’m going to predict that I can release Rack’Em Too before 2 PM today. I just have to add a button, move some code to let the keyboard work when not in development mode (so that people can pick a specific puzzle number), and then fine-tune the final 25 levels. (oh, and remove an option from the options menu that’s just for testing at this point).  Should be a piece of cake.

Did I have a point here? Don’t know, I’m afraid to re-read this to see if it’s coherent. I told you I was going to ramble, and I just haven’t cloned the better writer guy yet. So for now, even this Blog is “good enough”.

That’s from Everett’s website…www.kaser.com.

Everett is the Samuel Jackson of Logic Puzzles. By that I mean: He is The Man!!!

Over the years, whenever I’ve thought to myself that I have some extra time, I go check out one of his new games and it usually ends up sucking down weeks and weeks of my time. So much so, that I now avoid checking out his latest games, because I’m too busy, and I’m worried I won’t be able to stop playing them. Over the years, 7 of his games (I think he has well over 30 games now) have addicted me to one degree or another. Three of them I still play on a daily basis (Honey Comb Hotel, Knarly Works and Knarly Hexes.)

And I play two of those games on one of their “medium” levels (meaning…not really hard…but still causing me to use some logic deductions). I know that if I go to the next level, that I risk losing days of my life trying to become proficient at it.

And two out of those three games, I actually strongly disliked at first because some of his games are so different that it’s not obvious why it’s going to be an interesting challenge. I’ve played well over 10,000 levels in each of the games and I am still not bored.

If you’ve liked Free Cell or Mind Sweeper or Sudoku or Ken-Ken or Logical Battleships or any of the Pen and Pencil logic puzzles from Games Magazine (Or Dell Magazine), you will find enough puzzle variations from Everett to keep you busy for the rest of your life.

He’s that good. He’s the Man.

My favorite is Honey Comb Hotel. It’s the only one that I play on the absolute largest scale. (The knarly puzzles still scare me too much to advance there). I turn on a couple of the auto-complete switches so it’s pretty fast-paced for me. I try to do a puzzle in under 3 minutes (with no mistakes/hints). The nice thing about a Kaser game is that it’s very easy to make the game play the way you want it to (with handicaps/hints and puzzle sizes and the auto-complete settings). So…36000 minutes = 600 hours. I have easily played over 600 hours of Honey Comb Hotel. That’s pretty good for a mere $19.95.

Again, He’s that good. He’s the Man.

Once more, I salute you Mr. Kaser. Someday when I retire, I’ll check out the rest of your games. For now, I’m too scared to lose the time. (I’m dying to try Knarly Gigs and Occam’s Quilt….but I know I’ll never get Clutter II done if I download them).

(And someday after that…I want to check out KINT just to see if you’re as good a programmer as I think you are).

Mr. Kaser – You’re that good. Your games make me want to be better at what I do.

You da Man!!!

The version I will release will have 100 puzzles in it. 5 Styles, 5 Levels of difficulty per style and 4 unique puzzles in each. The first level of each style is quite easy but serves as a way for the player to figure out the rules of a style and get comfortable with the interface.

I have two purposes for releasing Rack’Em as a stand-alone game prior to it’s inclusion in Clutter II. First and foremost, I’d love to get feedback from anyone on what they think of the different styles of puzzles. Secondly, anyone who really likes them can make a small donation and I’ll open the game up for them and they can play it as much as they want. (Opening the game up will remove the 4 unique puzzles limit. This will let a person play over 30,000 unique puzzles per Style/Difficulty level).

It’s almost done, just a few more tweaks before it’s ready. I’m hoping to put it on my website tomorrow night.

The game is a cross between my original FitTris (the Coin Puzzle from Clutter was a variations of that game) and a few ideas I had about how to make it easier (and harder) at the same time. Like FitTris (or the Coin Puzzle), the object is to lay down Tetris like pieces made up of Pool Balls into a 9×9 grid, but the catch here is that some of the grid squares have a target Pool Ball already in them that must match the Pool Ball in the Tetris Piece in the same spot.

The puzzles aren’t for everyone but I like them.  Like most of my puzzles the difficulty ranges from exceptionally easy to mind-boggling. I’ll post some more pictures of the different styles when I release the game.

I’ve been programming to Weird-Al for about 25 years now and even sent him my own original comedy song called “Papa’s Wisdom” once. Tried to see him in concert but he canceled his one show in Binghamton (back in 2000) (even after I bought 9 tickets for friends and a spatula for each of them). It’s difficult to explain exactly why I love the guy so much, but I’m just going to list 20 things (memories, thoughts, theories) about Mr. Yankovic that make me love the guy and his work.

1. Do what you love and the money will follow.
2. Like the 3-stooges, it’s mostly a guy-thing but not quite as lopsided as them. (Most women just don’t like “stupid humor” as much as guys…yeah, I said it, doesn’t mean I’m sexist, if it’s true (and can be considered a compliment regardless of which side of the fence you’re on)).
3. My son doesn’t like Billy Joel and Elton John and most of the other mainstream artists I listen too, but he does enjoy Mr. Yankovic too. (often we made the 5 hour trip between N. Y. and N. H. listening to just Weird Al on the iPod.)
4. Three letters – U H F.
5. Love/Hate relationship with all things that are part of the pop-culture.
6. Every 2 years or so he produces another great “comeback” album.
7. Even the bad songs are great or so annoying that they’re good too.
8. He is so much better than he needs to be.
9. Even Ito and Amanda like him (especially the videos).
10. He gets better and better as he pushes the envelope for what a parody song can be.
11. He always creates a great idea/concept for a parody, and then it’s flawlessly executed. Some of the ideas themselves are pure genius – Bob, Albuquerque, Yoda, The Saga Begins, Leper Colony, The Brady Bunch…the list goes on and on. If I wrote this tomorrow, I’d list a different 5 or 6 songs.
12. His enthusiasm.
13. His niceness. His songs are never mean.
14. His social satire is always right on.
15. He keeps growing as an artist (yes, I’m serious). He’s technically much better than he was years ago.
16. I actually like his vocal tone.
17. The videos.
18. Everytime I listen to him, I’m surprised but how much I’ve forgotten and how many songs of his I just love hearing again.
19. Even the polka-medley’s are interesting. (I used to hate them but they’ve grown on me over time).
20. He gets permission to record/release parodies from the original artist. (And if they object, he only does the songs in concert, but not on recordings or DVD’s).

And 21…He just makes me smile. Right now I’m listening to “Can’t Watch This” all about bad TV sung to MC Hammer’s Can’t Touch This. Not a bad line in the song.

And 22…He’s the Man (especially with his Accordion). In 2002, when his concert was canceled, I modified the ending to a joke-song I wrote back in 1984-85.

Click to hear Papa’s Wisdom – By Joe Cassavaugh

One of the rules of programming that I try to take seriously is “Never Repeat Yourself, Never Repeat Yourself”. Although I call myself a programmer, I’m really a software engineer. I started thinking of myself as a software engineer back in the mid-80′s when I first learned C, Awk and the unix tools. I read a great book by Peter A. Darnell and Phillip E. Margolis called Software Engineering in C. This was the first time I heard a version of the NRY-NRY rule (also called DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) and DIE (Duplication is Evil)). They expressed the rule this way – “Needless redundancy is the hobgoblin of software engineering.”

Today is a fun day because I get to tackle a well defined problem with a well defined (in my mind) solution. It’s going to save me time in the long run and it’s one of those areas that I’ve been thinking about doing, but now that I’m going to translate Clutter into 4 other languages, it’s worth doing right now. Basically, I’m going to separate the text part of the button image from the button base. By doing this, I’ll just have to swap out text images for the new languages (the base 4-state button will remain the same).

While doing this, I will also redirect where some of the buttons live to make the translation step easier. As much as I’d love to have a minion to do this for me, by doing it myself, I don’t have to waste time explaining specifics, and it will work exactly the way I want it to.

Another nice thing, is that I’ll make it extensible but I won’t put in a lot of features…yet. It will be just enough to make the translation task easier, but it will lay the scaffolding for future enhancements. And that’s why it’s the ultimate Lego set.  Every block can fit into any other block (if you want it to) and if you do it right you can swap out huge areas of blocks and know that you won’t affect other blocks in other areas. I will add this new separate text button feature and all the old button styles will just keep working. And once I do this, I can choose to use this new feature as often as I want it. It will be a new tool that will let me swap out a new interface just that much quicker.

Anyway, it’s going to be fun…which reminds me of something I used to say to an old boss and good friend of mine: “Having fun, learning tons, still not done”.

If you’re messing with the Bandaged Cube, then I assume you’re fairly competent with the basic Rubik’s Cube. So, I’m going to assume that, and people can just ask questions in a comment, if my analysis and solution isn’t crystal clear.

Colors = Y, G, R opposite O, B, W respectively.

Analysis and conventions:

There is only one single cublet; YGB. Looking at the cube with this cubelet in the upper right front corner…gives you Yellow on Top, Green on Right, Red in Front, Blue on Left, etc…This is what I will call the Home position.

There are seven other movable couplets and these will be denoted by their two long edges. GY, YR, RG (group-1), GO, RB, YW (group-2) and finally the BW piece.

The WO centers are connected – leaving just the other 4 centers to turn (YRG and B). The YRG sides are rotationally symmetric. I looked for an operator that would leave the BW piece untouched. I found the following, really nice one:

F R U F R- F2 U-

Let’s call that the Move and label it M.

Perform M in home position and you’ll notice that RG piece stays in place.

I numbered the remaining 5 edges as follows (6 and 7 being the other two)

1. RB
2. YR
3. YW
4. YG
5. GO
6. RG
7. BW

I think of it as just a clock-wise numbering by looking at the single-cubelet (with Yellow on top of course).

This is a nice 5-cycle 1->2->5->4->3

Doing this 5 times, of course restores the Cube.

The Move (M) can be done with Yellow, Green or Red on top (keeping the single cubelet (YGR) in the upper-front-right spot).

I knew that the 5 cycle wasn’t going to be enough. At this point, I reasoned as follows. It’s easy to get the centers aligned. It’s easy to pop in BW (piece-7). It’s easy to get one of the (Group-1) pieces in which is then invariant under M from the right orientation (RG) (piece-6).

Using the 5-cycle, I can get one more in but that still left me with 11 unique positions to get to. There are 3 2-swaps and 4 3-cycles (2*4 + 3 = 11). Doing the 5-cycle from different directions only let me find one of the 11 (what I call the 23 (which swaps 2-3 and 4-5 (the 1 cube is now invariant by using M repeatedly until it’s in place). I needed one more interesting move and I found one. I call it The Big Move and I use B to note it (because it has to do with popping a piece in and out of the BW spot).

Here it is…The Big Move:

(U2 L U- F- L- U- F)(R U)(U2 L U- F- L- U- F)(U-R-)

1->2->5->3 and 4->6 A 4-cycle and a 2-cycle.

U2 L Ui Fi Li Ui F (accomplishes a lot but I think of it as getting the Yellow Red to go to the White-Blue spot (or 2->7). The (RU) then let’s you do the move again to put 7->2…and the final (U-R-) gets the cube back in it’s symmetrical form so the M operator can work.

With this operator (we’ll call it B) and Y, G, R for the M operator with that color on top). (Y on top is still the home orientation and the numbering). We have all we need to solve the cube from any position.

23 G2R-
24 RGB
25 YBG2Y2
2 GYBY2 – 3-5-4
3 GBR-Y2 – 2-5-4
4 BG2Y- – 2-5-3
5 Y2BG2 + 2-3-4

So, that’s it.

Get the Centers in place. Get the BW (7) in place.
Get RG (6) in place by using M from either R and G on top.
Get RB (1) by doing M with Y on top (or just Y).
Then look at 2, 3, 4, 5.
If one of them is in place use the corresponding formula (2, 3, 4, or 5) above.
If none of them is in place…look at where the YR (2) exchanged with – either 3, 4, 5 and use that formula (23, 24, 25) from above.

Some of what I’ll say here will sound like bragging, but keep reading, there is always someone better to put my humble accomplishments to shame.

I had heard about the Rubik’s Cube in early 1980 (I think from a Martin Gardner article but not the big cover story in March of 1981). I knew I wanted one, but the only way to get one was to send out of the country for one. Sometime in the spring of 1981, I picked up my first Rubik’s Cube. I picked it up at about 8 PM. I had to work at 4AM for UPS, loading trucks. I got home around 9-ish and started working on it. I worked on it until around 3 AM and then went to work. I returned from work at about 9AM and tried to go to sleep but the unsolved cube sat on my desk in it’s scrambled state, mocking me. I got back up, and solved it with another 4 hours or so of working on it. It would have gone quicker if I knew I could just pop-it apart and do “experiments” from a pristine state, but I didn’t know that at the time. For a while, I was very impressed with my 10-hour first solution especially when I read that most people never solve it on their own, and that those who do take between 2 days and 2 weeks to solve it. I thought I was pretty sharp, until I read about a Mathematician in England that has solved it in just 5 hours…without actually having a physical Rubik’s Cube on hand. He worked out the solution with just pencil and paper.

To be fair, I also solved it a 2nd time in just about 30 minutes…but then…I realized there was one thing I hadn’t really learned yet…(two-edge-flip)…and it would take me 10 more hours to find that operator. Once I did, I was down to solving it within 5 minutes always.

Within two weeks, I was down to a minute or so…and then I went to a contest at SUNY Albany. I was one of the fastest there, but my cube “blew apart on the curve” and it wasn’t a real contest (everyone used their own cubes). I met a kid there (about 6 years younger than me) and we hit it off. He was also about a minute or so…and when I showed him my method, he switched to it, and got down to 45 seconds easily. I figured, if he could learn my method…then I could learn to move my fingers more quickly. In about a week, I was down to 45 seconds, and then I started carrying the cube everywhere.

I finally settled on about a 33 second average (with no look ahead time). I could have been on That’s Incredible but I got talked out of traveling 4 hours for a contest in Buffalo N. Y. I later learned that my 33 would have easily won that regional contest (barring any slip ups on my part) and that would have landed me a spot on the 6 finalist on That’s Incredible. I would have come in last there…but…I would have been the oldest contestant too.

I was happy with the 33 and I used to think I was in the top 100-200 people in the U.S. in speed. But times change, and now the new method has most speed cubers under 20 seconds. In fact, I lived in Binghamton NY from 1997-2010 and wouldn’t you know it…the lady who created the method that all the really fast cubers use…lives in Binghamton. Her name is Jessica Fridrich and she does the cube in about 16-17 seconds on average. So I’m twice as slow as a person in the place I lived for 13 years.

As I look up from writing this, I see 15 variations of the Rubik’s cube that I own. In addition to the 7×7, 6×6, 3 5x5s and a couple of 4x4s variations; I own a Mirror Cube (one color – depth of a piece replaces the color…it’s awesome, and I can do it blindfolded), Homer Simpson (2×2), The Skewb, Square One, The Bandage Cube (one of my favorites), The Crazy Cube and a super Square One (not sure what that one’s really called)…and an awesome thing called The Latch Cube (for people who didn’t think the Rubik’s Cube was hard enough).

I’m sure I have another 30 or so cubes lying around in other areas.

I’m out of practice and can only do it in about 40 seconds (under pressure)…but I can also do it in 6-8 looks behind my back (but that’s not impressive anymore since other people can do it with just one look).

I’ve used the Rubik’s Cube to win bar bets. I’ve used it doing stand-up comedy. (If you ask, I’ll tell you two very specific, and very funny Rubik Cube based jokes). I met a gorgeous blond in a bar once…and she ended up being a Physics major who loved listening to me ramble on about the cube (especially a think called “Quarking the cube”).

And just this last year, I discoverd PuzzleMasters.ca which sells many, many, many Rubik Cube variations (it’s where I got the Bandaged, Latch, and Crazy ones mentioned above) and I’m sure I’ll find some more that I don’t have, that seem interesting.

This is really the tip of the iceberg…In some ways, the Cube is the ultimate puzzle. It’s the puzzle that never ends. There is always more to say about it. I’ll explain why that’s true, next time. I’ll try to write about the Cube at least once a week for a while.

The first one will be Rack’Em. The interface will be just like being in the Clutter game (but bypassing the main menu). I’m going to try to keep it simple, but here is the basic plan.

Five variations with five levels of difficulty each and either 3 or 5 randomly generated puzzles in each. There will be no time limit and anyone can play those 75 or 125 puzzles as much as they want. For just $5.00, anyone who wants to, will be able to unlock the randomness in the game for virtually millions of different puzzles.

Rack’Em will have 5 variations. Three levels will be like my original Rack’Em game. Another variation will be a mahjong-like brain teaser, and the final variation will be more luck-based, solitaire game.

After Rack’Em, I think I will release the venetian blinds game from Clutter-I with a few pictures and then a way to add groups of additional pictures easily (since that’s been requested). After that, maybe the Clock with another 25 variations not in the original game.

In case I haven’t mentioned it, Clutter is now on sold on Amazon.com.

Click here to check it out on Amazon.