BT

Leap - Minority Report at Last!

Sat, 26 May 2012 14:38:33 -0400

I’m sure most of you have seen this already but it can’t hurt to share it again. Quite a cool way of interacting with your computer.

Scamworld - Great look at internet "marketing"

Sun, 13 May 2012 19:36:15 -0400

I’m sure most people have seen it once or twice. A get rich quick scheme on a random site you’ve never heard about. They ask for nothing else but your information. Well the Verge recently post a very in-depth article on the scam know as Internet Marketing.

Xpost:

http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/10/2984893/scamworld-get-rich-quick-schemes-mutate-into-an-online-monster

Being able to destroy stuff in games is always my favorite...

Sun, 13 May 2012 02:00:00 -0400

Being able to destroy stuff in games is always my favorite thing! Now I can in my own game. How awesome.

Currently experimenting with different visual styles for the...

Mon, 07 May 2012 08:58:07 -0400

Currently experimenting with different visual styles for the game. Not sure if the background fits but we like the tiles a lot. They are all like, shiny and reflective and stuff when in motion. Made by our new artist buddy Egil. He makes awesome Unity related stuff.

Gameplay preview of our current project Lost Marbles. Game is...

Wed, 02 May 2012 17:17:00 -0400

Gameplay preview of our current project Lost Marbles. Game is nearing completion and should be done in the next couple of months.

Gerudo Valley played on floppy drives :)

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 19:07:26 -0400

Gerudo Valley played on floppy drives :)

Poo for WiFi? Only in Mexico…No really, this is actually...

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 12:08:53 -0400

Poo for WiFi? Only in Mexico…No really, this is actually happening in Mexico.

Zerg Rush

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 14:47:57 -0400

A little easter egg on Google, if you search “zerg rush” you will be given a chance to fight off a swarm off O’s from destroying your search results. Google always seems to have an amazing sense of humor despite being a massive company.

What we're working on

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:38:00 -0400

So it has been quite awhile since we’ve posted anything about projects we’re working on. Keith and I decided that we really wanted to go back and remake the game we did for final project at Full Sail, which was a puzzle platfomer called Lost Marbles. In this game your goal is simply to get to the end of each level as fast as you can. To do this though you’ll have to control up to three separate marbles and use them in tandem to navigate various hazards and puzzles.

We decided to try out the Unity engine as it seemed like the easiest way that we could get the game done. It only took me a couple of days to realize that this was the correct choice. Unity is amazing in many aspects and in just a couple of short months we have the vast majority of the game done. Right now we’re mainly just adding more levels.

It’s always fun to look back on the origins of a project though. Back in 2008 while we were making the original version of Lost Marbles at Full Sail we couldn’t believe how amazing the game was! And honestly as the student project it was, it was pretty good (well we did get an A). But when I loaded it up earlier, I couldn’t help but to just laugh at what I was playing. It was kinda bad, like kinda really bad. But still for a bunch of students working on only their second game project ever and having only 3 months to code everything themselves, I’d say it was pretty damn good.

Anyway I thought it would be fun to do a couple of comparison shots just for fun. The first two are from the original game and the next two are the same reworked level in the new version (click for larger versions):

*Assets aren’t final, we’re currently searching for artists to make the game look as good as possible*

As you can see Unity has certainly given us the ability to make the game look better (especially water and particles). Even more importantly though it has also given us the ability to make the game control and feel better. Much better. Stay tuned for a video of some gameplay soon!

I laughed way more than I probably should have.

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 11:56:03 -0400

I laughed way more than I probably should have.

LightTable IDE

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 09:24:14 -0400

Light Table - a new IDE from Chris Granger on Vimeo.

What a great concept for an IDE. Most of the time I feel like I’m fighting my IDE trying it to have it do what I want. Lightflow seems to solve a lot of the problems current programmers are having.

The Most Dangerous Gamer

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 07:43:18 -0400

The Most Dangerous Gamer:

An extremely long albeit interesting article mainly about Jon Blow, creator of Braid, and the age-old debate over whether games can be considered art or not.

The Internet? Bah!

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 10:52:08 -0400

The Internet? Bah!:

An extremely funny article written for Newsweek back in 1995 talking about how the internet will fail to make a dent in society. Oh how silly they look now :P

World Builder (high quality) (via bbranit) This is what the...

Sat, 05 Feb 2011 10:54:30 -0500

World Builder (high quality) (via bbranit)

This is what the future technology should be augmented into. We need the tech to be almost invisible ,instead of abstracting them out with lcd screens.

thingsorganizedneatly: Colour co-ordinated colour pencils.

Sun, 24 Oct 2010 15:37:50 -0400

thingsorganizedneatly:

Colour co-ordinated colour pencils.

You saved 5 cents, and your code is not readable, congrats!

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 13:27:14 -0400

I found myself reading this post, and at some point, I really wanted to cry:

We had relatively long, descriptive names in MySQL such as timeAdded or valueCached. For a small number of rows, this extra storage only amounts to a few bytes per row, but when you have 10 million rows, each with maybe 100 bytes of field names, then you quickly eat up disk space unnecessarily. 100 * 10,000,000 = ~900MB just for field names!

We cut down the names to 2-3 characters. This is a little more confusing in the code but the disk storage savings are worth it. And if you use sensible names then it isn’t that bad e.g. timeAdded -> tA. A reduction to about 15 bytes per row at 10,000,000 rows means ~140MB for field names – a massive saving.

Let me do the math for a second, okay?

A two terabyte hard drive now costs 120 USD. By my math, that makes:

1 TB = 60 USD
1 GB = 0.058 USD

In other words, that massive saving that they are talking about? 5 cents!

Let me do another math problem, oaky?

Developer costs about 75,000 USD per year.

(52 weeks – 2 vacation weeks) x 40 work hours = 2,000 work hours per year.
75,000 / 2,000 = 37.5 $ / hr
37.5 / 60 minutes = 6 cents per minutes.

In other words, assuming that this change cost a single minute of developer time, the entire saving is mute.

And it is going to take a lot more than one minute.

via Ayende @ Rahien

This is what happens when you let tech companies patent...

Wed, 06 Oct 2010 14:43:18 -0400

This is what happens when you let tech companies patent software.

Turba gaining steam

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 14:35:40 -0400

Turba gaining steam:

We have been working vigorously to get Turba onto other digital download services besides just hosting it on our website. We know that buying directly has its advantages and disadvantages so we want to give you guys some options. After fruitless efforts with services like D2D and Impulse;…

explodingdog: I don’t need sparkle gum

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 11:23:14 -0400

explodingdog:

I don’t need sparkle gum

Microsoft unveiled its smaller, sleeker Xbox 360 design,...

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 15:23:00 -0400

Microsoft unveiled its smaller, sleeker Xbox 360 design, packing a 250GB hard drive and built-in wireless-n. Microsoft’s Don Mattrick said it will be in stores by the end of the week, and will still cost $299.

Do. Want.