One such indulgence was a horse genetics simulator I made in 2007. I made it, friends laughed about Jeno and her horses again, and it slid off the radar and into the archive of "things I did" floating around the internet.
Occasionally I would get emails from a college student in equine veterinary studies thanking me for helping them get a handle on the difficult subject of coat color genetics. Other than that I didn't think much about the little page I had created.
But then, more recently, I was toying around with trying to make an indie game for the Android. To make life easier for myself, I decided to start with something that I already had working in a different format so the core logic would already be out of the way and I could just focus on the new medium. My horse sim seemed the perfect subject.
In order to translate it over, the first thing that needed to be done was to change the layout. A relatively square design built for the web just wouldn't work on a phone. At that point it had been almost 4 years since I had made the original, and if you know anything about artists you'll know that 4-year-old graphics scream at us for a reason to be redone. Besides, there's not much that inspires a new project more than some eye candy to point you down a path.
Needless to say, I had plenty of excuse and set about making a new skin for the phone.
This was my first java project, and I got quite a ways into it before I began getting distracted with python programming needs for work. If you've ever done much programming with python, you'll probably know that trying to simultaneously program in python and anything that requires semi-colons and curly brackets is an exercise in frustration. It can be done, but you'll spend a good deal of time with annoying syntax errors because your fingers like to add or omit those silly semi-colons at their pleasure.
I took a temporary hiatus from Java, and as tends to happen, a temporary hiatus became a permanent one. And that's how I wound up with a library of fancy new graphics but no app to display them in. If there's anything that can annoy an artist like an unscratched itch, it's graphics you haven't shared with anyone.
Fast forward a few more months, and I'm looking through my referrer stats for my website, which I do from time to time. There I find that not only is my horse genetics sim pulling more traffic than I ever would have thought, but its actually the topic of recent discussion on a pretty large breeder's forum!
The comments were pretty evenly split between complaints about inaccuracies and the fun addictive nature of the thing. Or maybe that's wishful thinking. There were a lot of complaints about inaccuracies. So what do I do? I register with the breeder forum and dive straight into the middle of the thread.
No timid internet nerd here! That be the more rare variety of bold internet nerd.
To make a long story short, the horse experts on the forum were very kind and helpful. Many of the inaccuracies were due to the sim being 4 years old when the subject of genetic research is making new discoveries all the time. There were a few that were my own fault, from not checking my sources well enough the first time around and relying a little too heavily on wiki. (the shame!)
Armed with new and better information, new and better graphics, and the knowledge that some people besides myself actually care about this stuff, I pulled out my old javascript skills and attacked my horse simulator.
I do have to say, the results are quite pleasing. For now.
- Send your friends interesting genetic combos! Links save the exact genetic configuration you've created.
- New to genetics or horse colors? Take a step-by-step walkthrough of the major genes and their functions.
- Need a reminder? Toggle on the gene help to display tips about what each gene is doing.
- Want to learn more? Toggle on detailed information to read more about the coloration you've created.
No comments:
Post a Comment