Blogs

I run an online game-jam event called Ludum Dare, and this past weekend I got together with a friend (Derek Laufman of Halfbot) and we made a game. What did we make? A platformer about size. The game was created over a period 72 hours. Somehow, amazing to me, we managed to pull it together despite our responsibilities. Me running the event (Ludum Dare) Family gathering at my brothers I attended on the Saturday Car appointment on Monday Derek taking care of his baby Fortunately, running Ludum Dare is only busy for me before the event, and at submission time (two of them, 3-5 hours each). During the event I’m free to sit down and do whatever I want. This weekend was the Diablo 3 beta test, and if I was a lesser man, I’d have played that. Fortunately for me, Derek came to me a couple weeks ago and suggested we make a game together, I said yes, and the rest is history. It’s totally silly, but I’m actually proud of the fact that I managed to attend the family gathering and the car appointment. Stupid me, I could have actually cancelled/rescheduled the appointment for Tuesday or Wednesday, but I decided to go ahead with it anyway. The car appointment was my yearly service for my smartcar, and I ended up staying in the neighborhood of the dealership for about 5 hours of that day. Working on my Ludum Dare game on my laptop, I had WIFI at the dealership, and also McDonalds, where I parked myself for a couple hours. To be honest, this was probably the first time I seriously “Coffee Shop Developed”, and where I actually got some serious work done. It was fun, because it was out of the ordinary. 🙂 Anyways, that’s enough back story. Lets get nerdy. ...

Uh… I am concerned about what that potion would do to me if I drank it. (a typo/bug from today, hehe) Hello! This is quite possibly the last post I’ll do in 2011, so lets make with the goods! This past week I’ve continued working on the demake of my primary project. If you checked out the Ludum Dare prototype, the core mechanics have dramatically improved since then (about 4 days ago)....

I wont talk too much about how Ludum Dare itself went, as I’ve already done that over here. But in addition to running the event, I participated for the first time in a long time. The theme was “Alone“, which I find funny given the title of my game. Could I not enter? 😉 About a week before Ludum Dare, I started toying with the idea of creating a demake of my game....

Pekka posed a good question recently that got me thinking: The default Bash shell that comes with MinGW (MSys) kinda sucks. You can’t resize the Window, selections are this odd visible only thing, in essence: it works like an ordinary windows cmd shell. The solution is surprisingly straight forward: Use MinTTY. Open up a MinGW shell, and do the following: mingw-get install mintty A few moments later, you’ll have MinTTY installed....

Phil keeps telling me I need to document what I do. After all, I’ve worked on a ridiculous number of platforms, and with many SDK’s. So alright, I’m going to record and share my notes here. I’m going to assume you have your own build system figured out, and cover the highlights and key things you need to know and do to get native code up and running on the PlayBook....

Enough of this non-game talk. The past month has been extremely good for progress. I did not meet my goal for the month, but I’d be silly to complain. Yadda yadda ya. Against my better judgement, I’m going to stop beating around the bush and show you: A mish-mash or random objects sitting in some sculpted terrain. Subtle glow. Vignette blur. That’s cool Mike, but what is it? Tech....

Hey look what finally came out! Hey look! Somebody liked it! Oh wait, that was me Here’s a video. Without spoiling it, I’m very happy with how it’s selling so far. 😀...

NAS time, again! Like before, I’m collecting my notes and thoughts all in one place. Two months later Why have 1 when you can have 2? After winning the GameTree prize, I decided I should have 2 So according to my blog here, I’ve been running the Synology NAS for just over 2 months now, and I still love it. Heck, I bought a 2nd one! The NAS has become a permanent part of my development setup, and even my development workflow....

Here’s some notes from my internal wiki. How to export .bullet data from a Blender 2.5x scene (awfully close to 2.6 now ‘eh). This might be as of Blender 2.57, and should continue to work well in to 2.6x. Exporting Bullet Data from Blender Exporting Bullet Physics data from Blender is a pain in the ass. Plain and Simple. It *SHOULD* be a right click export, but no, it’s complicated....

October is a very special month at Ludum Dare. Here’s a post I just did on Gamasutra blogs. Hey! I’m Mike, an Independent Game Developer up in Canada, and one of the main people behind the Ludum Dare Online Game Jam event. I’m here to invite you to participate in a very special event we’re running this month, The October Challenge. The Challenge isn’t your typical game jam, but the rules are simple:...