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Retrospective 2022
Mon, 02 Jan 2023 15:12:42 +0000
A visual summary of some of the stuff I've done in 2022, and a happy new year 2023!
A visual summary of some of the stuff I've done in 2022, and a happy new year 2023! 🐰

My 2022 at a glance

2022 was a rollercoaster. As if the world didn’t have enough with the climate crisis, the pandemic, and the never-ending wars in Syria and Yemen, Russia declared war against Ukraine (“special military operation”…) ☹️

Flights started changing routes to avoid Russian airspace. That meant that flights to Japan, already complicated with the pandemic, would now get longer and more complicated. So early on I decided I would not go to Japan this year, again… It’s going to be 5 years since my last visit… Some paperwork is still waiting… 😩

In the UK 🇬🇧 we got even more mess in the government, with 3 different Prime Ministers in one month (Bojo, Liz, and Sunak). The Queen died, and people got distracted for a while from the so-called “cost of living” crisis. Strikes at the end of the year made the access to public services more difficult and now I’m scared of getting sick because this doesn’t feel like a 1st world country anymore at some levels. At local level, everything is a mess as well. A building nearby has been without hot water for months. And we have been with water leaks and a broken lift for months as well. No one cares 🤷‍♂️

Personally, I’m still demotivated to make any new games in my spare time. But at the beginning of the year I decided to give Godot Engine a go. I enjoyed Godot very much (read Reasons for a solo developer to love Godot Engine), and I ported my English word puzzle game Syllabits to Godot (as well as the Catalan version, Sil·labetes). I also added a Wordle-like mode which I think worked quite well. We’ve been playing it on Fridays with colleagues from work and they seem to enjoy it because they ask for it 😃

Since the games were already available for iOS, I decided to release the Godot version on Android. It was quite a nightmare. I wrote a blog post about the complications with Google Play Leaderboards, and I posted a couple of video rants (in Spanish) — "reasons to avoid releasing your game for Android", and "hellish trip to make Google Play Leaderboards". The game took one month to develop, but the Android release took 3 months… And I only got 8 downloads in total, only from families and friends… Much worse performance than on iOS 🙈 After that, I was demotivated again, and the 2nd half of the year I haven’t done any more game development, except for a brief update on May & Yam Against Pollution (the game had stopped working on Apple TV, and it was going to be taken down from iOS as well).

A friend of mine was having troubles streaming to Twitch, so I decided to install a couple of streaming tools and start streaming myself to understand how it works. I ended up streaming a lot, even though almost no one is watching. But instead of recording YouTube videos offline, I found it works better to do a live stream, record it, and then edit it for YouTube. If a friend joins, they can comment live, which it's a bit more fun for me. I recorded several technological rants (in Spanish), and then I started playing Final Fantasy XIII. 2022 was the 13th anniversary of the game, and I wanted to play it again in Japanese, because the first time I played it in English. Because of my Fear Of Having Wasted Time, I found that streaming my play-through felt less wasteful than playing alone.

One of my goals for 2022 was to start a new channel to teach some programming with Swift, in Spanish. I managed to do that, following the same Twitch-to-YouTube pattern. I called the channel Algo de Swift. I’m not sure why I’m doing this, but I guess I love Swift and it’s a language I was only using for my indie games. But since I’m not doing any games right now, doing exercises like the ones from Advent of Code and then explaining the code was fun for me.

Traveling is getting very stressful and I’m afraid of visiting any new places… But we said goodbye to 2022 in Tel Aviv, Israel. My partner had to go there for work, and I decided to tag along. It took some mental effort to stop being scared. In the end it was worth it. I met with someone I’ve worked with who lives in Tel Aviv and we had a great day 😊

Now let me rewind and list up what I’ve achieved.

Achievements

Work

  • I did some AR stuff with Lens Studio (Snapchat), and I evaluated several ARKit components (body tracking and global environment capture)
  • Worked on some ML lens in Lens Studio (part of the GHOST fellowship)
  • Completed work on eTryOn (European project)
  • Worked on an automated rigging & skinning plugin for VStitcher & recorded a quick video tutorial: Metail Skinner plugin tutorial 🧑‍🎨 Bring VStitcher garments to life in Lens Studio
  • Lots of work on EcoShot
  • Lots of automation work with containers, AWS, Bitbucket, Slack…

Indie development

Released

Blogging

Technical posts (syndicated to Medium @endavid):

In my Spanish geek / otaku blog, I haven't written much, but I had some fun (use Google Translate if you are curious),

Vlogging

Learning

  • Learned some Godot Engine, and its GD language (Python-like syntax)
  • Kept using Python at work, as well as some C++ and Javascript
  • Did all the exercises of Advent of Code 2022 in Swift
  • Did a comparison of all the programming paradigms in Swift against other languages: "Paradigmas de programación en Swift"
  • Learned a bit of OBS Studio and Streamlabs, for streaming live in Twitch.
  • I read "Digital Minimalism" by Cal Newport & I followed a digital detox for one month. I organized the time I spent online a bit better.

Leisure

  • I finished reading the Sensei trilogy, a series of interviews to Japanese game developers by my friend Luis García.
  • Visited friends in Sweden and we saw the Northern Lights! (Aurora Borealis)
  • Visited family in Barcelona in January, April, July, September, and December
  • Weekend trip to Las Vegas!
  • Watched Totoro musical in London, which was pretty amazing!
  • Visited Tel Aviv (the 31st of December!)

Wishes for 2023

I just really want peace for 2023 ☮️🕊

I haven't set yet any personal goals for 2023, but I'm planning to visit Japan and enjoy 2023 as much as I can.

I will continue with the Swift videos, and I hope I can resume some of my iOS development.

My best wishes to everyone!


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