The Realm of Blog

(Not Literally... note : smoking cloth armor is bad for your health I do not condone it, plus it makes your mom upset) Dear Blog, I haven't forgotten you.  I have just been very busy.  Why haven't I shared what I am working on?  Because I think it will have a bigger impact when it is finished or close to finished. As earlier you might have read that I have been in bliss lately working on a game.  Complete and utter bliss.  So I am going to share an image from that game.  This was the first image I showed in my irc channel of developers I visit everyday.  Firsts reactions were 'NES' !  (Nintendo Entertainment System).  I think this has to do more with the Heart button, and the Heart Inventory slot more than the actual pixelated style, although those two together do smack of NES games.   And of course I made a Link type outfit which probably really brings it home as 'NES'. But once I post images of the game, that should be erased.  While the game retains t

8bit Rocket is at it again!  Yes, I have become a screaming ranting fan of all things 8bit Rocket, as noted from earlier posts. One thing that I never liked though was the forum on their website.  And I love forums hosted by code book authors. (Rex Van Der Spuy .. what happened to you?!?!)  The forum was tiny... smushed into the websites content frame, and FULL of bots promoting Jomla.  I am a huge proponent of social community for developers to discuss and talk all things code.  I believe firmly that if you can not share your knowledge to someone else, then you don't really know it in the first place. yes, this is another reference to LOTR.  See a trend in my interests? Well happy days are here, as their new forum is up and live!  Cool colored, crisply laid out, easy to read and familiar, this forum will be a regular stop on my morning, evening and general breaks I take during the day, strolling through the wilderness of the internet.  A picture of the Green Dragon in H

Whenever I want to get inspired, I think back to the earliest days of Electronic Arts, making their games look like album covers and prominently showing pictures of the developers referred to as 'artists' like rock stars.  Where have all my heroes gone. Some have passed away.  Some are still in the business at a variety of high profile positions that make me wonder if their earlier work was just more inspiring to me than it was to them.  I think back of those days of one person making something great, maybe with a few other people.  I think back to the days when my cousin and I formed ACES HIGH and made games for the Atari ST.  We released them  before even graduating high school.  Everytime I think of those days something inside me has burned with desire. Now my cousin has gone off into the corporate world of computer programming with no hint of returning since 1993. I have had my series of ups and downs in the computer game development world.  From being employed at a v

Native Interactivity and Animation for the Web HTML5 Canvas by Steve Fulton & Jeff Fulton Many of you probably know that I have been complaining and whining constantly about the new web standards  pushed so hard by the w3.org.   I am not a fan of 'applications' in websites that can be disrupted with right clicks and mouse highlights so easily like most of the work I have seen in HTML 5.  Of course there is always evolution that eventually wins me over.  Case example would be Onslaught! Arena , and I love the way they disable 'mouse highlight of elements'. What's that called?  And the disable right click!  How'd dey do dat?  Better yet, how did they even animate anything?   Well now I will finally get a chance to find out officially and learn from the ground up. For a while I have been following two brothers work, after accidentally stumbling into their site looking for (googling) 'Atari 8bit graphics' for inspiration.  What I found was a treas

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.  During the 16bit erra graphics were st

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 to get these new outfits, the us

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!

Like I stated in the previous post... We planned to go to the Apple Store this Thursday to get my MacMini.  Steve Jobs died Wednesday.  What a weird twist of fate.  The first day I purchase an Apple computer, is the first day the creator of Apple is no more.  Named it littleJobs.  Installing Xcode 4 with Mac OS X and iOS SDKs. This little thing is so sharply packaged and designed! Amy, My MacMini and my Alienware which will have to give up the tv monitor. Amy and I had fun at the mall.  Ate Chinese Buffet afterword and bought a nice MacAlly keyboard for 19$ with a phased out AppleMouse. (they were always my favorite)  The installer is so close to being finished... Can't wait to tear through my book of samples.

I would be a liar to say that I didn't get sad.  I would also be a liar to say that I didn't get supper happy, inspired, grateful, cautious, etc.  One of my heroes died.  He was a hero to many people.  So loved and hated. I actually worked at Apple for 4 weeks so I somewhat feel like part of the family!*   I never really owned an Apple!  I have been an Atari guy most of my life.  But like most kids in Spring Texas I learned on Apple II's in High School and had friends that had Apples.  A friend across the street would always tell me about this amazing fantasy game on his Apple called Ultima III! This game really was the big influence in everything 'GAME' for me.  If it wasn't for the Apple then this and a host of other things out of my perception would not be available to me.  Quickly though I went toward the Atari ST route because of it's superior graphics.  That is, until my friend down the street and partner in trouble making** introduced me to hi

Well I got a blog posted on Gamasutra!   Apparently it is not too hard.  And apparently I need to watch my spelling.  I honestly didn't even proof it because I didn't think it would be posted.  Interesting thing is that Blog will get more attention than this blog.  But if I can use that blog to drive traffic to my main website then this site is sure to pick up... That is...as...soon... as I link it... to this... haha.  Ok, I've got some stuff to do...  Making pixels right now. I think I will continue to write for that blog and use it to politely rib the industry versus lambast it...how do I spell lambast..oh, lambaste..  :)

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 personal portfolio website  with some more features.  Hope