Posts on Parade of Rain

Code Volume

Fri, 21 Nov 2025 12:37:22 -0500

I generally have some eye for “how much code does it take” to do a specific task. One thing I’ve come to terms with while working on larger and larger systems is that the runtime code starts to become dwarfed by the test code and build system that helps make the final artifact.

Interruptions are the Norm

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 23:00:01 -0500

As life gets more complicated, and responsibilities increase, it’s easy to chalk up the lack of progress to the constant interruptions. I sometimes have to remind myself that interruptions are the norm, not the exception. Plan accordingly, and take solace in the increasingly fewer times life gives you those long stretches of peace and quiet. And more importantly, recognize some of those interruptions aren’t of the distracting variety, but they are life happening.

Small Gasp of Fresh Air

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 00:03:54 -0500

Tonight’s election feels like a small gasp of fresh air while still suffocating in this hellscape. The rebuke across the board in the various elections gives me hope. My political feeds on bluesky for once aren’t just utter doom and gloom. OH MY GOD, DDHQ CALLS IT AND DEMS FLIP BOTH STATEWIDE ELECTIONS IN GEORGIA — Joe (@electionsjoe.bsky.social) 2025-11-05T00:43:05.760Z 1. On Tuesday Night, Democrats won elections nationwide in a stunning rebuke of anti-transgender politics.

Stop Falling for It

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 14:04:14 -0400

Affinity just announced their version 3 of their graphics suites. It’s a crazy technical achievement marred by the false promise of “democratizing creative tools”. This feels straight out of the enshittification playbook. I was rooting for them years ago after Adobe went subs only. Sad to see this direction. They gave away their core product for free. Professionals just lost their leverage. This is no longer a business relationship where someone exchanges money for the service.

One Percent a Day

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 00:38:54 -0400

Focusing on the 1% improvement per day for a long time instead of some herculean effort in some small intense burst generally yields bigger and better results in the long run. I don’t know why it took so long. I think I’ve always knew it intellectually. But in the past couple of years I think I’ve finally begun to internalized it. I read Atomic Habits a while back and it put into words that same sentiment.

Taking It Back, Part 1

Thu, 23 Oct 2025 08:11:50 -0400

I’ve been on a bit of a “get back in control of my data” streak. I’ve been experimenting with different services and software to help enable that. Some stick and some don’t quite hit the mark. One that’s had staying power for me has been Kagi. I’ve had it over a year now (August of last year) and I haven’t looked back to google search since. The few times I’ve been found myself on google search it really felt like a step backwards.

Creative Diet

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 15:51:17 -0400

Ran into this post earlier today with a choice quote from an old movie I enjoyed: “In order to make delicious food, you must eat delicious food. The quality of ingredients is important, but one must develop a palate capable of discerning good and bad. Without good taste, you can’t make good food." - Jiro Ono in Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011) The sentiment shared in Prasatt’s post I agree with.

What's Happening

Fri, 21 Feb 2025 19:52:57 -0500

I’ve finally got the creative itch again, and I want to try one more time. What I’m going for is my most ambitious project yet. And I suppose the most liberating notion to me is failure is totally an option, but sitting on the sideline is not.

Adventures in Japan

Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:35:57 -0500

Some photos I took from my Japan trip last summer

I'm Still Writing

Sat, 14 Dec 2024 15:59:38 -0500

I keep telling myself these past couple of years that I would write more. And then the blog would sit idle for the rest of the year. Turns out I have been writing more. Just not on this blog. I’ve been writing in my own Obsidian vault for years. Are any of those musing worth sharing? Maybe. But I think the fact that the only audience is me compells me to write more frequently.

Onward to Another Year

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 01:20:57 -0500

Last year was quite the year for me personally, professionally, and creatively. There was just a lot of change. One them that stuck throughout was just “re-thinking how I do things”. I was pretty comfy in my tools, gear, and workflows and had become curious about other methods. It quickly turned into a rabbit hole 😆. Workflows I spent several months last year kind of re-thinking workflows. This ranged from how I work and the tools I use to get that work done to the architecture of code I write to improve iteration time.

Melted Rust

Sat, 20 Jan 2024 18:26:41 -0500

TL;DR: So I’m not entirely sure if my CPU is completely hosed at this point and I’ll have to be getting a new one soon, but I was running into some insane errors while compiling rust recently. Turns out my CPU can’t compile rust reliably when thermal throttled. I’ve been on this PC build for a little over a year now. The CPU is an Intel i9-13900K. It’s also a custom build.

Godot, Powershell, and GdExt

Fri, 12 Jan 2024 23:23:57 -0500

New Year, more Godot! I’m finally taking the time to make my windows environment as comfy as I can make it. My day job has me working on macOS/linux so I’m familiar with just running stuff with simple shell scripts, maybe a makefile, and I’m off to the races. With Godot I’m developing primarily on Windows, in Neovim, and using the Rust GDExtension. Trying to stay in the flow of coding and iterating starts to become important so today I decided to spend some time setting up some scripts to help with that flow.

Godot, Neovim, and Windows

Fri, 08 Dec 2023 15:43:23 -0500

This took longer than I care to admit. I work both in MacOS and Windows daily. Recently I wanted to setup Godot’s LSP with neovim on Windows and it turned out more tricky than I would have liked. The crux of the issue was trying to get the LSP configured to use netcat instead on windows. I’m also using the LazyVim distro. Long story short, under my plugins folder I have a lsp.

Barriers to Writing

Mon, 28 Aug 2023 00:07:02 -0400

The burden of trying to do longer form blogging can certainly be a bit much. I think as time has passed and experienced gained the self awareness of how little I actually know became an overriding force for me to not put anything together. Also getting a post together always ends up a way bigger task than I think. In truth, I’ve been writing a lot. Just not on any public facing platform.

Errors All Day

Tue, 14 Feb 2023 19:08:06 -0500

Today I had to install nodejs on a new dev machine for a separate project. I did the reasonable thing and went to nodejs.org and installed from there. Little did I know what insanity I was in for. After it finished spewing garbage all over my dev machine for several minutes, I went back and tried to remove as much of the cruft as I could and went with nvm-windows. It installed in half a second, and installed a version of node even quicker, and no ridiculious other dependencies.

Tools in 2023

Tue, 17 Jan 2023 00:42:30 -0500

This month I’ve been thinking a lot about the tooling I’m using to get through the day, learn things, and manage things. I felt the tools could be simplified, changed, improved, or consolidated. I started with a nuclear approach and tried to see if I could do: Task management Reading stashes Note Taking Project management …all in 1 app: Notion. It was a fun exercise and I found some real powerful features there, but I also discovered I valued UX a lot.

Loading Fonts in UE5's Slate

Thu, 05 Jan 2023 16:40:14 -0500

I’m currently deep in UMG/Slate with UE5. It’s been a few years since I’ve worked in Unreal regularly. And it’s also the first time I’m stepping into Slate proper. I recently had the need to load up a font just for some custom styling on a slate widget I don’t have fully exposed in UMG. After some digging I got to this nugget of info: NormalText = FTextBlockStyle() .SetFont(FSlateFontInfo(FPaths::ProjectContentDir() / TEXT("UI/Fonts/MyFont.

Using a specific canvas element for bevy

Fri, 22 Jul 2022 13:23:28 -0400

Bevy works well on the web! One of the things that took me some digging is how to get bevy to not create and inject a canvas element but instead use one that is already in the DOM. Below is a snippet of how to do this in rust as well as the corresponding HTML. Hopefully this saves someone some time! I needed this in a prototype to see if I could get bevy and yew to work well together.

Taking Flight

Sat, 22 Jan 2022 02:14:54 -0500

Like many of us in this pandemic, I’ve picked up a hobby over the last year. It’s been fun learning to build, fly, and eventually wreck these little winged terrors.

Memory Lane

Wed, 19 Jan 2022 02:03:11 -0500

Weird to think that some of these images are over 16 years old…

Death By a Thousand Cuts

Fri, 03 Feb 2017 00:41:16 +0000

One of the issues with game development that’s become more apparent over the years was dealing with splitting time between new game development and bug fixes/maintenance. When we first released games, they were much simpler, and as a result had less bugs to deal with. You could spend the majority of your time working on new features. Nowadays, our games have become so large that as the solo developer, even I can’t keep everything in my head straight on how certain systems were implemented.

Setting up Multiple PlayerControllers in UE4

Thu, 01 Dec 2016 23:37:20 +0000

Use: UGameplayStatics::CreatePlayer(World, Index,bSpawnActor) (Docs). When creating a custom game mode it wasn’t clear in the documentation how ones goes about: Spawning a playercontroller Spawning a pawn assigning both to each other and possessing the pawn with the controller So I basically did it all manually inside InitGame(). This cropped up some unwieldy UI focusing bugs. Once I replaced it with a call to CreatePlayer() things started working as intended. Hope this helps anyone who’s starting out in UE4 with C++.

This Online World

Mon, 16 May 2016 20:10:09 +0000

“If the byline on your article doesn’t enlarge its readership then you don’t have much of a value. All you’re doing is using the distribution network of a company. That makes you expendable. They can find someone else just like you. “ – Clay Davis Quite an interesting read regarding the business of writing for a living. I don’t 100% agree with all the conclusions he argues for, but when put through the lens of indie games I think a lot can be applicable as well.

Testing, Testing, Testing, 1,2,3…

Tue, 03 May 2016 22:18:46 +0000

With each game release I’ve noticed I’ve committed less and less time to writing the ‘fun bits’ and more time spent trying to mitigate complexity and find ways to make as many things as testable as possible. I guess that’s the nature of the beast once you go beyond your average ‘asteroids’ clone. With the recent announcement of SFT getting asynchronous play in the coming months, I’ve been scoping out my dev schedule for what needs to happen to make it reality, and the only issue that I keep circling back to is “how the hell do I make all of this testable/bug free”.

The little details…

Sat, 13 Feb 2016 01:04:20 +0000

Early on in the development of SFT I had concerns about how I was going to do text rendering on the cards in such a way that things stay readable regardless of resolution, while keeping fonts looking nice. I ran into aliasing issues as well as pixelation, since all the fonts being rendered were simply bitmap textures on top of cards that are flipping, rotating, and scaling in 3D space. I had read about SDF (signed distance fields) font assets for text rendering and was wanting to get something implemented for SFT’s cards.

Player Preference for Role Selection

Thu, 11 Feb 2016 00:48:31 +0000

Taking the “conflict” out of shared roles: https://vine.co/v/inaDFBXgFUB We opted to do a ‘ranked preference’ for role selection in SFT. Instead of players joining/leaving and selecting anywhere from 1-3 players to control and then having more UI flow when conflicts arise, or a character is left unselected, or a few other scenarios, we simply take everyone’s preference list and the game deals out character roles based on them. If there’s a “tie” (for instance two or more have captain as their first choice) it’ll be random who gets it.

Animations In SFT

Wed, 10 Feb 2016 04:14:07 +0000

Finally got another card ability animation implemented into SFT: https://vine.co/v/i12I565Q9zg The method and architecture I’m using for driving game logic I think has served me well for the past few years. I shipped Outwitters on the basics, and expanded the gameplay “engine” for SFT, which allowed for real-time multiplayer (albeit in sometimes hokey ways). The drawback is I haven’t found a good way to untangle it from the animation layer. It’s all 100% unit-testable, but when it comes to driving user input visuals for card play, it’s still a mess of:

Closing in on Alpha

Thu, 10 Sep 2015 20:25:46 +0000

So much work left to do, but we're hitting a point where the game is fully-playable with basic graphics online and off. Hope to write more about some of the technical challenges soon! A delivery made! But barely! Sign up on http://t.co/Y9RSqo47n9 for release updates on SFT! #indiegames pic.twitter.com/pvanWLGG26 — One Man Left Studios (@OneManLeft) September 10, 2015

Space Food Truck Shenanigans

Thu, 27 Aug 2015 15:00:43 +0000

This week I’ve got a lot done in the way of Steam integration, save files, automated builds, some better randomization for galaxy generation, as well as some much needed bug fixes to make online play smoother. Got a lot done but not much on the visual side of things. But hey: Nice to be one step closer to a shipping product Got basic Steamworks apis integrated as well. Pretty painless with the Steamworks.

Thoughts After a Failed Kickstarter

Wed, 19 Aug 2015 16:12:44 +0000

We ran a kickstarter for the game I’m currently working on, Space Food Truck. The game is coming along great, but we lacked the funds internally to really step it up a notch mostly in the audio department as well as some aspects in the graphical department due to budget constraints. I needed to be persuaded on the idea of running a kickstarter, but I eventually came around to it. Obviously, things didn’t work out but it was an exciting, sometimes nerve wracking experience.

Darkest Dungeon

Fri, 07 Aug 2015 23:00:37 +0000

Oh my word. This game is my current single player obsession. Loved the new X-Com? Loved FTL? Love RPG’s and the that “one more turn” feeling? I found it hard to stop playing. It came out of left field for me (but that’s how it always feels if their marketing is doing its job right?). I’m not a huge fan of “medieval” or “dark and grim” themed games. But the art style in Darkest Dungeon is amazing and I quickly became a fan.

Five Years of Being A Full-Time Indie

Thu, 06 Aug 2015 06:12:54 +0000

Wow, it’s been a while. Figured passing another milestone is worth at least some sort of update. Looking back at my 1 year milestone has been amusing. My initial thought was that almost all the points brought up 4 years ago would no longer apply. A lot of the insights back then are strangely still quite applicable. So what’s happened in the 4 years since? On a more personal level, I’ve improved my eating and exercising habits to stay healthier.

Designing Mechanics for Longevity

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 14:32:13 +0000

As a game designer, one of things I try to avoid is creating disposable experiences. As any creative, if you’re making it for an audience, you don’t want it to be forgotten shortly after it’s introduction. Designing for longevity can be taken in two ways: You’re design is centered around story, atmosphere, characters, with less focus on mechanics. Mechanics are simply a vessel to get through an experience you’ve authored. You’ve designed the mechanics that can be seen in their fullest from minute one, and are deep and relevant enough to have replay value in and of themselves even in hour 300 of the game.

Game Design Sensibilities

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 03:31:47 +0000

I’ve been playing a fair number of board games lately. It’s interesting because the design of those games I feel are a whole different world compared to modern video game designs. In a way, I feel board games are a ‘purer’ game design in some aspects. You’re not tied down in presentation, cut-scenes, and other spectacle, and all you have to work with is a few widgets and a compelling rule set.

Outwitting the New Year

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 06:39:53 +0000

That’s probably the most non-sensical post title I’ve every come up with. Anyway, just wanted to do a quick update post on Outwitters. I’ve got a few longer-form entries in the works but I’m letting them cook a little bit before posting. There’s a lot of moving parts right now in trying to get this game looking presentable, and all at different stages of completion. Over the next couple of weeks I’m focusing on getting this thing ‘feature complete’ so we can start iterating on the stuff we want to touch up on.

Outwitters Progress and Disk Access issues in VM’s

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 23:23:32 +0000

I’ve been slacking lately on the blog unfortunately. In any case, Outwitters is still chugging along as I chip away at a large to-do list. We’re still not feature-complete, which is a bit disappointing. Yet, the core game is playing more smoothly than I predicted it would be at this stage so that’s a plus. We’ve started adding a few more testers into our pool to get more feedback from new players as well as get the matchmaking ironed out.

The Indie Spirit

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 23:56:21 +0000

I’ve been slow on the blog updates lately mostly because the times I use to write were taken up with me being out of town. Just got back from an awesome weekend trip at MLG Orlando. For those that don’t follow that area of gaming, MLG stands for Major League Gaming, and is essentially a league for professional gamers to compete in. Starcraft 2 has taken off in a big way in the MLG, considering only a little over a year ago MLG was pretty much dominated by Halo and Call of Duty.

Outwitters Dev Battle Report

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 17:41:02 +0000

Oh, It’ll Be Out By…. Hmm, even now as I look back on what’s been done on Outwitters, I’ve learned a *ton* of new things in regards to game development. I’m not too excited about having only 1 game to release this year (if we even make *that*). Hell, we even planned on having 2 games a year. The take-away from that is game development is not an assembly line process.

Getting Production Data Out of Google App Engine And Into your iOS App

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 20:26:05 +0000

This following post is probably going to be useful to an extremely niche audience: anyone developing a multi-user iOS app that has a GAE backend. I’m currently working on Outwitters and debugging turn-based games on the local dev server (dev_appserver.py) is really quick and painless. The problem arises from the nature the game. It’s a multiplayer game, and as such, requires multiple users to function. You can only go so far with creating ‘mock user’ accounts, and fake data populating your local server.

Gameplay Choices in Outwitters

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 19:32:38 +0000

We’re still balancing Outwitters gameplay. When thinking about changing, removing, or adding gameplay I try to keep two aspects in mind, choices and unpredictability. I’ll speak to the choices aspect today, as I’m still trying to grapple with that whole unpredictability thing in a turn-based perfect-knowledge setting. When we set out to create Outwitters, we wanted to make a simplified strategy game. One where players can easily pick it up much in the same way they pick up an iOS arcade game.

The Ever Daunting To-Do List

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 20:32:26 +0000

My first week off the iDevBlogADay rotation and I miss my usual Friday post. Go me. We’ve kind of hit a period where a lot of work is getting done, but an ever growing mountain of work is coming up on the horizon. Polishing a game is hard. Polishing an online turn-based strategy game is really hard. The simplest things take 3-4 more extra steps to do whenever you incorporate a server into your game’s architecture.

Srs Bidness Mode Engaged

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 20:29:38 +0000

I’ve been making a ton of progress on Outwitters lately. Although when I step back and look I still see a mountain of work left to do. But I *do* feel like I’m whittling away slowly at it. All of the core gameplay has been implemented for local play. Online play works in a non user-friendly manner and is still missing a few bells and whistles to make it stand apart from the typical affair.

Crazy Busy And A New Work Style!

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 02:21:47 +0000

Wow, Friday almost flew right past me. I’ve been working on Outwitters practically non-stop. A lot of the major ‘components’, as I like to think of them, have been figured out and implemented in some sort of fashion. Now I have to make this big herculean effort to get it all integrated and seamless: 1v1 and 2v2 pass-n-play A couple of teams and their animations and unique powers The ever crazy complicated (implementation-wise) UI Asynchronous play using Google App Engine Aside from team animations/powers, all those things exist in kind of their own isolated ‘prototypes’ in one way or another, and now I’m trying to get it all under one “roof”.

Observations of the Casual Mind

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 00:01:26 +0000

Keep in mind, a lot of the rambling below is in the context of me being neck-deep in working on Outwitters, which is a strategy board game. I’m constantly thinking of ways to present games, their systems, and their objectives to people. Notice I said people, not gamers, or casual gamers. Sometimes I even look around my own environment and question “why the designer wrote that message the way they did”.

A Year of Being Indie

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 21:01:00 +0000

Tomorrow (June 18th) marks the first year anniversary of me becoming a full-time independent game developer. Wow did the time fly by fast! Over the course of the past year I helped launch Tilt to Live HD, Lite, a couple of major gametype updates to Tilt to Live for free, a paid Viva la Turret update, and finally released a multiplayer co-op mode for both our games. When I think about it that way, it’s definitely been a busy year.

More Witty Progress

Fri, 03 Jun 2011 18:56:13 +0000

It’s been a rather busy last couple of weeks. I’ve actually had a few coding sessions at night, and that hasn’t happened in months. Been having a blast working on Outwitters and we’ve been play testing maps on a weekly basis. In other news, Craig and Gavin, of Retro Dreamer fame, recently released their Velocispider iphone/ipad game. If you haven’t checked it out by now, then you’re missing out on some good old-school arcade fun.

Playing Around With Flash on iOS

Fri, 20 May 2011 16:26:47 +0000

About two weeks ago I mentioned I was looking into using the open source library, gameswf to integrate into our little 2D engine for iOS. I was at the point where I needed a UI solution for Outwitters, and I had a few options: Keep doing what I was doing with Tilt to Live and create the UI by handing coding everything and procedurally animating it Create a UI editor to help automate some of the UI features I had created in Tilt to Live Look into gameswf and see if I could go for the whole she-bang and just use Flash for the UI.

UI Woes

Fri, 06 May 2011 22:03:58 +0000

So what’s new in the world of OML and Outwitters? Not much really. Just keeping our heads down and working through some of the boilerplate stuff. We iterated a bit on the prototype over the week for visual elements to help make the game more approachable. I got my feet wet in Google App Engine and threw together really basic asynchronous functionality into the prototype in about a day just so I have a clearer understanding of how those things are going to work.

So Much Science Has Been Done…

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 20:40:53 +0000

As we’ve announced on the OML site, our new game has a name: Outwitters. It’s been quite busy for the last couple of weeks, but I’m loving it. Being able to tackle new problems and going outside my comfort zone in terms of game development has been pretty fun so far. I’ve never coded a turn-based strategy game from start to finish, so I’m having to learn a slew of new concepts and design patterns to help mitigate the complexity of the game’s rules.

Automating Asset Generation in Photoshop

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 18:30:47 +0000

Wow, time flies when you’re busy. As seen on the OML site, we’ve announced we’re working on our next game. With that out of the bag, I’ll probably be blogging about the progress of it, obstacles I run into, and things that are helping us along with the development that might prove useful to other iOS devs. With that, the first major issue we’ve come across is trying to develop 2D assets for a game that is planned to run in 3 different resolutions.

What's This Monkey Business?

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 16:50:59 +0000

My first GDC conference was an awesome experience! I’m sure my head exploded multiple times throughout the week attending talks, meeting awesome people, eating great food, and a bit of sight seeing around San Francisco. Unfortunately, I came down with a double whammy of the flu/cold and bronchitis. Being ill the last couple of days of GDC were pretty miserable, but I was able to keep my head up for the rest of the week and try to enjoy what little I could.

GDC Around the Corner

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 03:01:29 +0000

Seems this past week I’ve been slammed with a ton of stuff. Had to take a breather, step back and get a bit more organized to gain some perspective. Tax season is in full swing, so that’s always biting at my ankles as this is my first year filing as a self-employed tax payer. Tilt to Live Viva la Coop is close to being live on the app store (hopefully), and HD will be followed up shortly after.

Adding an Upgrade Path to In App Purchases

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 18:04:10 +0000

Tilt to Live HD’s Viva la Turret mode is now live and people seem to be enjoying it. One of the bigger hurdles in this prior update was getting in app purchases to work the way we wanted them to without violating the standard user experience of IAP. I figured I’d share how I went about solving this for Tilt to Live HD specifically. We had a few business goals in mind:

Running Wild with GameKit

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 00:14:17 +0000

I’m still in the middle of finishing up our Co-op mode for Tilt to Live and coding in the last odds and ends to polish up the UI. The gameplay rules have be finalized and it’s been a hoot to play. Yes, I said hoot. We’ll be playtesting the mode in the coming weeks to do any minor tweaking to the physics and balance. The wireless P2P GameKit API has been pretty cool to work with.

A Small Update

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 17:45:36 +0000

Wow, last week was an intense week, focusing on pretty much Tilt to Live exclusively. Took a nice break/road trip up to North Carolina to do a bit of snowboarding to cap off the week. Conditions weren’t that great, but it was close, cheap, and still fun versus going back out to Colorado. Back today somewhat recharged and ready to go. Haven’t had time to work in Blitzmax at all last week, I hope that’ll change after this week as well.

So Much To Do…

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 23:07:05 +0000

January started off with quite the busy schedule and it hasn’t let up yet. So much to do so little time! Viva la Turret has turned out to be a critical success and people are enjoying it so that’s great. Coming right off the heels of that I wanted to update Tilt to Live HD with Game Center support. It came, and we screwed up (again) :[. There’s a bug with the scoring that cropped up after I added a last minute fix to a less serious bug involving double vortexes.

2010 in Review and This Year's Goals

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 22:19:25 +0000

2010 was an amazing year for me. While a lot was accomplished, there was a lot left to be accomplished. June 18th, 2010 was the day I fulfilled my dream of becoming a full time indie game developer. Moved back down south from DC to cut living expenses to help my chances at keeping this up as well as be within shouting distance of Adam, my partner in crime. Tilt to Live became a crazy and unexpected success.

Building with two projects at the same time

Fri, 24 Dec 2010 19:19:38 +0000

I’m currently messing around with bluetooth multiplayer and it’s been a blast so far. The only downside is the much longer turn-around cycles for developing the network code to test on two devices. On the PC it was a bit cumbersome as well, but I could always just run 2 instances side by side locally. I guess if I had spent a little extra time to allow for Wi-fi AND bluetooth I could test with one device and 1 simulator, but it’s still always going to be slower than single device testing.

Fixing interference problems with iSimulate (Bluetooth = Bad)

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 04:09:43 +0000

About to head out for a week into the rockies for some fun snowboarding :D. So I won’t be able to keep up with e-mail, twitter, or the blog for the next week and I’m currently in a rush to pack. I didn’t want to just leave for a week without explanation though. In any case, I still use iSimulate for testing Tilt to Live on the simulator. Having already written about the great benefits of using something like iSimulate I won’t go into the details again.

The Tug of War in Content vs. Gameplay

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 01:22:12 +0000

I’ve started holding a particular mindset in regards to game design a little while after I started working on iPhone games, but I could never really articulate what I was feeling without sounding like a lazy game developer or religious nut. Danc’s article over at lostgarden reflects a lot of what I think about games as a medium, and what they can do, and where they are heading (good or bad).

Bitten by the multi-threading bug again

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 21:34:00 +0000

Wow. I think I’m still digesting thanksgiving dinner. Anyway, we just recently announced our newest game mode for Tilt to Live and it’s a doozy. In the midst of getting it all tested and ready to submit to Apple I had a bug lurking about the loading screen code. At seemingly random times the game would crash with an EXEC_BAD_ACCESS error somewhere in my loading assets functions usually stopping at CGContextDrawImage.

Keeping Achievements Relevant

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 01:37:18 +0000

With December quickly approaching we’re finishing up our next major update to Tilt to Live. We just finished putting in the new achievements and I figured I’d share with you some of the guidelines I try to follow more or less. Maybe you’ll find some good ideas for achievements for your own game if you happen to be working on one, or maybe re-think some of them. Bad Idea Don’t make the player grind (actively) This might be fine in a hardcore RPG (I don’t think it is personally, and just a sign of an outdated design philosophy), but in the mobile games arena time is of the essence.

Decoupling Ranking from Revenue

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 23:24:44 +0000

Before I start, I just want to mention that after 18 straight weeks of making iDevBlogADay posts, that this will be my last one. I’m following Noel Llopis’s lead and making room for that LARGE waiting list of developers waiting their turn. The point of iDevBlogADay was to encourage developers to blog regularly and help them get in the habit of blogging. I’ll still be making regular posts, so be sure to check back each week!

Taking the pain out of ad-hoc testing

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 17:25:50 +0000

This post is more of a public service announcement. Prior to Tilt to Live’s Game Center/Retina update we wanted to extensively test the game with a wider tester base. So we ran a small ‘open beta’ (as open as Apple’s ad-hoc program would allow us). Prior to iOS 4.0 users had to do a cumbersome dance to get an ad-hoc game on their devices. And by cumbersome, I mean anything dealing with the desktop iTunes client.

Tilt to Live Post Mortem

Thu, 04 Nov 2010 14:57:30 +0000

Gamezebo was kind enough to host the post mortem I wrote up for Tilt to Live. You can find it here.

Restoring My Own Sanity

Tue, 02 Nov 2010 03:34:56 +0000

Sometimes being able to ‘unplug’ is exactly what I need to recharge my motivation. This past weekend I did just that. Adam and I headed up to DC to attend the “Rally to Restore Sanity And/Or Fear”. I use to live in DC so ti was great visiting and meeting up with old friends and just exploring the city. I tweeted maybe 1 or 2 times the entire weekend. My laptop never came on, and I actually didn’t randomly browse my RSS feed or facebook until I got back home in Montgomery.

When One Goes Indie

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 19:25:42 +0000

One Man Left Studios is over a year old, but it’s been about 4-5 months since I’ve gone ‘full time’ indie. It’s been an awesome experience thus far and each new day brings a lot of joy and excitement. It’s really hard to describe the feeling of going from a job you simply ‘show up for’ and one that you can’t wait to start working on. But looking back to how I felt about certain aspects of the working life to what I feel now, a lot has changed:

Gyroscope all the way!

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 03:24:22 +0000

Ok, that title is kind of misleading. But for those who caught the reference, *high five*. I actually pulled gyroscope support from our latest Tilt to Live update. I had it implemented into the game at one point but through beta testing eventually killed the feature. I just wanted to go over the details as to why it went the way of the dodo bird. Gyroscope != Accelerometer Alright this a biggie.

Retina Graphics Caveats

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 18:57:56 +0000

Lot’s going on in OML-Land. TTL HD is out the door. TTL HD 1.1 is already in Apple’s queue (fixing a horrible crash for our international users). TTL 1.5 (iPhone) is in testing right now. On top of some R&D type stuff I’m messing around with so we can transition to our next project more smoothly. So retina graphics are all the rage at the moment. If you were lucky to develop your game assets all in a vector-based format, supporting retina graphics was a bit easier.

Notes on Game Center Integration

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 16:57:44 +0000

Despite the good advice on just using a library or someone else’s solution to getting game center working, sometimes I’m just stubborn. Well it wasn’t actually completely stubbornness as it was more of a “don’t have an alternative” situation. Tilt to Live uses AGON for it’s leaderboards and awards system. It has served us well and never faltered. Despite that, Game Center has arrived to rain on it’s parade so-to-speak. To give TTL hopefully more life in the long run I decided to implement Game Center alongside AGON over the past week.

Taking Mercurial Out For a Spin

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 21:42:10 +0000

Let me first start off by saying how great it feels to be genuinely “busy”. I’m talking about the “excited-and-can’t-wait-to-get-started-or-get-finished” type of busy. I’m slowly finding out that the days are flying by with me barely noticing. Each morning, I’m looking forward to getting to work (yes, even Mondays). So either I’m strange or have found something I truly love doing :). Anyway, I don’t have any technical insights for this week’s post, just more of a status update on something I’ve been tinkering with.

IAP Fun and Games

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 22:52:30 +0000

We sent off Tilt to Live HD to Apple for review today. I couldn’t send it off until around 3 PM today because my internet was down (since 6 AM) due to a less then stellar ISP here in Alabama. *sigh*. But that won’t get me down, I’m super excited that TTL HD will be on the ipad app store in a few short weeks! Right now I’m busy trying to cut and edit footage together for a launch trailer.

Which Anti-Pattern are you?

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 14:21:17 +0000

A friend of mine sent me this list of anti-patterns common in software engineering. Being the lone developer on my team, I don’t get to see anyone else’s code except mine on a project. As a result, it’s hard to critique whether my code is “good” or not. That was one of the benefits of working at a company I suppose. Being surrounded by those with more experience than me, I would learn a lot just from an afternoon of working on a section of code that wasn’t mine.

Getting Into Prototyping Mode…

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 00:01:27 +0000

After reading Noel’s post on prototyping I realized I was drifting away from that mind set and getting into dangerous territory of just “thinking up a game and running with it.” Tilt to Live itself spawned into a full game from being discovered in a rough prototype. Since then we’ve just had rough documents and ideas that we wished to pursue after TTL. The past few weeks we’ve been gearing up more heavily for our next game and I’ve been getting back into the habit of whipping out fast prototypes.

The More the Merrier?

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 01:02:02 +0000

I recently made a post on our official OML blog about what Adam and I are playing. Taking a look at that list you’ll find that the vast majority of games I play are multiplayer oriented. A lot of biases, inspirations, and design decisions that go into my game designs are influenced by multiplayer games. When we set out to start One Man Left, my long term goal for the company (beyond making fun games we like to play) was to be known for making fun multiplayer indie games for whatever platform we develop for.

Developing with Multiple iDevices

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 20:53:15 +0000

So I’m currently playing around with some multiplayer prototypes on the iphone, and when it came down to testing stuff I ran into a problem: You can’t deploy to multiple devices at the same time. Yea it’s not exactly a ‘problem’ per say, but it’s certainly tedious doing a ‘build and run’ on the devices you want to test. So much so that I dropped 3 player support in a prototype just to save time.

iPhone Dev Tip #4: Check your Locale

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 16:26:06 +0000

I had an issue where several international users were reporting that the game was crashing. As it turns out, using an NSNumberFormatter would return a weird character to display as the grouping separator. This would be all good and dandy, but the problem lies in the fact that I’m using bitmap fonts to render, and the look-up failed causing a hard crash. In Tilt to Live’s case, this was in regards to how number grouping symbols are displayed in different locales.

Size Doesn't Matter Day

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 02:14:57 +0000

After responding to Noel’s post on the size of games I soon learned it was a wide effort by developers to post their thoughts on this topic so I figured I’d throw my hat into the ring. I’ve had this topic in my head for a very long time and it’s been frustrating hearing friends’ and reviewers’ opinions on games. Other developers have covered this pretty well already so not sure what else I can contribute beyond just a rant :P.

Adventures in Retina Display Land

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 22:05:54 +0000

I spent this past weekend getting retina display graphics implemented in Tilt to Live for iPhone 4. The cynic in me hates the marketing term ‘retina graphics’ because on the production side, it’s simply just a bigger image. But I guess you do need a name for it, and since ‘HD’ has already been bastardized on the iPad I guess this will do. I decided to write this post to bring a bit of awareness to some of the process of updating your OpenGL game for the retina displays if you choose to do so.

iPhone Dev Tip #3: Sanity From Automated Builds

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 19:43:54 +0000

It’s been hellishly busy as of late, as I’m knee deep in Tilt to Live HD. Now on with my quick blurb: This tip is kind of a “duh” much in the same way version control software is for most developers. The thing is I still meet a lot of developers who don’t use any form of version control. And automated builds simply weren’t even in my own tool set initially.

Links for Thought

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 17:50:23 +0000

It’s been busy, busy, busy as of late. We’re in full swing trying to get Tilt to Live HD ready for the iPad. It’s looking amazing thus far and plays a lot better than just the 2x mode for the original Tilt to Live. Frostbite mode just went out the door a few days ago, and the response has been positive so far. We’ve been getting some responses from users saying the game has become too easy in the other modes.

A Follow Up On Burn Rate

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:25:32 +0000

Markus Nigrin wrote a great follow-up to my previous post on managing one’s burn rate when going independent. His post touches on some really important information that I completely left out of mine, namely, being educated about investing and not ignoring it. I’m guilty of this as well, but only since “cutting the chord” have I become much more concerned about my lack of education about investing, and it’s something I’m currently working to improve.

Managing the Burn Rate

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 17:18:05 +0000

While I was working at a day job for the past couple of years I was gobbling up any info I could find on going fully independent and the what it takes not only from a business perspective, but what you have to change about your personal life, ideals, and expectations in order to make it sustainable. One of things that stuck out a lot was managing my burn rate. Minimizing the amount of money leaving my account wasn’t just a matter of not buying a Starbucks coffee (I don’t even drink coffee, but you get the idea).

Playtesting: do it honestly, do it early, do it often.

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 12:42:41 +0000

When your profession empowers you to design literally just about anything, it’s easy to rationalize just about any game design decision. Hell, I somehow managed to rationalize that our new power up for Tilt to Live have a screeching hawk sound effect. Bad idea? You’ll have to wait and see. When Adam and I are working on design details for how a particular system or game mechanic will work, we bring a lot of assumptions to the table of how we think people think.

Lessons Learned in Tilt Controls

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 12:00:28 +0000

Ahh, my first idevblogaday post! For those that don’t know, idevblogaday is a group of indie dev bloggers started by Miguel Á. Friginal of @mysterycoconut games to get developers blogging more regularly. So we’ll see how that goes :]. After finishing the initial release of Tilt to Live I had been wanting to gather up my thoughts on what I had learned about making a game that is heavily dependent on accelerometer controls.

Decompression

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 16:51:54 +0000

Looking back at some of my old blog posts where I contemplate and muse about long term career goals; I would have never guessed 9 months later I would sitting here having accomplished one of my ‘loftier’ ones: Become a full time independent game developer. It’s been 23 days since I cut the chord and went full time indie. And the range of emotions are wild and varied as I flail about trying to get settled into a new and super exciting lifestyle.

It's Raining Outside…

Fri, 28 May 2010 03:31:43 +0000

…it’s so calming. I remember registering this domain in similar weather conditions, hence the name :). I submitted an update to Tilt to Live earlier this week, after crunching for a few days to get it done. So much to say and so little time :[. Heading up to New York City this weekend with family, which’ll be enjoyable. Went there for the first time a couple weekends ago since middle school, and it was so captivating.

Funny thing about releasing games…

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 02:30:42 +0000

Here I was thinking that once Tilt to Live was out the door, that it’d calm down a bit and I’d get a breather to rest for a few days. Wrong. Running off the early buzz of Tilt to Live we took it as an opportunity to generate some extra excitement for our upcoming updates. It was a very weird shift going from a mostly ‘quiet’ development cycle of just spending days coding away to suddenly spending the majority of the next few weeks doing PR, marketing, chatting with players, etc.

Tilt to Live is out now!

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 03:59:44 +0000

Tilt to Live has been unleashed on the unsuspecting public! So far the general vibe has been extremely positive! Adam and I are both pretty excited about getting our first app store game out the door. What’s interesting is the workload went from “lull” to “overdrive” in a matter of days as we ramped up for release and still are trying to coordinate things for a bigger media push in the coming weeks.

iPhone Dev Tip #2: OpenAL Performance

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 03:17:03 +0000

So I’m using OpenAL to do the audio in Tilt to Live. Over the course of development audio became the bottleneck of my game, both in size and in performance. The following could help you if you’re experience audio performance issues and are somewhat new to OpenAL. Let me preface this with: Don’t blindly optimize. Measure, Measure, MEASURE! Know what your bottleneck is before trying to tune code! Don’t make more than 32 sources objects in OpenAL.

iPhone Dev Tip #1: Batch Audio Compression

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 01:49:03 +0000

We’re extremely close to submitting our first title “Tilt to Live“. We plan on submitting it this upcoming Friday. After a long and grueling (but awesome fun!) development cycle we’ve learned a ton. I figured an interesting way to distill our new found knowledge it would be in very short “dev tips” for developing an iPhone game. Today I start out with audio: Compressing Audio By the end of development our game weighed in at 16 MB.

Update On Continuous 2D Trails in XNA

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:05:07 +0000

I’ve received a few e-mails now regarding this tutorial that was hosted on Ziggyware’s site. So here’s a quick post to help others save some time and give an update on it’s status: Ziggyware.com seems to be down indefinitely. As a temporary solution until I get back around to hosting this tutorial myself you can find the Google cached version of it here. If you wish to look at the sample code and illustrations in full you can download the XNA sample from my site here.

Games speaking to the human condition

Sat, 16 Jan 2010 20:20:13 +0000

I had seen a few things written about “Everyday the same dream“, a game created by but never took the time to try it out myself until recently. It’s a compelling art game where you try to subvert you’re daily routine. It took me a few minutes to figure out what to do after a few days of the mundane routine, but that added to the whole experience of the game itself.

Happy Holidays!

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 01:19:46 +0000

So we’re at the last mile (it’s a long mile..) of development on Tilt To Live. Adam and I are starting to get some pre-release buzz built up around the game as we put our finishing touches into place. With the holidays around the corner, I will be out of commission until mid January. Marketing is a whole other beast we’re trying to deal with and learn as we go. With a market as vicious and saturated as the App Store, it’s been one challenge after another!

Tilt To Live Trailer Released

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 04:13:34 +0000

: )

Throttling Back on Multithreading

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 04:42:04 +0000

It’s been a while since my last post. As things started entering crunch mode and the whole holiday rush was happening I unfortunately let my blogging schedule slip as a result. It’s still going to be irregular for the next month or so as I’m trying to finish up Tilt To Live. The official Tilt To Live site has launched with a few screenies and more info though! It’s a basic info site at the moment, but I’ll be sprucing it up as time goes on.

Despite My Best Efforts…

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 02:12:39 +0000

…looks like I’ll be hitting a bit of crunch time in the coming weeks. Blog entries will probably be dwindling over the next month or so as I try to put the finishing touches on Tilt To Live. On that note: No matter how much energy you feel like you have and no matter how motivated you are at seeing a project to the end, you still need to take breaks from it.

The App Store: Does Size Matter?

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 02:40:50 +0000

As I’m zeroing in on finishing Tilt To Live some of the bigger assets are coming through from Adam and the game size has grown a lot faster than it has in past few months. One of the unstated goals of mine was to keep the game under 10 MB. Why? You are not allowed to download apps, podcasts, or videos that are larger than 10 MB over 3G. You are required to connect to wi-fi in order to do it on your iPhone.

Incremental Progress

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:08:34 +0000

I’ve made some serious progress as of late with Tilt To Live. The age old saying “I’m 90% done…” is rearing its head and yet it feels like there’s 90% more to go! This is a bit regurgitated, but saw an interesting bit in a post on burnout and motivation at Zen Habits: 1. Achieve in increments. When you only focus on a big goal someday, it’s easy to get burned out by the daily grind.

iSimulate or Bust

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:28:54 +0000

I finally got rid of the stupid… “ld: warning in .so, file is not of required architecture.” …warning when using iSimulate. If you’re not using iSimulate or a similar technology you’re losing valuable time even if you don’t use the accelerometer or GPS functions. Then again, I might not be the best spokesperson on time since I spent the weekend re-inventing the wheel. I have this need to make sure my projects compile w/o warnings.

Eureka! Multi-threaded iPhone texture loading is a go!

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 03:09:28 +0000

It’s getting around that time when I’m spending more time working on the game as I realize how many little things need to be fixed, added, tweaked. I’ve recently given up most of my weekends now in an effort to get more hours in. I’m currently working 6 out of the 7 days a week on the game in some way. It’s mostly game programming, sometimes graphics, web development, emailing, phone calls, or getting business forms and other legal stuff squared away.

Canabalt: Powerful, simple, game design

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 05:32:25 +0000

Every now and then I come across a game that is rather inspiring. Strangely, a lot of them come from the flash community. I really like it when someone can take a game mechanic that is so utterly constrained and create something so enjoyable out of it. The epitome of these design challenges might be the ‘One-Button’ games. I just recently came across Canabalt, and it had me playing for a while despite the need for sleep.

Issues Loading Assets On Separate Threads

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 02:53:44 +0000

I’ve had a rather productive weekend! Implemented a handful of new art assets from Adam, finished some more gameplay code, optimized a bit, and even released a new build to testers tonight. It wasn’t a smooth process, but when is it ever? I was having an issue with loading the assets of the game at app launch and it caused the game to crash if it ever took more than 20 seconds to load the assets.

Teach Me How To Play, Madame!

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:13:40 +0000

Last week was a busy week as I spent most of it implementing and tweaking the really basic tutorial system I had in mind for Tilt To Live. From my gameplay experiences I feel tutorials have gotten pretty good at being integrated into the game themselves and not being ridiculously wordy/boring. I’m not sure if it’s that I tend to grok how most genre game mechanics work from many years of playing, or understand the basic ‘standards’ across games in the same genre, or that the tutorials are really getting better.

Short Term Goals and Motivation

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 05:36:18 +0000

Tangible goals are key to any project. Without them I feel like I’m peddling up a steep hill just so I can peddle up some more. Scheduling and time logs showing time spent are great for statistical and historical purposes, but in the scheme of things can do little to save a project if you and your team lack that motivation needed to push the last mile. Countless indie games die from loss of interest.

GUI Design and Easing Functions

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 21:31:25 +0000

When it comes to gui coding I don’t typically find it the most glamorous things to do. Particularly when dealing with games. You are left with writing a lot of boiler plate GUI code that is tightly integrated with your rendering pipeline. And even when I do find gui libraries for games they tend to try to emulate the OS in look and feel. When you want something lightweight and very interactive/animated you typically have to write it and integrate it yourself.

Serializing Assets: XML vs Binary

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 23:06:43 +0000

I had planned to put up more of a tutorial post on rendering adaptive 2D grids for things like editors and such, since it was something I recently implemented. I got it working in my editor but then when I tried to conjure up a more “simplified” version in Blitzmax without any of the abstractions of a scenegraph, camera, and other numerous things I found I was tripping up over Blitzmax’s own graphics commands O_o.

Finding That Balance of Day Job vs. Indie Work Schedules

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 03:39:46 +0000

One thing I’ve learned from working on games along side a day job is it takes a very strong commitment otherwise it will grind to a halt shortly after starting. You have to plan for the long haul as any game worth playing, or better yet paying for, requires much more time than you think. Especially if it’s your first ‘commercial’ endeavor. Planning is paramount if you wish to have any chance in succeeding.

Where Does This Piece Go? A Framework To Engine Dilemma

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 20:57:49 +0000

I’m currently working on an editor for the next iteration of Gunstyle on the weekends. I find it’s a nice break from iPhone development and lets me start the week with renewed energy to work on Tilt To Live again. I’m using wxMax to develop the UI for the actual editor. It’s not much at the moment but it’s coming together slowly. The editor code architecture is taking a page from the Unreal engine mentality of having your engine and editor be pretty much one in the same.

Music While I Work

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 18:27:48 +0000

I try to avoid music with lyrics while working as it ends up being distracting for me when trying to work through some problem or bug. For the last several years I’ve been listening to chillout/lounge/ambient music. A couple of the sites I tune in to in case you wish to expand your listening playlist: Digitally Imported – Chillout Channel SomaFM – Groove Salad

Low Hanging Fruit and Project Motivation

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 20:01:47 +0000

Some days it takes a herculean effort to force myself to sit down and work on my game. Some weeks it can be destructive to my entire schedule, while others its a complete non-issue. Overtime I’ve found prioritizing my tasks wasn’t enough to really Get Things Done. I needed a way to organize my daily tasks in such a way that would maximize my motivation to actually work that day, particularly after coming home from my day job.

Interpolating 2D Rotations

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 18:27:30 +0000

I’ve had this issue in past 2D games all the time. The ability to interpolate 2D rotations for basic animations for anyone that doesn’t understand quaternions becomes a rather laborious task. I’ve done messy if-then statements to try to catch all the cases where rotation hits the ‘360 to 0’ boundary and it’s always ugly and seemed like there had to be a more mathematically correct way to interpolate a circular value.

SVN Owned: Lessons Learned

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 21:17:47 +0000

I’ve been using Subversion even as a single developer for several years now. It’s invaluable to me and millions of other developers. If you’re a developer working on any project that lasts more than a couple hours and you aren’t using version control then you are shooting yourself in the foot. As a developer, we’re comfortable with juggling several things in our heads at the same time, it’s a fundamental skill we use everyday when developing software.

wxMax > MaxGUI

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 03:09:04 +0000

The title of this article says it all. I’m currently working on the next ‘iteration’ of Gunstyle with a fellow developer and over the past weekend we were in need of a GUI library to help develop our map editor. In the past maxGUI ‘worked’ more or _less…._emphasis on the _less_. The design of maxGUI left me with a bad taste in my mouth. It’s a procedural library that is cobbled together with some weak OO on top that didn’t provide much flexibility (not to mention it wasn’t exactly ‘native’ UI on different platforms).

Video Games Live!

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 05:16:08 +0000

I just recently got back from the “Video Games Live!” concert. In short, it was AMAZING. If they are performing in your local area, no, your state I highly recommend you take the effort to make it to one of their shows. It’s an all day event of games, contests, and meeting other gamers that’s capped off with a fun and amazing performance.

Be A Time Ninja

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 05:10:44 +0000

I’ve settled into my new apartment and job and trying to get a decent schedule for working on my different game projects. For now my iPhone game is my ‘main’ project which I spend Monday through Friday working on in the evenings. Weekends I devote to side projects such as Gunstyle. Trying to make progress is getting increasingly harder as my time has become extremely limited to about 1 maybe 2 hours a night during the week.

On the other side

Wed, 06 May 2009 16:57:31 +0000

Graduation is over :). Real world here I come. Anyway, going to be moving in probably a month or so. In the meantime I’ve got a lot more time to focus on some of my game projects. My main focus is finishing up an iphone game and it’s coming along great! Whenever I play it I end up playing it for a lot longer than needed for testing, so hopefully that’s a good thing :).

Physics, iPhone, and non-sense

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:04:56 +0000

It has been a while since my last blog post :(. If you’ve been following my twitter account though you’d know it’s still been a busy last couple of months. I’ve been developing things on several fronts lately. For one, I’ve been busy developing some supporting code to hook Opensteer into C4 in a more seamless matter and work with C4’s constructs in mind. It’s a project related to some school work, which has proven to be challenging and fun.

A Little Twitter Never Hurt Anyone

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 20:04:22 +0000

I’ve decided to give this twitter thing a try. I’m going to try to keep that feed updated as much as possible on my progress throughout the several projects I’m involved with. I’m spread a little thin at the moment so trying to find time to come up with a substantial blog post is becoming increasingly difficult. I’ll try to come up with some blog posts when I hit some milestones for my projects in the future.

Off To A New Year

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 01:28:11 +0000

Yea, I’m a little late posting about the ‘new year’. My last post pretty much covered what I had to say about 2008. I’m still in flux at the moment getting settled into my new schedule for the semester. Just got off the phone with a colleague discussing potential themes, styles, and design goals for our upcoming XNA game. After spending 3-4 months prototyping the ideas we had in our heads I think we’ve cut the fat and finally have something we can focus on getting done.

Year In Review

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 05:44:52 +0000

I’m finding it hard to believe its almost 2009 already! I guess it’s that time of the year where I start reflecting on my accomplishments and shortcomings. Back in January I had set the goal of completing a commercial game. Well, that never came to fruition for various reasons. It was mainly a conflict in balancing school responsibilities with game development (which at this point in time couldn’t be considered anything but ‘hobby’).

Farseer.BMX Update (v 1.1)

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 17:43:15 +0000

I was made aware of a serious issue with detecting collisions between TGeom’s recently. While it did not affect anyone who was using the engine and letting the TPhysicsSimulator run and manage collisions and dynamics, anyone who wished to use Farseer.BMX’s collision routines separately by calling TGeom.CollideWithGeometry() ran into issues. The code has since been fixed and updated. Please update your Farseer.BMX module so you can continue using it without this annoying bug.

Wildboarders: The Long Road Ahead

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 21:30:57 +0000

Quick status update on Wildboarders. Every week I tend to have small incremental goals to hit. This week focused on wrapping up the supporting code to allow me to generate levels for the game. I’m slowly starting to realize my current schedule isn’t accomodating to my game dev time. It’s actually the opposite, my game dev time is working ‘around’ my schedule. Looks like I’m going to have to rearrange a few things on my weekly schedule to actually get this game done on time and make game dev my focus for the next several months.

September Update

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 03:33:06 +0000

Just wanted to post a quick update on some game development stuff I’ve been working on the past couple of months. Farseer Physics is just one of the few projects I’m working on. By the way, I’m still slowly working on Farseer physics, but don’t expect an update on it for a while. I’ve mainly been giving support to those who are using it through e-mail. So if you’re having issues with it or can’t figure something out let me know and I can help you there. I also figured it was finally time to do some aesthetic work on the site. I like the way it turned out :). All in all, things are doing great but I’m ever so busy! Over the last few months I’ve been neck deep in either Blitzmax, C#, C++, php, or mySQL.

Yummy Digests

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 18:39:02 +0000

I’ve been working on a few projects that require blitzmax and a web-server (php/mysql) to communicate. Along came the need to hash files. This code archive entry was very useful :). I decided to wrap it into an object and add a new method to it. Even though it’s a series of functions I still tend to make types with functions in them to help me organize them (it’s like a cheap way of namespacing). I needed the ability to hash a file using Sha-1 hashing. Seeing that php has a function called sha1_file($pathToFile) I figured I’d implement the equivalent on blitzmax. With this THasher type, I’ve added a SHA1_File(path) function also.

Why hash files?

There are many reasons to use hashes, but recently I used it to check for file changes. If you’ve ever wanted to find out if some arbitrary file has ‘changed’ since the last time you’ve opened it this can prove to be useful. If you save the hash beforehand then recompute the hash now and if they are different, then something’s changed! Some applications of this are:

Write a file-updater to quickly find out which new files need to be downloaded. Just comparing hashes would be sufficient in most cases, instead of having to go individually byte-by-byte or traversing the file structure to find a difference.
help stop cheating. If you don’t want users changing texture files to gain an advantage or don’t want them ‘mucking’ with any other data file. If you check the current hash against a previously approved one and it doesn’t check out then the file has more than likely been tampered with.

How Do I Use THasher?

If you want to hash a string using SHA-1 then:

Local hashedFoo:String = THasher.sha1("Foo")

Want to hash a whole file? Then:

Local filehash:String = THasher.SHA1*File("someFile.txt")

Keep in mind you can hash _any* file, not just text files like in the above example.

Anyway, read on for the whole file. With the exception of SHA1_File() I did not write these hashing functions for Blitzmax. They were simply taken from Yan’s very helpful code archives post :).

How to create concave polygons

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 01:42:28 +0000

Yes, yes I know the documentation is lacking at the moment for Farseer.BMX. I’m still working on it on a few fronts. First, I’m trying to do api documentation (bbdoc mostly). Secondly, I’m trying to write tutorials/guides that help show how to use some of farseer’s features. I had hoped that releasing the demo application source code would’ve covered this aspect as the demos cover pretty much each feature, but I guess since the demo source is a bit more complex in design (handling a lot of graphics related mumbo jumbo), the actual ‘needed content’ wasn’t particularly easy to find.

Flavors of Farseer…and new Module!

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 06:31:12 +0000

So far feedback has been great on Farseer.BMX working in Blitzmax. Some users have tested Farseer.BMX on Linux and Mac and it works without a hitch. Farseer.BMX is officially cross-platform between Windows, Linux, and Mac! That’s great news seeing how widely available the Farseer engine is becoming. It’s now available on: Windows C# – XNA C# – Silverlight Blitzmax XBox 360 C# – XNA Linux Blitzmax Mac Blitzmax Your Toaster * ?

Farseer.BMX 1.0 Released

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 05:13:24 +0000

And there was much rejoicing! It does feel great to finally ‘finish’ something. I started out this project as something to give me a foundation to code my own game project on, and now after 110+ hours of coding there is a 2D physics library for Blitzmax :)! I hope it proves useful to those that end up using it. While the engine hasn’t been tested for ‘real-world’ use it I think the demos do a good job of putting it through its paces.

More Farseer.BMX

Wed, 28 May 2008 06:26:40 +0000

I was hoping to have an update a little earlier than this, but decided to hold off and throw together at least a bit of content with the update. I’ve added a slew of joints and controllers into the Farseer engine for Blitzmax (which I think I’ll just start referring to as just Farseer.BMX to save my poor little fingers). Below is a list of stuff I’ve added since the initial post:

Farseer Physics in Blitzmax Demo

Sat, 17 May 2008 00:25:12 +0000

Hurray! Finially got to a stable stopping point in porting over Farseer Physics from C# on XNA to Blitzmax! Farseer Physics Engine is a 2D physics engine originally written by Jeff Weber who develops XNA/Silverlight games over at Farseer Games. Much thanks to him for creating a great physics engine and for allowing me to move it to another language, which once done, I hope will help others create fun physics games in Blitzmax.

GTA4 Rant [Read: Initial Impressions]

Mon, 05 May 2008 17:13:47 +0000

Wow! GTA4 is an awesome game! The amount of content in it is mind-blowing. It seems whatever gta4 lacks in gameplay departments it makes up for by sheer quantity and quality of content. It was pretty sad when I spent 20 minutes in gta4 watching TV. Watching TV inside a video game…wtf…that’s a new low for me. As if being a couch potato or an eccentric gamer wasn’t ‘bad’ enough. It just goes to show the brilliance of gta4’s design.

Zzz

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 04:27:31 +0000

Functioning off of very little sleep in the last 48 hours… But finally got a good lock on what game I’ll be designing and developing in the coming months. More news on that in the upcoming weeks! My head is still spinning as I’m trying to pick up WPF, Open XML, Linq, and a host of other new technology/concepts for the last couple of days for a project at work I’ve just been assigned to.

State of Mind

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 16:21:32 +0000

I always knew that your state of mind affects your productivity. Had a pretty rough week last week and work on my prototype suffered for it. But in the end, I realized time was a-wasting. You have to keep at it regardless of how you feel that day/week/month, because at the end of the day no one is asking you to do this. I never doubted that working on indie games would be difficult and you should approach it just like any other serious job, but it’s now becoming clear how to approach it.

Random Static

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 09:26:38 +0000

Going onto my 4th prototype this coming week. One thing I’ve quickly realized is if I want to make a decent game that has enough depth to warrant as a full game then trying to crank out a prototype in a single week is unrealistic. With my current work schedule plus life’s many other challenges, the average 10-15 hours a week I invest wouldn’t be enough. I’m ‘redefining’ my time schedule to mean ‘total time spent on a prototype shouldn’t be more than week’s worth’.

Back Into the Swing Of Things

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 23:41:31 +0000

So far the new year is working out A-OK. I’m about 60 hours into developing my new game framework and 5th prototype for my next project. For those that are curious, it is being written in Blitzmax. Why? well it’s a straightforward language that is also pretty easily extensible, should the need arise. I’ve used Blitzmax’s predecessor for about 2 years, and I’m familiar with it. What more reason do I need?

End 2007. Initiate 2008.

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 05:53:43 +0000

A lot has been happening lately, but not much worth writing about (aka I’m too damn tired at the moment to be bothered writing it). It’s been a good year, and I’m gearing up for a busy 2008 with plenty of ideas and goals I hope to set in motion and accomplish :). Hint: One of those goals is to update this blog more frequently. Catch you on the flip side!

Just Keep Coding…

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 09:07:45 +0000

Yawn! Man, I’m tired but can’t fall asleep. Just finished my first play session on Gunstyle on the Xbox 360 a few hours ago with a friend (2 player split-screen). The day before I finally got split screen working fully (up to 4 players) with the exception of the in-game HUD. Overall, we had a good laugh and the rounds were exciting, but I’m not satisfied with the controls :|. Since a big part of Gunstyle is movement, this creates a poor gameplay experience.

A Splitting Headache

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 19:25:32 +0000

After a lot of tinkering I got split screens functioning in Gunstyle. TorqueX supports split screens natively so i expected it to work rather simply, but due to some modifications and how Gunstyle game code worked on top of TX it complicated things a bit. Below is just a screenshot of two player screen shot on “Fool’s Paradise”. This is also working on Xbox 360. I am going to have to optimize some load times as they are drastically longer on the 360 (particularly loading assets initially on start up).

Gunstyle Progress

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 08:38:25 +0000

It has been a while since I’ve talked about Gunstyle so I figured a post was due on the status of the game… Right now development is rather slow just due to our busy college schedules. It’s also the last 90% so it’s always tough ;). Right now Gunstyle is a PC only title due to it being a multiplayer centric game (XNA 1.0 lacking networking functionality on the 360). Personally, I’d love to see Gunstyle on the Xbox 360 and take it in that direction, but I guess it’s more of a ‘wait and see’ right now until XNA 2.

Continuous 2D Trails in XNA

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 13:55:55 +0000

Hey again! Two updates in less than a month! Wonder if I can keep this up :). Anyway, just finished another article for Ziggy’s site. This one shows you how to do those cool, seamless ribbon trails you sometimes see trailing behind melee weapons (swords, sticks, etc) and other objects. I’ve also included a sample with full source code that works on both the PC and Xbox 360. So go check it out!

Distortion Shader Example

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 23:55:36 +0000

Wow it has been a while! School is back into full swing so I’m spending time at school and in labs longer than should be legally allowed :|. I managed to scrounge up some spare time to write up this distortion shader article and some explanation of how things work for Ziggyware.com. Go check it out! Feedback is welcome as I’m still somewhat new to the world of shaders. Below is an example picture of the post-process shader in action.

Ideas On Networked Games in XNA

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 01:31:41 +0000

I’ve written networked games in the past, but never in XNA. So after writing the networking logic for Gunstyle I figured I could write a blurb about general networking in games for XNA, which in reality isn’t that much different from any other API. I do not claim to be some expert in networking and I only present to you what I know based off prior experience from a few multiplayer networked games. Oh, and yes I am aware the diagrams are not completely correct UML diagrams, I am simply trying to illustrate a point. This isn’t a How-To guide to networking either, just food-for-thought for those just starting out with networked games.

Upcoming…

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 17:44:50 +0000

Its been quiet on my blog and the End Dream site, due to me being on vacation. And man, was the beach great! Now I have to get back into the daily work routine :(. Oh well, that’s life as it seems. So we’ve got an update for Gunstyle available to any irc #xna chatters on EFNet at the moment. A lot of the major core building and development is done with Gunstyle and we are now shifting into more of a ‘polish’ mode to fix bugs and tring to create an accessible, easy, and hassle-free multiplayer experience.

Gunstyle Early Beta Rundown

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 15:25:55 +0000

Last night we hosted our very first semi-public play test with the new XNA version of Gunstyle. Tonight is the midnight deadline for submitting to Dream Build Play. I’ve been hearing some bad experiences about it, so we’re all a little worried about getting it submitted in time. We’re going to be submitting our current build for now, but also try to get more fixes in before the deadline and hopefully submit a newer one later today.

T-minus 1.5 Weeks…

Wed, 20 Jun 2007 23:46:33 +0000

Well the Dream Build Play deadline is approaching and as always there seems to be a crunch to get those last final features implemented, down-sized, or cut and squashing bugs all the while. It’s clear the game won’t be in a ‘final’ state July 2nd, but very playable. After the submission we’ll be continuing development as usual to get the game where we originally wanted. Right now I’m finishing up the dedicated server to allow us to just setup a host machine to run servers with no graphics component to allow players a place to play.

It's been a while…

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 23:12:44 +0000

Wow, it’s been months since my last update! Figured I better post a quick update on some of the things I’ve been working on for the last few months. I’ve been really busy between school, job, and this Dream Build Play entry. Whatever spare time I’ve had I’ve been tinkering away at getting this new XNA game up to snuff to submit to Dream Build Play with two other team mates.

Go Back To Sleep…

Tue, 03 Apr 2007 18:21:16 +0000

For some reason I’ve been listening to APC a lot lately (can you tell?). Maybe it’s been the numerous all-nighters I’ve pulled recently and this music soothes me late at night. It’s been too busy the past few weeks for me to sit down and gather some thoughts for a post. Been hard at work with the new game for Dream Build Play, along with life’s other issues. Don’t have much to show at the moment as everything is a bit too early in development, but I figured I’d at least post one of the concepts by Adam (below).

School + More School > Free Time

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 22:07:07 +0000

Well, Nut Harvest is out to the public and so far it seems most that have tried it have enjoyed it. That’s always good to hear, considering it was just a toy-around game for my friends and I :). Unfortunately, I know that it certainly won’t get as big of an audience as WildBoarders simply because it’s an XBox360 XNA exclusive. There just doesn’t seem to be a good venue yet to release Xbox360 XNA games.

…A Sigh of Relief

Sun, 11 Feb 2007 04:19:18 +0000

Today is the day I release a ‘release candidate’ for Nut Harvest. It feels so great to finish a game! Nut Harvest is for the Xbox 360 only. This game almost took longer to release than to actually develop! It started near the end of last December when I was over at friend’s house hanging out with some buddies. Of course, we were playing some games on the Wii and 360.

Breathe!

Mon, 05 Feb 2007 23:14:24 +0000

As you can see from the lack of updates, I’ve been pretty busy. Wrapping up Nut Harvest, which is a 360-only multiplayer XNA game. I’ve got a few minor fixes for WildBoarders to release in a patch once I’ve done some more testing. Plus another project I’m working on, you’ll here more about it soon :). School work is bearing down on me as I’ve hardly had any time this past week to work on anything, much less play any games :(.

Busy Little Bee

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 15:26:26 +0000

It has been a while since I actually got a day off from school/work or whatever right on my birthday. Usually they tend to always ‘celebrate’ MLK’s birthday on the 2nd Monday of the month. It finally, got around to being where it should be :). I didn’t do much on my birthday except relax. I did get a cool new cell phone as a gift though. It’s pretty slick.

Delays Abound

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 06:49:39 +0000

Hmmm, I was hoping to actually meet the deadlines I set for myself in the last update in regards to my current projects. Yet, even I can’t predict what will happen in a few days time. For one, I became ill right after the update for several days. Secondly, I’ve had to move back to Atlanta to start another semester of classes so I lost that window of free time due to illness and now the classes are requiring a lot of my time (who would have thought?

Onward With The New Year

Thu, 04 Jan 2007 06:29:26 +0000

Hey, just a quick update. I’ve been working on a few XNA related things since the contest ended. First, been working with WildBoarders and looking into the bugs people have reported so I can squash them for the next update. I also have ported WildBoarders to the xbox 360. A few issues cropped up, but it should just take me a few days to get most of them fixed. Expect an xbox 360 version in a few days.

Happy Holidays

Fri, 22 Dec 2006 00:10:41 +0000

Christmas is around the corner (for those that celebrate it), along with New Years. It’s a busy time of the year that’s for certain, and I’m busy just like the rest of you. Mark Coffman announced the winners and prizes for the xbox360homebrew contest over the last week, and I’m certainly happy at the results :). In regards to WildBoarders, the game has reached over one thousand downloads this past week!

Looking Ahead

Sun, 17 Dec 2006 20:10:54 +0000

XNA Game Studio Express 1.0 and TorqueX came out. I gave it a spin and looked at a few of the starter kits. Torque is a rather complex beast so I didn’t get too far with it for the time i spent with it, but it looks promising. On the topic of WildBoarders, I’m releasing version 1.0.1 today. This version runs in XNA 1.0 and is simply using the updated Farseer Physics Engine.

WildBoarders Postmortem

Wed, 13 Dec 2006 00:50:00 +0000

Sure, this game is not going for sale or being published or whatever. So it wasn’t the complete game development cycle, but there was still plenty to learn. This is my 2nd complete game released, so I’ve still got a ways to go :). But I figured I’d at least run through the motions and write a detailed postmortem. Read on for the details…

WildBoarders First Release

Mon, 11 Dec 2006 13:48:22 +0000

Howdy! It’s been a while since my last post. I’ve been rather busy in the last week finishing up WildBoarders for the competition. It’s uploaded and ready for download now. The game was created with XNA Beta 2 over two months. Go check it out along with all the other cool games in the contest entries section at xbox360homebrew.com. It has been a fun two months developing a game from the ground up.

Critical Mass

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 14:55:22 +0000

So this week is the final week of the xbox360 homebrew contest. I can’t wait to see and play all the games to be released this weekend :D. I wrote up the final dev blog post before the due date on Monday. I had an issue getting XNA games to run on typical user machines, but was able to resolve it thanks to another fellow game developer in the contest! It seems rather weird, but fortunate, that my editor and game has kind of hit ‘critical mass’.

D-d-d-d-do Watcha Want…

Mon, 13 Nov 2006 23:47:05 +0000

That’s how the title of blog entries suffer when I’m caught listening to some catchy tune. I made a new Dev Blog entry for WildBoarders over at xbox360homebrew and I posted an article in my Tutorials section for dealing with large 2D worlds in fast paced scrolling games. On the gaming front, Gears of War kicks major ass. I was skeptical after the initial announcement many months ago. I just couldn’t see how the gameplay would end up interesting, but the graphics were sure a joy to look at.

Little By Little…

Mon, 06 Nov 2006 02:42:53 +0000

Seems progress for the game has slowed down a tad over the last week, but I’m getting there :). XNA Beta 2 came out this past week so I spent a little time porting that. I made a new dev entry over at xbox360homebrew so go check it out! I added a new image to the gallery also. On a side note, Adam Stewart, the artist for WildBoarders, launched his new site last week!

Rock On

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 18:13:57 +0000

I realize there’s been a delay on my updates on this blog. But if you follow the xbox360homebrew site you’ll know I’ve been keeping up with my weekly updates. You can find my 7th dev entry there describing the art process of my game. Seems like everything is pressuring me to update update update! WordPress just released a new version that I’m going to eventually get around to. Most exciting is XNA Game Studio Express released Beta 2.

"I'm not asleep… but that doesn't mean I'm awake."

Tue, 24 Oct 2006 11:10:13 +0000

Hmmm… 4 hours of sleep. What a splendid way to start off the week :|. Spent the weekend working on my game, along with a healthy dose of gaming and much needed sleep. It’s getting cold here in Atlanta and I left my warm jacket at my parent’s place in Montgomery, so it’s been a bit chilly getting to work. Anyway, made a new post over at the homebrew contest. I hope it’s coherent since I wrote it at the last minute and half asleep.

Double Take

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 00:44:18 +0000

What?! Two posts in one day? Yea well, this one actually has some content to go along with it. I’ll make it short and sweet. You can find more info at my dev blog. I’ve got some cool stuff to share for this weekend’s update so stay tuned! My 5th Dev Blog Entry I put up my first tutorial! Hurrah! Go check it out in the tutorials section. I’ve also posted my game’s project plan for anyone to follow it as the game progresses.

Mid-Week Shuffle

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 18:25:39 +0000

Strange how sometimes I feel like there’s nothing to do for a while and then suddenly I’m swamped with things that need to get done. I wish it would come gradually, but I guess I do this to myself. I’m in the process of fleshing out my project plan so I can get a better picture of my progress on the game I’m developing for the xbox360homebrew contest. I’ll be managing it within my blog so I’ll make a post linking to the page so for those interested can see the current progress of the project, otherwise just look out for my weekly updates on the homebrew site or here.

And the beat goes on…

Mon, 16 Oct 2006 10:41:18 +0000

Phew! What a busy week that was! I got several components fixed/added into the editor to better support XNA’s graphics pipeline. I still need to implement the ‘smart import’ so I can save time (maybe hours) from cutting up images by myself to import individually. I made another blog post on the status of Wildboarders. My 4th Dev Blog Entry I’ve reached a stage in the development of this game where I’m sensing the transition is moving from ‘foundation laying’ (the fun part) to the real effort (not so fun) part of the development.

Vision is everything

Tue, 10 Oct 2006 10:38:01 +0000

Every once in a while I see a game that really goes off in a different direction. Sometimes it’s a gameplay innovation/evolution other times it’s a visual style that seems so out there that I can’t help but appreciate it. Games like this just reaffirm the fact that games can be art. It really takes an open mind to break free of typical game conventions such as creating photorealistic graphics, or going for the typical cartoon style of graphics seen in many 2D games.

No time like the present.

Mon, 09 Oct 2006 11:21:45 +0000

I had a long weekend and took some of the extra time to try to get ahead of schedule. Much to my surprise I got a rather good chunk of the ‘to-do’ list done thanks to XNA game components and open-source libraries. I posted a list of the libraries and components I’m currently using for my game and where to get them. I’ve also made a library of classes for loading Endgen map files into XNA.

I'm in.

Wed, 04 Oct 2006 23:40:48 +0000

So I took the plunge. It looks like its going to be a wild ride (pun intended). Anyway, for the contest I’m required to keep a blog throughout the development of the game on their site. I’ll be keeping that blog updated with pictures and some comentaries of my experiences. Meanwhile, on this site I’ll just post a link to my blog and some additional notes to my self here if I missed it on the initial post.

…You In?

Tue, 03 Oct 2006 13:01:02 +0000

Stumbled across this while browsing gamedev.net. I’m contemplating if I should join in. Sounds like it could be entertaining. If anything, it would be good practice on creating a game from start-to-finish with a set deadline but still keep it in good fun :). I’ve got a game idea that’s been brewing for a while and this might be just the thing to see it spring to life. Go check it out if you’re into this kind of thing.

Fun Flash Toy…

Sat, 30 Sep 2006 13:14:19 +0000

Don’t have anything ready to post as of now, but I had to atleast share this little flash ‘game’ I came across. It has sapped atleast a couple of hours already from me: Line Rider It is in beta, but it was pretty solid from what I saw. I thought this was a really cool gameplay mechanic. While I had ideas of drawing levels as you go for a type of game, this game took it far beyond what I had in mind.

Can I get a number crunch…

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 01:43:01 +0000

6 New Images in the Development Gallery Ok so I had the GeSHi blitzmax language file scheduled to be done by last weekend. Got caught up in more important development matters. I still plan on doing a full port for it, just not at the moment. I’ll probably get around to it when I’m ready to post another code sample or a tutorial for blitzmax. Nothing too exciting to really post about at this moment.

[New Blitzmax Entry] I can't believe I was driven to do this…

Fri, 15 Sep 2006 17:31:53 +0000

So I got my code archive up and with its first entry:

New Blitzmax Code Module: Animation Strip Compiler

Hope you enjoy it. Been doing alot of work lately on getting the site to accomodate me in posting code modules and examples both in C# and blitzmax. I think I might write a Blitzmax highlighter for GeSHi over the weekend. From what I’ve seen there currently isn’t a Blitzmax langauge file for GeSHi. There’s already a blitzbasic one, but it seems rather limited. Plus once its done that’s just another language GeSHi supports :). I’ll post the highlighter source when it’s complete.

In other news, while I was out to lunch…

So there I was. Sleeping like a log…

Thu, 14 Sep 2006 14:42:36 +0000

It’s Thursday. The weekend is almost here. Can’t wait to finally be able rest! Waking up at 5 am every morning to the sound of an obnoxious alarm clock isn’t one of the most pleasant things. I am certainly not a morning person. I’m a college student. What do you expect? I got a simple gallery up and running. The layout is a bit messed up at the moment but I’ll fix it later this week when I have more time to get into the code and templates.

And Here We Go…

Wed, 13 Sep 2006 17:46:21 +0000

Finally got around to setting up my own personal web site. Don’t expect too much in the coming months, but I atleast have alot of ideas for the use of the site. Right now I’m just organizing some of my work to be uploaded and still tweaking the site to fit my future needs. Hopefully by the end of this weekend I’ll have some stuff up. Maybe even a screenshot or two of the current game I’m developing…