BH Booker

More Free Updates!

booker — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 00:41:16 +0000

Changes to my “Work” page! Now there are 3 categories under the “Work” heading: Portfolio, Games, and Experiments. “Portfolio” will have the little portfolio image viewer widget that you’ve seen before. Basically if I don’t have rights to the code/game I will build a portfolio for it and link it under that heading. The 2 previous entries I had in Work will now be under “Portfolio”. I will put any playable games I make in the “Games” section. This will only be games that are actually playable on my site, of which there are none… The last section is “Experiments” which is where I will put any little tech demos or experiments I’ve monkeyed around with. For example I just put up an experiment I built in as3IsoLib. Go check it out!

Toots

booker — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 03:49:55 +0000

Put up another portfolio today for Tootsville.com! I am legally bound not to comment about that job or work environment! Seriously! Not joking! I had to sign a form saying I would never impugn or defame RES Interactive publicly so I could receive my final pay check from them that I was owed! So I am not impugning or defaming RES Interactive in any way! They are great people and I wish them the greatest of success in all that they do! Check the portfolio out by clicking the “Work” link at the top of the page. DO IT!

Adobe Max 2011

booker — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 02:07:32 +0000

I was fortunate enough to attend Adobe Max this year so I thought I would inform the populace about what happened there and what I learned.

Screw LA

LA is a great place to visit… Actually, that’s a lie – LA sucks. The only reason why I got out of LA with any brain cells intact was because someone else did all the driving (You will be missed Arron) I’ve made the harrowing drives of inner city Atlanta, but that does not compare with pure white-knuckle masochism of driving in LA. It seems a prerequisite that everyone start their daily commute with cutting people off, forcibly merging into full lanes of traffic, and leaning on hornes. Also LA is too damn expensive. Our hotel (that charged 175 a night) only had valet parking that cost an extra 15 bucks a day plus tip.

Mobile

Flash builds straight to mobile platforms. I’ve done it. It works. The big news is Native Extensions which allow flash to do things like throw up native OS dialog boxes and play with special hardware. Also you can now embed the AIR player inside your mobile executable (apk) for android devices. This keeps the user from having to download the separate AIR app to use your flash built app. Very nice – very needed.

Stage3d

I saw several games in the pipe utilizing Stage3d and I was impressed. The games were mostly of the indie/downloadable quality, but in browser which is impressive. But, “Booker!” you say. “Unity3d has been making these games for years now!” This is true, but with one huge caveat – the Unity3d Player. The Unity player never caught on because it is ONLY used for Unity games. Quick – name 5 games you’ve played that were built in Unity! What, you can’t? OK then, name 5 websites you’ve visited that use Unity3d. Can’t do that either? Shocking. It’s no wonder that Unity is building a swf exporter, frankly they have to. If not for all of the sudden inexplicable attention that Unity3d has gotten from the gambling industry it would surely have died by now.

Unreal to swf

We have all seen and played the demos but there is something magical about Tim Sweeney awkwardly stammering through some que-cards and demoing Unreal 3 in Flash. No-one, myself included, was expecting this. But why not? If you own a game engine and would like to have “playable in browser” as a bullet point for your engine all you have to do now is build a swf exporter. Since the Unreal reveal Crytech has announced that they are also working on a swf exporter. Times, they are a changing.
Unreal3.swf

Odds and Ends

Lots of small coolish things at Max. Flash Pro cs6 will build sprite sheets and will have a new suite of JSFL extensions. They are building a working callstack for Flash Builder. They built a thing called Telemetry that builds a graphic chart representing processor and load spikes in your swfs. They are working on thread support for Flash. I will supposedly get a free copy of the entire adobe suite for a year. They had an open bar for over 5500 people with no line, but the burger truck had a 15 minute wait. (nerds apparently don’t drink) Weezer did a killer set. Rainn Wilson doesn’t understand command prompts. And also this happened:
NerdGasm

Conclusion

Despite LA, Max was fucking awesome and I will go every year I can convince someone to buy me a ticket.

Portfolio Finished?

booker — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 00:32:53 +0000

Mostly finished my portfolio viewer. It could still use some extra bells and whistles, but it works for now. I also put up my first portfolio game Mom, Wife, Bounty Hunter. It was a game I made back in 2006 for a quickly cancelled Women’s Entertainment TV reality show. The game proved to be better than the show which I think only aired 2 episodes before it was pulled. The game, however, stayed on WeTV.com for almost a year. Go check it out on my “Works” link. More portfolio updates on the way.

Flashinating

booker — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 04:42:11 +0000

Winding down development on the Air Android game I’ve been working on. Now we’re just gold-plating the hell out of it. Do we need to add Facebook log in, or database storage, or sound effects, or bonus games? No, no we do not. It was just supposed to be a proof of concept. Oh well. As I always say, If you’re going to do something – do it to the point that you start scaring the people around you. Since this thing is technically owned by my parent company I haven’t figured out yet how I’ll be sharing info on it. We shall see…

Special shout out to my partner in crime in this little endeavor: Brian Lachniet. Go read his blogs and learn something! blachniet.com Unlike me, he pretends to be a professional. Oh to be young and stupid…

In other news I’m going to Adobe Max! I’m honestly quite excited because I’ve never been to like a real professional conference type thing. I’m sure I’ll make a huge ass out of myself and have to find a new career, so that will be fun!

Also, I ordered an Asus eeeeeeeepad transformer so that should be fun to break.

Peace and Hairgrease

Flashing Androids

booker — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 03:20:46 +0000

So I got my hands on a copy of Flash cs5.5 (o.O) and I’ve been playing with the android system. Back when cs5 was released with the ios exporter I was very underwhelmed. It was cumbersome to use, it ran slow, and functionality was very limited. Well, Adobe has been very busy. The new system they introduced with cs5.5 and the continual player updates have made mobile air development real. My first couple of hours playing with it I went from hello world, to a simple touch game, and then to an app with google maps integrated. The ease of development and toolset offered by Adobe for mobile development is simply incomparable. Mobile air apps will never be able to compete with apps built on the native hardware/rendering systems, but for a cross platform option I’m impressed and excited. If only you could package the air player in with the app so it doesn’t require the user to download the separate air app. I’ll keep playing.

Lazyness, thy name is Booker

booker — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 22:52:47 +0000

My never-ending battle with laziness wages on. To make matters worse a buddy of mine got me in the SWTOR beta. This has not helped my productivity. In fact, I took the day off today just to play it. So sad… so very sad. Well I am actually putting some time into the portfolio today. I’ve got most of the meat of the thing done, its just a matter of making it pretty and cranking out info on my work.

Also doing some really crazy stuff at work. I’ve been working on a Flash Component that will load swfs at development time. This would theoretically allow you to use the Flash GDI to layout swf or image based game objects and then you could use jsfl to export a game layout file. Then you turn around and use that xml file in PBE, or some other proprietary rendering system. (we’re using it for scaleform) If we get it working (big ‘if’ there) I will do a series of posts on it. Look forward to that!

Cross-promotion Synergism!

booker — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 03:09:44 +0000

I’m working on my portfolio, but it’s slow going. So to tide you over, my buddies at Infinity Beard (inc.) and I have developed a fantastic new game. The rules are simple, and I think you will enjoy it.

Game Rules

I expect everyone to be playing this all the time. Cause if you aren’t – know that I am. I’m always playing…

ENJOY!

Summer Header

booker — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 01:21:26 +0000

Well this was an abundant waste of my time. But I have a new Banner!! I spent 8 hours hand drawing a flower animation that still looks like donkey! I have no business doing art! Why am I still ending my sentences with exclamation points!

I’m going to attempt changing out the header with the seasons. Just so happens it’s summer. Just so happens I named this thing Spring. Just so happens I have no concept of time. Click the bees! ENJOY IT!!!!

Still here

booker — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 18:34:17 +0000

It’s been a while, and I have been working. I’ve done a lot of work to my game header thingy at the top of the page, but I’ve been rethinking what I want to do with that. It probably makes more sense to not have a game that makes it impossible to see the logo… Therefore, that will likely change, and hopefully soon. In addition to that, I really have to get my portfolio page together. I’m thinking some kind of interactive slide-show doohickey with screen grabs of some of my games. Unfortunately, I either have lost or don’t have the rights to the source for most of the game’s I’ve developed.

One thing I have completed is an overhaul of my resume. Where can you see it? No-where! Because I know better than to put my full resume on the internet. If you do want a copy for some absurd reason contact me through the contact button at the top. I have updated my linked in page to contain much of the changes.

I hope to get the header updated this weekend to something a little less obtrusive and start getting my portfolio together soon.