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Coding holiday hack - 2024

Last year I took part in completing a holiday hack. This was a lot of fun and spawned some changes to the open source projects I have been working on.
If you would like to read about the project which I completed successfully, last years post is here

After the success of last year I have decided to go again. This year I am going to continue the theme of hacking on a current project. This post will set out the ground rules, success criteria and timeframes to complete the work in.

What am I working on

This year I have been building out the initial DevRetro projects. This includes RetroSwift the library api for the swift programming language, RetroPlatforms the documentation and testing website and the first Platform Library RetroDMG for the Nintendo Gameboy. Currently the only application that supports the RetroDMG library however is based around debugging the platforms and really isn't for playing games. This is where Cade comes in.

Cade is the sister project to DevRetro that implements the library for play. Work on this however has not started, and this is where the this years holiday comes in. The plan this year is to provide an MVP build for Cade.

What will I deliver

The plan is provide an iOS version of Cade which will include loading games into the RetroDMG platform library. To break this down into success criteria I will implement the following.

  • A basic library view that will show a list of games available to play
  • being able to play games (obviously)
  • portrait play (via basic touch controls) and landscape view with hardware controller support.

The areas that are out of scope for this holiday hack

  • any other platform outside of iOS, (iPadOS will not be supported)
  • metadata scanning for the library
  • anything particular game compatibility or any features that currently aren't supported in RetroDMG, sound being an example.

how long do I have

Well I am going to set myself a tight timeframe of two weeks. This is based off the time I have off from my day job and will change from year to year.

This means I will have a working MVP in internal TestFlight by the 6th of January 2025.

I will be blogging about the outcomes of this holiday hack so please check back. I will also be talking about this on BlueSky and Threads, links below.