So, there’s been a ton of new information shared about the upcoming Harry Potter AR game, Wizards Unite. And it’s certainly shaping up to be an incredible game!

Here’s the back story:

A calamity has befallen the wizarding world, causing artefacts, creatures, people, and even memories to mysteriously appear in the Muggle world. Witches and wizards from across the globe must come together to solve the mystery of The Calamity, overcome the confounding chaotic magic that surrounds these “Foundables,” and return them to their rightful place, keeping them safe from Muggle eyes.

Your journey begins as a new recruit of the Statute of Secrecy Task Force, established by the Ministry of Magic and the International Confederation of Wizards for the purpose of investigating and containing The Calamity.

From the story alone, there’s a massive scope for what the game could turn out to be. On one side of the scale, it could have been a simple rip-off of Pokémon GO, but essentially a hide-and-seek game with a Harry Potter theme. But instead, what we’re getting is a much more all-rounded role-playing game!

Of course, at it’s an AR game, one of the key mechanics will be exploring the world, finding some of the “Foundables”, casting spells, and also Portkeys that offer a full 360 AR experience out in the real wold. That already feels to me a more immersive experience than Pokémon GO (And I’m a big Pokémon GO player!).

Where I think the richness of the game will come from, is the things like potion making, challenging other wizards and foes in Wizarding Challenges, and developing your Wizarding skills while specialising in certain professions.

It sounds like a game with many ways to play. You can simply explore the world, while finding “Foundables”, Portkeys, potion ingredients, etc. You can compete with other players by battling with them at Fortresses, but you can also team up with them and compete Wizard Challenges together. And at the same time as all of that, you’re developing your own character, gaining new skills, and just taking your own route through the game.

One thing I’m unsure about though, is the “Spell Energy”. I’ve never found a mobile game that has some kind of perishable energy source to be that great. As there’s usually long waits to refill, mostly with the aim for players to spend money on in-app purchases. You can find food and drinks at “Inns”, which will be in certain places around the world, and will replenish your Spell Energy. Hopefully there’s enough of them so it doesn’t inhibit gameplay.

My other worry is that the game will be too rich. Sure, I wrote earlier that it’s one of the reasons why I like the sound of this game, but maybe other people won’t appreciate it. As not everyone is as well versed in the Harry Potter universe as others (me), and a steep learning curve for a mobile game may not work out well.

But despite how anyone else finds it, I can already tell I’m going to be really addicted to this game.

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You can find out more about Wizards Unite on the website, and also find more of the details I mentioned on their blog.

For when Lorem Ipsum just isn’t enough, there’s Jeffsum:

A little text placeholder generator of Jeff Goldblum awesomeness.

For example:

God help us, we’re in the hands of engineers. I was part of something special. You really think you can fly that thing? Life finds a way. Eventually, you do plan to have dinosaurs on your dinosaur tour, right? God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates Man. Man destroys God. Man creates Dinosaurs.

Today started with a mix of house work, watching television, and just relaxing around the house.

But it was the late afternoon that it got interesting. As it was time for Arsenal vs Manchester United! I had it on my big TV for once, and wow it was a good game. We won 2:0, and it’s a massive result for us. Naturally, that meant nothing could ruin the rest of the day.

When it was finished, I made myself a carbonara for dinner, and then I continued to watch more coverage of the game, and what the pundits thought of everything.

But it wasn’t all relaxing and football, as I got around to checking another thing of the Text Case 2.0 list. Specifically, the ability to set a custom icon! And I didn’t just add a few. In total, there are now 22 different icons to choose from.

I’ve had Lost on in the background while working on the app, and I think I can manage another episode before it’s time to go to bed!

Today started with a pretty good discovery in our house. Our garden has loose stones at the bottom near the door, and we’ve wanted to replace it with a patio ever since we saw the house. But after being in the garden this morning, I noticed that there’s actually a patio underneath! It’s not complete, as there are some gaps, and it’s not perfectly flat. But it may save us a bit of work, and also it’s a lot better to have a reasonably okay patio in the short-term.

We both then went to town for more home-related things. And also to have lunch in our usual cafe.

After town, we walked my girlfriends parents dog that stayed at our house overnight, and we’ve been relaxing with Netflix and TV ever since! Well I’m especially relaxed, as I keep falling asleep on the sofa.

It’s finally Friday.

I had a pretty busy day at work, which I actually prefer. But now I really do need a good sleep!

The only other thing I’ve done since getting home is cooking/eating dinner, and then sitting on the sofa falling asleep with my girlfriends parents dog, that’s staying round our house tonight.

I’m glad it was a rather simple day, because anything else and I wouldn’t have the energy to write this journal entry.

😴

A pretty mixed day today.

It stated at work with the usual stuff going on. Nothing especially good or bad.

After work, I had loads of trouble with my commute home. Specifically the train from London Euston. There was trespassers on the track, so every train to and from the station was cancelled. It took an hour an a half of waiting for any trains to start service.

Oh and then Arsenal lost 3-1.

But after that, my girlfriend made dinner, and I’ve been watching Lost! So there’s been both ups and downs.

Today at work was very much a continuation of what I was doing yesterday. I was monitoring the latest app release, while also doing a bit of work on UI testing something else!

Apart from work, my day hasn’t exactly been that much more interesting. I got home, ate dinner, did the usual mindless activities on my phone (Twitter, Instagram), caught up with my RSS reader, and then watched a film with my girlfriend!

Maybe the film should be classed as interesting. But it was something I’ve seen before. The problem was, I was enjoying the beginning as I forgot most of the storyline, but after about a quarter of the way though, my mind had already remembered the rest. So I couldn’t exactly stay focussed.

I had a very exciting day at work. As I released an app! Okay, well it was an update. But it was a complete rebuild of a very stable app, and only myself worked on it. So it was a big deal for me at least.

So, because of that, I spent the majority of my day staring at the app analytics, and monitoring how the app was going. It was getting some interaction within the first few hours, and it’s looking positive, but I’m sure I’ll know more after the app is updated on people’s phones.

At home, I also did a tiny bit of development on Text Case. I added a Rot13 format, which is something that was requested a while ago, but I wanted to postpone it as one of the extra features in the 2.0 release.

Regarding Text Case 2.0, here’s basically what’s new/changed:

• It’s been completely rebuilt from scratch (Not exactly appealing to users)
• Complete redesign, which adds some further structure to the app using sections, and also changes the approach from a simple functional utility, to what I think is a great and rich app.
• Three new formats: Base 64 Encode, Decode, and Rot13.
• One-tap copy. Previously this required a long press to open a contextual menu, and a copy button would appear..
• Much better “dialogs” in the app. For example a small bubble appears from the bottom temporarily after you’ve copied a text. It shows the format used, and the result of the format.
• Themes! There’s now a light and dark mode, so if iOS 13 adds a dark mode it’s ready.

It still feels a bit bare to me. As it’s a 2.0, I want it to actually feel like it. I haven’t got many other things on my mind at the moment, but I do know that I want to add custom app icons. That’s something I think people will enjoy. I’ve had the idea of a “text to emoji” format in my task manager for a while, that I may add as well, but I’m not 100% sure yet.

After a pretty relaxing weekend, it was back to normal at work. I was working on some basic UI interaction in an app, and that meant getting to grips with Cucumberish a bit more, as that’s what we’re using for UI testing. It took a while for me to fully grasp how it works, and how to tie in all the different actions/tests, but I’ve got the hang of most of it right now.

Apart from work, I’ve mainly just been watching videos about aquariums. Mainly ones about aquascaping, keeping minimal/nano tanks, and just loads of setup videos. I used to keep fish before I moved out, but it was just things like Goldfish, and Shubunkin. While they’re pretty common, they make a ton of mess and the tanks took a lot of effort to keep up with.

What I’m looking into doing soon, is getting a very small tank, probably around 30x30x30cm. And then taking my time to slowly grow a minimal planted aquarium. Ideally it would have a high number of plants, low number of fish/shrimp, and therefore a much lower level of maintenance. Of course I’ll be posting any updates here, but I’m not sure when it’s actually going to happen.

Another relaxing Sunday!

I started the day with a bit of World of Warcraft and some New York bagels.

Then we had some of both mine and my girlfriends family round for coffee in the afternoon.

After they went home, I cooked a chilli con carne and jacket potatoes for dinner!

Then in the evening there was a birthday in my girlfriends family, so her whole family celebrated that.

After all the relaxing, I’m now ready to go back to work!