You are a microscopic doctor. A hero. A marvel of modern science.
Shrink down to the size of a single cell and enter the bloodstream of your patients. Destroy the bacteria, and fight the evil cancerous tumor to save the day! Survive three BOSS BATTLES to get to the final credits. CLICK HERE TO PLAY!
Just for fun, I decided to try my hand at doing some manga-influenced (toon) art.
My current twitter, google plus and gravatar profile picture was one that fills me with happiness – my son and I smiling, wearing tuxedos.
However, it needed a little more gamedev-style lighthearted fun. As a huge fan of cute anime art, when I saw a book on how to draw “Chibi” in the super-deformed “Kawaii” (Japanese for cute) style, I couldn’t resist. I bought the book and dove in. Continue reading
The Game Jam Survival Guide
The Game Jam Survival Guide
Build a game game in one crazy weekend and survive to tell the tale!
I’m really proud and excited to announce that my book about game jams has just been published. It is essentially a love letter to the game jam community.
I was lucky enough to be granted interviews with some of the community’s most influential people, and their wisdom is set alongside mine throughout the book, which is packed full of information, ideas and anecdotes.
There’s nothing more satisfying than getting the chance to write about a topic that means a lot to you – write about what you know, as they say. Since game jams are quite honestly my life’s passion, when I got the opportunity to write this book I dove in headfirst and had an absolute blast with it.
The second edition of my Flash 11 Stage3D shoot-em-up tutorial has gone live! In this part, we are going to work toward evolving what is currently a mere tech demo into something that is more like a videogame. We are going to create a title screen and main menu, add some sound and music, and code an input system that lets the player control their spaceship using the keyboard.
I’ve been hired to write a Flash 11 Stage3D tutorial series that covers the creation of a fast-action, hardware accelerated 2d shoot-em-up game inspired by arcade titles such as R-Type and Gradius for the tuts+ team.
Here is the demo from week one: Sprite Benchmarks. We will be taking advantage of several hardcore optimization techniques to achieve great 2D sprite rendering performance.
Leaping Lizabeth and the RISING MAGMA OF DOOM is a “pixel-perfect” platformer (no grid! no tiles!) that I wrote for the GDC (Game Developer’s Conference) event.
Written in HTML5 canvas, works on any device (tested on Playstation3 at 35fps and Android Phones at 40fps and Windows 7 and Macs at 60fps in all new browser versions) and attains pretty decent framerate. Continue reading
Here’s a little platformer that I programmed called Pile-o-Gears. It was made in a grand total of 48 minutes for a game jam speed coding challenge.
This year, I took part in the biggest game jam of the year, the Global Game Jam. Just for fun, I decided that I would try my hand at creating an analogue (non-video) game with fellow gamedevs Chris Tihor and Brandon Bey. It was so much fun!
12 months
12 games
12 songs
12 chapters
12 blog posts
1200 pushups
12 steps
12 words
The year is twenty twelve, and I’m setting forth a personal challenge for myself. A way to break beyond my comfort level and strive for ultimate productivity. Success is not guaranteed, and I acknowledge that I’m reaching for the stars, but these are my new year’s resolutions:
1. To finish twelve (small) games. A few will likely be on mobile platforms, others in html5 and Flash. Pen and paper RPGs or boardgames count too.
2. To compose an entire album worth of new music (12 songs). I’ve written many songs in the past but it has been a while since I let the musical inspiration drive my daydreams. These songs will be released as (CC) freeware mp3s that will be available for download from my blog as well as several music social networks like soundcloud.
3. To publish at least two books, (twelve or more chapters worth) as ebooks (pdf, mobi, epub) or traditional paper books. The ancient wisdom, “write about what you know” will be my mantra, so the books will be about game development. These books will be available on stores like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, the Kindle and iBooks store and others.
4. To actively maintain my blog (www.mcfunkypants.com) even in light of the fact that I get much more response when I post the same content on social networks like Google+. The cloud cannot be relied upon for longevity so my website will be the permanent record. I hope to produce a few game development tutorials, game jam recaps, and other content that fits my areas of expertise.
5. To continue my quest to get into amazing shape. I hope to do at least 1200 pushups this year, though the number is derived from the other twelve-based choices and I hope to in fact do many more than that. I wonder if I can log 4800?
Last year at my yearly checkup my doctor told me that for the first time in my life I was overweight! I was shocked but my beer belly was a testament to the truth I’d been in denial of.
I’ve joined the fitness gamification social network www.fitocracy.com and have been using their operant conditioning tools on myself (you earn XP for exercising and slowly “levelup” yourself by completing challenges and quests in your workouts).
Great news: though it is only February, I’ve already gone back to NOT being overweight (I’ve recently lost 15 pounds by going for daily 3-6km hikes), which in itself was a great motivator to continue being active and eating well. I hope to never again be anything other than my ideal weight. Even more imporantly, getting into the habit of hiking has become psychologically beneficial as well: these moments of fresh air help me clear my head and I often come up with solutions to things I’d been having trouble coding earlier.
6. To teach my son to walk and talk. My most important quest for this year is to help my little boy learn to take 12 steps without any help (or furniture to hold on to) and to be able to say 12 different words (and understand their meaning).
That’s it! My quest has been set in stone.
I hope to use the public declaration of all these personal quests to hold myself accountable so that I do not give up on them. This is precisely why I waited until February to make New Year’s resolutions: those made on January 1st rarely persist.
The goals above are ones I’m dead serious about achieving: 12 months, 12 games, 12 songs, 12 chapters, 1200 pushups, 12 steps and 12 words.
Wish me luck!
December’s Ludum Dare 22 was a resounding success with nearly nine hundred games being made in a single weekend! The votes have been cast and the winners are now ready for you to play.
Each and every one of these amazing games is well worth your time. Some are gameplay masterpieces. Others are certainly art. The rest are, without a doubt, examples of the incredible things you can do if you just give yourself a chance. Can you imagine making one of these games from scratch in a weekend?
Here are the “winners” – the 48 hour competition entries that ranked the highest overall:
