Meet a developer - The Dynamic Duo

In this new year, we have some exciting interviews to bring to you and we start off this year with the Dynamic Duo, no that is not their name or their secret identity. As a kid growing up on Batman Comics The Dynamic Duo meant Batman and Robin and in some cases Batman and Superman. Now if you Google, you will find a Korean Pop Band, a wrestling team and many more. Out guests today are plain developers that have made a mark in the mobile development scene with their products like Ultimote, Profiler and AutoLAN.
so, here we are

First, please take a moment to introduce yourself and M. Y. Developers

Hello, we are Alex and Mekha Shrestha. I work for a biomedical engineering company and my wife, Mekha graduated as a neuroscience major and currently works part-time for a clinic. Currently, developing is a hobby for us and we do it in the weekends or when we have a break but we hope to be able to make enough money to develop more apps.

 What is/are your role(s) at M.Y. Developers

We are the CEO’s, developers, and game designers for M.Y. Developers.

What is the size of the M.Y. Developers and would you want to introduce others?

Currently we are a small two person team.

What is the Idea of the M.Y. Developers' business (self publishing, services, etc)?

M.Y. Developers was founded in order incorporate our interests in developing games and tools but our long-term goal is to be able to fund for our Autism projects since both of us our passionate about learning more about Autism and helping the clinical community with more tools. We believe mobile technology can revolutionize autism treatment by way of apps for the children themselves and tools for the researchers to gather data efficiently on the field. In both aspects Corona ® SDK empowered us to create such tools in the future. Another one of our long term goals is to develop affordable medical instrumentation using mobile devices as a user interface for the advancement of healthcare in third world countries. 

What platforms do you develop for?

We develop for iOS, Android including Kindle and the Nook. We also do some basic javascript web application development.

How many Apps have you/M. Y. Developers published?

So far we have published five apps of which two are games, Space conquest and Space Falldown, and the other three are tools for Corona® namely Corona® Ultimote, Corona® Profiler, and Corona® Autolan.

What was your flagship app that you think brought you/ M. Y. Developers to the limelight?

We started getting recognized when we published Corona® Ultimote, but Corona® Profiler was more like the flagship app that helped us and our company standout in the Corona® community.

Which is your favorite app amongst all your apps?

Our favorite app is our space strategy game, Space Conquest; because this was our first project together which also helps us realized how much we enjoyed developing games together that eventually led to the development of Corona® tools and the founding of our company.

What is your favorite app that you have not created?

Definitely Angry birds, it is so much fun and it is also one of those games that encouraged us to make our own puzzle/strategy game, Space Conquest.

What is your favourite device (Computer & Phone) and why?

Well, we do not really have a favorite device but we like all the devices currently we use namely, le pan tablet, ipod touch 4G, and T-mobile sidekick 4G.

Can you tell us a little bit more about  Space Conquest?

It is a physics based dual stick shooter action/strategy game. It was done entirely in Corona® and Inkscape as we did not have many resources at the time. It was more of a learning experience for us and it gave us ideas to develop many of the third party tools we have today. For example, the lack of multitouch in the simulator prompted us to develop Ultimote and the performance issues we were initially having inspired us to create Profiler.

What was the inspiration for the app?

Well both of us have always been very interested in Space games and we have been fans of Starcraft, a space RTS game, for a long time and that inspired us to develop a space strategy/action game. This is also evident in our newest game Space Falldown.

What are the main categories your apps are in? (Games/Utilities/etc)

Currently we have developed apps in both games and utilities categories and we hope to keep making more in both areas. We are also interested in the medical sector and we hope to make apps/devices for autism and medical instrumentation in the future.

Do you advertise for any apps you have published? What was the outcome/results?

No, we did not do any significant advertising for our apps except posting on Corona® forums and uploading introduction videos on YouTube. The outcome was very positive and we were able to promote our products to the interested community faster.

When did you start development?

We started developing fairly recently. Our first project, Space Conquest was intended to be a summer project so we started developing it around July of 2011 and once that was completed; we decided to make more tools/games so since then we have been active developers.

How did you get into Development? What attracted you to this?

We started developing during the summer of 2011 as part of an Autism research that we were involved in where we developed a simple app in Corona to test reaction times in Autistic children to specific stimuli. Soon we realized that we could also develop few games as a hobby on the side that could bring in some extra funds that could help us continue with our research and this fueled our interest in developing games and Corona® tools.

What is your favorite programming language?

Lua is pretty good and has helped us a lot. We really liked the dynamic nature of the language and its flexibility in tackling even the most difficult tasks. It has features that you can only dream of in C and that is only available in arcane libraries in Java.

Do you believe in the giving back code to the society to help aid development?

Yes. We owe our very existence to the many wonderful open source projects such as Inkscape and we feel it is necessary to do the same in the future. We also believe in giving back to the society at large with our Autism and medical device projects.

Do you have any GitHub repositories or OpenSource or code repos?

Not yet.

What do you do other than Development?

Currently both of us work throughout the week and we use our spare time and weekends for developing apps. Occasionally we tinker around with circuits and medical instrumentation design. We also do manage to find some time to play our favorite game, Starcraft 2, together and with friends.

What is your method of commute? (Bike, Train, Car, Walk)

Our main method of commute is by Car.

So what is next in the pipeline for M.Y. Developers?

We have some features that we will be adding for Corona® Profiler and we will also improve the user interface for Ultimote and add internet functionality to Autolan. We hope to generate more income to take time off of work and pursue our other projects.

Any thing that you would like to share with the readers, about You/M.Y. Developers / Profiler, Ultimote

We would like to thank everyone for supporting us and we hope to develop more tools and games soon. We will have some updates coming soon for Profiler and some improvements for Ultimote. Also with more funds we will be able to continue our Autism projects which is our long-term goal.

What advice would you give to other developers out there?

If you enjoy developing games/tools then definitely continue and always challenge yourself to make better apps. We started as very new developers to this field but in short time we learned a lot so there is always room for learning and improving. The beauty of app development is that anyone can start, all you need is an outlet, a netbook, an Internet connection, and lots hard work. Trust us, it will pay off. 

Would you want to provide your contact details if any one would want to get in touch with you/ M. Y. Developers

The best way to get in touch with us is via email – mydevelopergames@gmail.com

Thank you for your time, we appreciate your participation






For those of you lucky readers that read the entire interview and do feel impressed with the work that these folks are doing and have done, there is a small gift for one of you, M. Y. developers are offering a copy of their latest product AutoLAN that was reviewed earlier here


You have to just follow us on @whatsin4me and RT this article with the @whatsin4me and #MYDevelopers tag.

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