It’s fun to watch the internet buzz about a new Nintendo console and get all fanboy and hater. Console wars, good times.
Decision is easy for this family. Read the rest of this entry »
Nintendo Console Rumors
April 15th, 2011iPad Adjustment
April 5th, 2010
Shiny iPad in hand!
Read the rest of this entry »
iPad
February 15th, 2010Yes, it’s one more thing for me to work on while trying to release my game. Yes, it’s like a big iPod Touch. Yes, it doesn’t play Flash. Yes, I want one — at least, one.
As far as my game goes it’s actually inspiring some harder work on it. So far, making it run on the iPad incidentally caused me to clean up some crufty old code in the game (again). Plus, I want this thing out near the launch of the iPad to catch another wave of new users looking for something to try out. It’s a dream, anyway.
When people say it’s like a big iPod Touch I think they mean it as a derision sometimes. I don’t really get that. It’s like mocking a laptop for being a small desktop computer. The size is one of the chief benefits. It’s going to open up the masses to multitouch in a much more useful and natural way. It’s going to look stunning, too, with that high DPI screen as large as it is.
Modified Snowball in iPad Simulator
The whole lack of a Flash plug-in is a problem that is going to slowly become a boon for most people. Let me explain…
Buffing the Edges of the Snowball Game
October 10th, 2009I’m realizing I’ve learned quite a bit over the last year and a half. I had very little Objective-C experience (not to mention Cocoa) when I started and just yesterday I realized I could have made a much better architecture choice in my code. Going back to some of the original code is kinda painful sometimes, but it all works just fine.
One major feature I added is a visual one:
Cel-style outlines on the basic stage geometry.
Snowball Hits Slippery Patch, Slows
September 16th, 2009My last post is a bit painful to read. Soon after that elated optimism I had to do some deep digging into my code.
This is me in July(!):
The technical stuff is almost completely over with: one gameplay glitch to tidy up — not a show stopper — and a few more sound effects to shoehorn in.
So that glitch wasn’t the only one, and that glitch did stop the show for a while. Ah, innocence.
Snowball Picks Up Speed, Snow
July 19th, 2009Snowball Touch is picking up speed rolling down the hill towards release. On the way it’s glomming some new features onto itself.
There will be some very basic victory animations that change every 5 stages or so to help with that feeling of progress. Plus, you can try to beat your own times and see if you could have completed the stage with fewer steps. You can also see how long it took to figure out with restarts included.
Snappy Retro Game Design Tools
June 12th, 2009I love me some 8-bit and 16-bit gaming. I’ve got a Metroid-style-platforming-shooting-adventure-exploration game knocking around in my head (yeah, I wrote some notes down, too), I’m just not sure where to target it.
Snowball Touch Progress
June 12th, 2009So, I’m starting to get time to work on Snowball Touch, again. Getting used to the new little guy, after all.
Basic 2D-sliding/zooming/layered cinematics are go. That’s the last major feature that needed to be added. The pic below is from the opening (short) story cinematic and it’s in motion on the device. Kind of a camera pull-back reveal to give some depth and excitement.
Baby Ray
April 23rd, 2009Here’s what I’ve been tinkering at lately
Snowball Touch: iPhone Game
March 13th, 2009
Snowball contemplates options
I just put up a little sneak peak about Snowball Touch up on YouTube. Kinda weird putting it out there as I’ve been working on it for almost a year. That sounds more impressive than it is, though.
I Finally Made a Movie! (Outsource)
March 13th, 2009About 4 years ago, my friend in LA, Dan Trezise, decided it was time to make a short film. He was going to make a project from the idea we had worked out together back in film school. We had storyboarded it back then as a possible promotional film for Kodak’s Cineon software. It was far too dark and ambitious for such a purpose, and soon Kodak imploded and dropped Cineon altogether. Now, ten years later he wanted to take a crack at it.
Dreams of Animation: Icescape
January 30th, 2009Back in 2001, the web was growing rapidly as a place for rich media to be viewed thanks to the ubiquity of Macromedia’s Flash. People seemed to be making money on websites like atom.com with short animated films.
I was fresh out of RIT’s Film/Video/Animation program and gave a go at starting my own online flash animation series, hoping to win a deal through an upcoming contest.
Ideas, Ability… Time?
January 18th, 2009
A couple decades passed before I realized that an idea was just a point to push off from.
Reason tells me that the little happy rush we get arm in arm with a new idea is adrenaline meant for action. Sadly, my young self was mostly content with just finding more push off points.
Compile Pseudocode. But Why? [Updated]
December 21st, 2008Pseudocode is meant to be a way to quickly sketch or communicate how a coding problem could be solved. It’s not a real programming language, but usually resembles the language one is targeting.
Well, I’ve been teaching a class based on a book that takes the approach of learning the fundamentals of programming by focusing on pseudocode. It’s a mixed bag. Yes, a lot of complexity is avoided so students can focus on the logic rather than syntax, but there is no way to test it. It all feels abstract and theoretical.
Joe Hisaishi conducts Nausicaa Live
December 21st, 2008Of the movies I’ve seen that have influenced me the most, there is the original Star Wars movies, and there is Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. The soundtrack is by Joe Hisaishi and seeing him conduct an orchestra playing themes from that movie is just sublime.
YouTube – Joe Hisaishi – Nausicaa of the Valley Wind (Part1 of 9). <- link is much higher quality video than embedded one below.
Starting Out
December 12th, 2008This is the debut post on a blog I intend to keep for those interested in my professional life. Hopefully, it will be a way to keep people who care informed about what I’m up to and what makes me tick when it comes to work. Please comment and encourage and critique and we’ll see if this gets interesting or not.