The Realm of Blog

So.  Where were we?  Oh of course!    QUESTLORD! Progress has been coming along at a nice steady clip!  And here is one new way I show that progress.  There is this thing called Screenshot Saturdays, not sure who runs it but, whomever does is doing the indie community a HUGE favor. I made it in time last week.  This week however it appears that I might have missed the deadline, I think the actual day for the Saturday might be on the Tower of London timetable.  So here is the shot that was uploaded at 10:30 Central time and I guess missed the deadline. Here we see the player swinging his/her sword at the Gates of HammerStone.  Testing out the Japanese translation of 'You Missed!'  (iPhone) This screenshot actually made it in the previous weekend of  #screenshotsaturday, And you can see that Lady Telefin tells you something encouraging yet wise in French. (iPad) So the game is progressing right along and I hope to do ...

Graphics were pretty tough in the 8bit Atari days.  It took a lot of work to get things rolling, a lot of plot and drawTo and Player-Missile graphics.  That is until I discovered the method programmers were using to re-define character sets and create graphics using extra characters in the fontset.  The only way to do this effectively was to use a program that reordered the bytes for you, saved out that data and loaded it back in.  One such program that would load and save fonts was called Superfont. This program allowed the user to edit characters of the font in the checker board area and then save out the font to be loaded into a program later. These programs came from BBSs(dial-up online bulletin board systems, pre-internet) and in magazines like I have mentioned previously in my Gamasutra Blog, Compute!. Needless to say, I spent   mountain growing amounts of time making my own fonts and experimenting with fonts and creating my own.  Duri...

Things have been super busy.  Doing my tutorials for the iPhone.  Enjoying it very much, it has taken it's toll on my Flash/ActionScript 3 development.  But I have managed to find time to update my  portfolio site !!! I think I have found that people don't mind visiting my portfolio website when I offer them more activities than when they first visited.  Most of them probably do not constantly look at my prior titles or artwork, however that is a guestimate since I do not have analytics on that.   Holidays are a perfect opportunity for this!  Everyone loves getting a holiday greeting. Lately I have been thinking about creating a public variable to tie the whole sites' activities together.  Basically the player could change that variable in the activities and that variable will be shared throught the game.  I am thinking since I developed such a complex animation system for my character, users could purchase new outfits for him. ...

And the best way to move forward is to learn new things!  Found this a gem of a website called  Codecademy.     Seriously fun and easy way to learn Javascript and it feels like one of those old Atari 8bit games that trick you into Basic programming by making you feel like you are playing a text adventure. I really recommend this to EVERYONE.  Even if you are not really a code person.  You can collect awards, score points and even log in with Facebook.  The company is hiring right now, so if you are good at code and good at explaining it, go check it out!  Who knows I might be doing a tutorial you wrote in the near future!  I sure hope so, it is addicting. I really hope someone rights an Objective C tutorial.  One thing I have learned, JavaScript is very similar in syntax to ActionScript!  :D

The other day I came across a blog by someone in the game industry that was such a distortion of reality it really made me feel sorry for the blog's author.   I was going to write a retort about it, but you know... It's not worth it.  Let this person believe that they are the great driving force in the industry and all of his failings are the faults of others. I have games to make.

Had to put my Hello World up!  Turns out my MacMini comes with OSX Lion which is great because the new version of XCODE (4 vs 3.2) needs that to run.  It is slightly different than the previous version.  Actually a lot different all of these screen shots in my book look totally different than the new redesign of 4.  But everyone says on the forum if you can get passed chapter 2 then you're in. I guess I am in!  Interactivity starts bright and early tomorrow morning!

Why does this... Help me code so well?  And further more, why when I quaff one of these... Do I program even better?    It is something that puzzles me.  Is it because I am pre=programmed to eat party food when I am creating entertainment? (Notice... I did not call this junk food... I hate the idea that such fine cuisine could be called junk.)   However I have taken some steps to moderate my intake of sugar, especially corn syrup.  Amy has (... oh wait, need to ad the girlfriend tag to the blog) been encouraging me to only drink 1 soda a day.  Although today I think I have already blown it and so I will just have to start my 1 a day tomorrow.  I have noticed that it is easier to drink a lot of water before I drink my soda that way I am not so inclined to drink it fast or have two.

Decided to start a blog!  I have had blogs before.  Mainly art blogs.  This will let me put all of my work and fun things into perspective (get in trouble and make enemies). Let's see, today My lovely girlfriend and I went to the Houston Arboretum.  Very nice place.  I remember it well from my childhood.  But one thing I don't remember well is the location... Right in the inner loop near downtown Houston.  I was so direction lost when I was a child and got in my parents car.  I would have been the worst runaway or abduction escapee. One thing it did do is spark creative ideas to code.  That happens almost every time I wander in the woods.  I started to think of the many times I did wander in the woods and had a hint of lament as to why I gave up on tile based games so long ago.  So, I decided... Time to get more XML in my life along with scrolling around arrays. Going for it.  Also today I am going to update my persona...