Martin Stewart tells the behind-the-scenes story of how his game Circuit Breaker (built entirely in Elm, of course) came to be, starting with an ambitious plan to surprise his sister on her birthday.

Thank you to our sponsor, Culture Amp.

Special thanks to Xavier Ho (@Xavier_Ho) for editing and production of this episode!

Recording date: 5 Jan 2020

Guest

Martin Stewart (https://tretton37.com/meet/martin-stewart)

Show Notes

00:00:00 Intro and sponsors

00:02:37 How Martin got into Elm

00:05:14 C#/WPF to Elm

00:07:05 Getting started in Elm

00:07:44 Remaking Lego Loco / server-side logic

00:11:29 “I was allergic to using case statements”

00:14:10 The origin of Circuit Breaker

00:17:57 A brief description of Circuit Breaker

00:19:45 The original “hackman” prototype

00:21:30 The level editor

00:23:08 SVG to WebGL / presentation framework

00:30:27 Hacking around Elm WebGL's limitations

00:38:45 Ready for his sister's birthday

00:40:16 Polishing Circuit Breaker full time between clients

00:42:13 Deterministic except for floating point precision

00:44:07 The game's tutorial

00:47:49 Hidden features and Easter Eggs

00:49:50 Splitting a project into modules

00:53:22 Music in the game

00:54:59 Playing music in Elm

00:58:30 Thankyous & Outro