The Year 2015 in Review

The Year 2015 in Review

     The year 2015 A.D. for EagleSoft Ltd was a great year! In approximate order, the following is the key events for EagleSoft Ltd in the past year.

     Unfortunately, due to bottlenecks and technical difficulties with the BASIC BEX compiler for Sega, the Ultra Air Hockey Sega/Retro port was moved from BEX to SGDK in Jan 20; this project is still ongoing, but the progress for the SGDK attempt is nearly caught up with the old BEX attempt. EagleSoft Ltd successfully finished and published to the EagleSoft Ltd website its first Unity3D video game, both a v1.0 and v1.1 version of Ultra Air Hockey DX around Jan/Feb 2015, and most importantly, purchased a Google Play License and published a Android port to the Google Play Store around summer 2015. This project was a group project started with a colleague for a Fall 2014 Fundamentals of Software Engineering college class. We also officially purchased and setup a domain for the website (formerly a stock Google Sites one) to www.eaglesoftltd.com on 02/25/2015. During March-April 2015, we published 0xdbin, a computer architecture number utility for a graded class project. Furthermore, key to retro development for the Sega Genesis/CD/32x, funded with a large refund check from my shrewd Uncle Sam, I purchased an EverDrive MD for my birthday, a flashcart that would allow me to test my homebrew projects and hacks On Real Hardware (TM), for debugging discrepancies and issues for the projects between emulators and Real Hardware. The purchase of this EverDrive MD finally finished a quest started in 2011 to assemble the ultimate, retro Sega gaming machine: a Sega Genesis CD 32x with EverDrive MD (and backwards compatible with Mark III SMS games, and some hacked Game Gear games converted to SMS format).

    During Summer 2015, we began work on a second Unity3D video game called StarEagle; however, it has been put on hold currently. Around late Summer 2015 to early Fall 2015, EagleSoft Ltd expanded its social networking presence to a FaceBook Group. During Fall 2015, as part of a graded IED project for college, I began work on finishing a colleague's Unity3D video game idea called Colonial Combat, with a newer project group. The project received an A. This project is currently ongoing now in our own leisure time outside of class. However, on 09/19/15, EagleSoft Ltd's primary development machine, the beloved HP ProBook 4540s, died; may she rest in piece. This laptop I received more or less for free, due to earning a one-time $1000 scholarship at the community college for usage on school supplies, and I greatly miss her. Currently, I am using a loaned laptop from the university for development and primary computing, but its rental is due on 01/15/16. At the same time of the development of Colonial Combat, I worked on finishing an old Fundamentals of Software Engineering Android app called The Equator from another project group for Distributed Systems class, by putting in internet database connectivity. This application was yet the hardest project I ever worked on, due to the old project using MIT App Inventor 2, and having to write very convoluted code to fetch the online database's data and cache it locally onto the device with a hackish local database.

   

     Finally, the year ended with a long-awaited release of Demo #3 of Sonic CD Breakout for SAGE (Sonic Amateur Games Expo) 2015; however, SAGE 2015 has been postponed until later in early 2016. I also finally earned my B.S. Software Engineering degree! Overall, EagleSoft Ltd accomplished much more than expected in the past year, and we plan on doing a lot more next year!

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The Future

  EagleSoft Ltd accomplished creating plenty of software over the past year and in getting its online presence established. Of the highest priority right now, however, is generating funds for a new laptop and getting a job in my field! This current laptop is a rental from the university, which is due on 01/15/16. The important data from this rental and the dead one must be transferred to a permanent home in a new laptop, and time is of the essence. I already have a laptop picked out, but need to find way to fund acquiring this capital in time, due to lack of funds due to college costs last year.

   As for software engineering projects, in 2016, we at EagleSoft Ltd will continue to work on Colonial Combat and Ultra Air Hockey Retro development, both which currently have the highest priority in terms of software development. We may also get back into retro video game modifications (there is a project in the works, TBA, if the project is feasible) too. After those 3 projects, work on StarEagle will resume.

   As for other plans, EagleSoft Ltd is also considering creating live YouTube videos for video game reviews, electronics, and other nerdy stuff. Details TBA in the near future. For the future, we are also looking into homebrew developement for Dreamcast and the Atari XE(GS) consoles, as well as perhaps more Sega homebrew. (We do not have a Dreamcast yet, nor any means to run code on either console On Real Hardware. Also, research needs to be done on how to program both using high-level tools.)

Goodbye 2015, and welcome 2016!

(Hopefully 2016 will be better than 2015)

-Tamkis