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IrisEdit Screenshot Saturday

In an attempt to keep updating this on a more regular basis here’s the first of (hopefully) many Screenshot Saturday.

a screenshot of the almost complete level editorThis is a screenshot of the irisEdit map editor on my dev box.  At this point it’s 90% complete.  There’s a glitch in the saving/reloading that needs tweaking but other than that it’s ready to start building levels in.   At which point I’ll move to the live databse over at editor.irismel.com

Unfortunately this week was full of all sorts of fun freelance stuff and prep for the baby’s 1st birthday party (in roughly 11 hrs from now)  so I didn’t get the editor wrapped up.. but hopefully I can get it knocked out Sunday if I’m lucky.  Next week promises to be full of more and maybe even some new paying client work, which of course takes precedence over BSDDoD! progress.

What I’m Playing:

  • http://insideastarfilledsky.net/ A recursive, larger than the Galaxy  shooter.  From the guy who made Sleep is Death (more coverage of that over on RPS) which was a lot of fun to play with P.
  • Bejeweled 3... because it’s like sparkly snappy happy crack…. especially some of the new gamemodes.
  • X3 Terran Conflict – the last, best, biggest, entry in the X series of intergalactic space trader conquer the galaxy games (available on steam)
  • But with a new Minecraft patch hitting tuesday… all bets are off for the next week.
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Short sharp turn in freetime utilization

Talking a couple days away from the biggo painting..  Kinda mentally stuck on what to do with the blues..

So I’m diving head first into another side project.  Which I spent the all of yesterday working on and plan on spending the evening on (after working out) to hopefully have a workable single level.

It’s all so much fun, it’s hard to pick just one project to focus on… Which, I guess, is why nothing ever gets ‘done’.

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A little housecleaning

Thought it was time for a little house cleaning here on the site, so some older posts got tags, pictures got cleaned up, and switched back to the comicpress theme. It’s such a nice simple theme and makes adding pictures easy.

I would like to customize the theme in the moderate future but since I haven’t touched a computer in my free time for the last couple weeks for anything other than a game or 2, it might be a while.

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Been learning flash..

Been playing around learning some flash bits n pieces..and Holy moly!  it’s starting to make sense. Gradually…

But man.. is flash slow performance wise.  Anyway here’s today’s little excercise.  It’s not entirely properly OOP since I didn’t extend the base MovieClip class and just slapped the functions into the various instances.. But New classes are the next thing I’m tackling.. and then passing and fetching javascript data back and forth for flajaxy goodness.

tilebounce

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Easy as cake

Hmm so I’m grandually getting comfortable wiht the whole MCV arhictecture of dev elopment.  I’ve decided to more or less just give a pass to Ruby on Rails for now and see about getting cakephp up and implemented to my workflow. 

Having a hard time with the initial mental gymnastics to fully embrace it but it’s gradually starting to make sense.

For now, though, It may be time to just take a break and take a look at some bigger picture items and play around with my paints while things gel.

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Playing with Painter (take 2)

OOPs deelted this accidentally earlier. Lets see if this works.

Finally got around to watching some of my painter tutorials and just getting comfortable with the basic tools of painter. Its way different from Adobe’s suite of tools but its finally starting to feel comfortable.

Eventually I took this into photoshop to do some final tweaky bits and immediately it was noticeable how much extra work it is to introduce the texture in painting with photoshop.

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Playing Around With Painter

OOPs deelted this accidentally earlier.

Finally got around to watching some of my painter tutorials and just getting comfortable with the basic tools of painter.  Its way different from Adobe’s suite of tools but its finally starting to feel comfortable.  

Eventually I took this into photoshop to do some final tweaky bits and immediately it was noticeable how much extra work it is to introduce the texture in painting with photoshop.

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Joomla seems like a good thing to know

Bought a book about Joomla a lil bit ago and just reading over it makes it seem like a wonderful platform for doing a whole bunch of really really neat things.  It kinda makes me want to redo the custom CMS i’ve been making at work for the last 3 months for fuddruckers.  Well ok there’s some pretty significant things that aren’t in there for that particular job.  Nonetheless it looks like a very robust foundation to know and be able to expand upon.  So I’m goind to get started on the Drakkheim.com lan planning / management site just to get more comfortable with the ins and outs of the system.  

Hopefully once I knock it out I’ll have the knowledge to use Joomla as a base platform for many many other things that I’ve got planned both at home and at work.

In completely unrelated news Robert Asprin and Lody Lynn Nye have released another book in the wonderful MYTH series called Myth-Chief..   Jeez come to think of it I’ve been following those for close to 15 years now..  Well here’s to another 15.

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Witcher – first impression

Ok, so the initial download is 14gb… ouchy… so that took most of a day.

Wow.. this does not feel like the old Neverwinter Aurora engine. (or look like it for that matter) 

Just about an hour into it, the first 15 minutes were intro videos and cutscenes and some in-game cutscenes.  I didn’t skip any of them, very well done and felt like either a solid introduction to things or tied into the game seamlessly.  Combat is more diablo than NWN but then again I’m not all the way throught the tutorial part so that may change.  

Its pretty, very pretty, and architectually things feel more authentic than most western rpgs’ attempts at a ruined castle. 

If the story is half as good as the reviews make it out to be the enhanced edition is going to put up on hell of a fight for RPG of the year.  (Fallout 3 has got it’s work cut out for it.)

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The Witcher gets a head start.

Looks like the guys who make the Witcher couldnt contain themselves any longer.

Sources report that “The Witcher: Enhanced edition” is popping out today.   The big decision is, buy it off stardock, steam or wait for the box to hit stores and get the extra goodies.  I’m partial to stardock, but steam’s platform is better and I like goodies.

*sigh*

Well I guess there are worse problems to face.
[edit: steam offers 10% off until the 16th]

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Let the holiday rush begin.

Well the holiday gaming season looks to be kicking off a bit early this year.

Here’s my shortlist:

  • Rockband 2
  • Warhammer online
  • The witcher enhanced edition
  • X3:Terran Conflict
  • Crysis: Warhead
  • Brothers in Arms: Hells Highway
  • Lost in Blue: shipwrecked
  • Lego Batman
Yeah.  That’s just september. Ie, 2 weeks.   Rockband, is a must before x-mas but since its a party game it’s not that important.  I’d say witcher and x3 are the 2 biggies.. granted I pre-ordered Brothers in Arms a long time ago (steam had a bundle deal).  Might give WAR a month after launch or two before sinking into another mmo.  Yeah, and october looks to be just as full of noteworthy releases.
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Server move

Well things are now settling down here on our new server. 

Got a handful of old and new domains consolidated across the board and some nre goodies lined up.

Most notably would be the start of development on the dream wars.  Got a good start on the dsesign spec and some of the data modeling up and running.  It’s an ooold idea I had a long time ago but with the new png support that’s universal plus a bunch of new nifty ajaxy2.0buzzwordladen tools at my disposal it actually might be doable now.  The biggest concern is how browsers support 3-400 pngs with 8bit transparency.  I hope pereformance doesnt just suck. 

anyway.. more layout changes and general tweaking still needs to be done all over the place.  But it’s a beginning.