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Posted on 05.29.08 by Mike K @ 2:28 pm
I was really hoping to show what I’ve been up to these past couple months right about now, but it looks like that tease will have wait a few more weeks. Something that is ready to go, albeit beta like, is the new Ludum Dare website. The WordPress blog we’ve used for the last 2 compos has been migrated to dedicated hosting, and the ludumdare.com domain now points to it directly. You can check out the new hub website at the link above, and read up on all the latest happenings. Next weekend (June 6th), we’re also having our first Mini LD Compo. This is a variant of the “non competitions” we’ve hosted in the past. If all goes according to plan, these will become monthly between the major community voted/judged compos. Any veteran Ludum Dare entrant can opt to host a compo. They can choose to provide a theme, and make changes/tweaks to the process. Mini LD’s are still a new idea, and we’ll be evolving what they mean throughout their lifetime. Since it was his idea, Mike (Hamumu) Hommel will be hosting the first one. http://www.ludumdare.com/…/mini-ld48-1-hamumu-style/ Tune in Friday June 6th for the theme announcement. And if everything goes according to plan, we should be announcing an August 2008 date for Ludum Dare 12. We’re going to try our hand at Mini LD #1 first, to see how the new site handles it. Filed under: Stuffing and Ludumdare Comments: None |
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Posted on 04.13.08 by Mike K @ 12:52 pm
I’ll get back to the series eventually. I was expecting to work and talk about new engine stuffs. Between some spontaneous stuff, taxes, and a week of illness, I’ve not touched anything “next” since early last month. In other news, Ludum Dare 11 is this Friday. I’ve been too busy to really get involved, but Phil’s got things under control. Notice went out to the mailing list a good month or so early, and I’ve been mirroring the posts on a very default looking gamecompo.com blog. I mention that because it has an RSS feed, for those that’d prefer a feed over a mailing list. I think there’s still a couple more days to suggest themes, before they’re voted down to a minimal list. Hit the announcement for more information. Filed under: Stuffing and Ludumdare Comments: None |
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Posted on 02.29.08 by Mike K @ 11:29 pm
February 29th! How could I not say something today. Just what to say is the question. Blogging in the past, I’ve noticed the tendency to want to turn the blog in to something. A community, articles and subjects, talk-back, and all that stuff. And that’s great and all, but it’s a lot of work for not much return. Traditionally to make ends meet this way, you plaster your blog with advertisements, or actively soliciting contract work. No thanks. Any readership I may have either hits me once a month, or watches me via RSS or an aggregator. And hey, that’s great. I’m impressed that I have a readership Exciting. … Not really. I’m not ready to promise a change or anything, but I have a bit of a multi-part rant brewed. I’ve been putting a lot of serious thought and planning in to my next project, and in several ways it’s already started. I want it to be blogged right and from the beginning. That just happens to mean I start now. So tomorrow, March 1st, I’ll be at least posting part one. I’m not delay it for suspense or anything. The rant I’m staring at is long, technical, and self referential. The type of rant that’s really been holding me back from having more to talk about. For cohesions sake, I just want to sleep on it to be sure it all sounds right. It’s looking like it’ll be between 3 and 5 parts long. Then, in theory, I can finally start talking in the present. Wow! I want to start walking through my thought process of architecting “the next“. Where I’ve made mistakes, and so on. Heavy technical, just like mom used to make. Filed under: Stuffing and Opinion Comments: 1 Comment |
. A project shrouded in half-ass secrecy isn’t great content. Pulling away the curtain entirely isn’t easy to do, at least until the perpetual “later”. So instead, this blog collects occasional rants and the odd picture.|
Posted on 01.01.08 by Mike K @ 9:30 am
Start the year right ‘eh? I think each year I’ve had a blog, I’ve told myself “Yes sir! This year we’re going to blog more often… and it’s going to be great!”. I’m not crazy enough to think that’s going to happen, but there’s always the intent. - - - - Some fun code I toyed with over the past couple weeks, completely unrelated to each other. The VST SDK (audio instrument/effects) and the WinTab SDK (tablets). I know I’m an oddball programmer, as I prefer MinGW (GCC) to Visual Studio. That’s totally asking for headaches when it comes to non open source stuff, but I don’t care. As expected, neither of these SDK’s ship with a MinGW or Cygwin friendly build option (though VST SDK is portable). As far as the effort in getting them working, I gotta say, thumbs up to Steinberg, thumbs down to Wacom. VST wise, I got started on a VST port of sfxr. I have the sound engine working both as a sound effect generator, and a key’d instrument, but the real meat of sfxr is in the GUI. So if I manage to discover another day of VST inspiration by April, we could have some Instrument + Sound Effect integration for LD11. Tablet wise, I really just wanted to know exactly what was involved in adding tablet support to an app. Apparently Windows API coding, and lots of obscure searching. - - - - Ludum Dare #10 results went live Sunday night. 52 submissions. They can be found here, and the entries can be found here. Phil Hassey, you rock for hosting it. Ludum Dare #11 is scheduled for April this year. The exact weekend, we’ll figure out some time before then. If you want to chime in on weekend suggestions, leave us a comment. There’s mutterings of a 10.5 between then and now. If you’re interested, get on the mailing list, and we’ll let you know if it happens. Filed under: Stuffing and Technobabble and Ludumdare and VST Comments: 5 Comments |
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Posted on 12.10.07 by Mike K @ 8:06 am
Yeah, sorry. I wanted to do detailed commentary of The Spider stuffs, the in between stuff, and get in to the new PuffBOMB stuff, but it looks like it didn’t happen. I wrote an outline and drafted a couple parts, but I wasn’t happy with the results. “New PuffBOMB” has been down to just me since October. The artist finished his work, which turned out great. Richard got a job, and has been unavailable to help since. So, I’ve had to make that adjustment, which has been keeping me busier than I’d hoped. The 2nd video of the retrospective, circa March 2006. It’s actually been online for some time. Just ’cause I don’t like my commentary, doesn’t mean you can’t watch it.
Invisible object in the way. And yes, in case it wasn’t clear, I did not continue with this, the ball+rope game (AKA: The Spider). Prior to really diving in to doing a “physics game”, I really did think heavy physics were the way to go. But a number of them have come out recently, and after playing them (and my own), the novelty has really started to bore me. If it’s not bad controls, it’s level/puzzle content ‘en mass. 100 levels, because you’re supposed to have 100 levels. Personally, I just don’t care to play them anymore. Mind you, I don’t play a lot of games anymore. This wasn’t my reason for switching from The Spider back to New PuffBOMB. After all, it’s just as much a physics game as The Spider was. If anything, it falls in to the new gaming cliché of an Incredible Machine clone with physics. If the Wii isn’t bombarded with these, I’d be surprised. Switching back to PuffBOMB was one of economics. The Spider was really just a step in the development of a physics engine. The game concept was undeveloped, and lacked an art foundation. As much as I’d have liked to do art, beyond character designs, I’m not all that useful as as artist yet. Every prior game I’d worked on was low resolution, pixel art driven. This project I wanted to be HD ready, with vector/flash graphics. That should have been reason enough to expect outsourcing the art. With my limited art budged, there was no room to take chances on an undeveloped concept. Sure, there were ideas, but nothing concrete enough. So, PuffBOMB it was decided. This was around October/November of 2006, about a year since Richard came on board to help me out. Take the original game, HD it, and do more with the idea. We had our ups and downs. We’ve made mistakes. But I do think we still ended up with something interesting. I suppose the first project always seems to be the toughest, even though I’ve made games before. I keep telling myself I know exactly how to approach the next one. But right now, this one is the important one. Development continues… Filed under: Stuffing and PuffBOMB and The Spider Comments: 1 Comment |
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