Southlake, TX
Imparting game development wisdom of dubious quality a ridiculously long time.
February 13, 2009
Thanks for the Pop Pies 2 feedback. I went live with the thing and started uploading it to the major game portals in the hopes that it'll be co-opted by the smaller ones. Since the game runs ads before it starts, the key is to get it on every place you can find.
A couple of my favorites are MindJolt…
A couple of my favorites are MindJolt…
February 09, 2009
Okay, Pop Pies 2 has been a week in RC status now. I haven't gotten a serious exclusive sponsorship offer via flashgamelicense, so I'm gonna go with my original plan. That's to release the game to the four winds self-sponsored but with ad-banners, grab nonexclusive sponsorships as they come in, and…
January 26, 2009
I'm working on Pop Pies 2. Pop Pies is my most successful game far as ad-revenue goes. I'll also admit that it's not my best game. Myself, I much prefer Meltdown, although both games do have that visceral id-gratifying "blow up lotsa stuff in one shot if you set up everything just right" bit.
One th…
One th…
January 21, 2009
Actual paper copy of the book. Ooooh, amazing. Scientific. And yes, slightly bent courtesy of our good pals in the brown truck.
Okay, I've been meaning to document the process for quite some time. This is how the gamedev series came to be.
According to my email archive, it first landed in my and Drew…
January 14, 2009
Looks like Amazon's little book-excerpt-reader-thingy has indexed the first of the gamedev.net books. Bask in wild wonder!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1598638092
Looks like Rick's article as well as mine are in this one. I have another article in the Beginning Programming book, which is scheduled…
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1598638092
Looks like Rick's article as well as mine are in this one. I have another article in the Beginning Programming book, which is scheduled…
January 13, 2009
First off, here's my guide to Marital Infidelity For Smart People(tm)
1. Decide that you wanna cheat on your wife.
2. Agonize about the "dump wife" versus "cheat on wife" decision for a while. Insist that it's being done out of enormous love for yourself. . .I mean your wife.
3. Reveal to your lucky l…
1. Decide that you wanna cheat on your wife.
2. Agonize about the "dump wife" versus "cheat on wife" decision for a while. Insist that it's being done out of enormous love for yourself. . .I mean your wife.
3. Reveal to your lucky l…
January 06, 2009
If you didn't catch this freebie back in August, here's your chance to catch it again. This is Edraw Max 4.3, and it's a great vector-based tool for making any kind of blob-n-arrow documents. It's a lot like Visio, only I like it better. It has loads of drawing templates for stuff ranging from furn…
January 03, 2009
I received the following email from my six year-old.
dear johnhattan please giv me 548$ yor cretet card has expird
I think this is the first instance of a six year old trying to pull a Nigerian scam on her own father.
I'm also amused that she managed to catch the nuances of Nigerian-Eng…
dear johnhattan please giv me 548$ yor cretet card has expird
I think this is the first instance of a six year old trying to pull a Nigerian scam on her own father.
I'm also amused that she managed to catch the nuances of Nigerian-Eng…
December 31, 2008
Howdy hoo. It's the end of a bad economic year and the start of a worse economic year. At least gas is cheap.
And on an economic note, here's my own helpful way that I budget myself. This is pretty far from a "be like me" blog, so I ain't gonna say that it works brilliantly for everyone. It has, how…
And on an economic note, here's my own helpful way that I budget myself. This is pretty far from a "be like me" blog, so I ain't gonna say that it works brilliantly for everyone. It has, how…
December 10, 2008
Apologies for the lack of updates. End of year stuff, you know. Had a couple of appointments and went to a conference (Autodesk University in Las Vegas) that I unfortunately could not really cover for any game development press.
Again, I'm available on most social networks (most specifically, Twitte…
Again, I'm available on most social networks (most specifically, Twitte…
November 26, 2008
First off, today's my birthday. I'm 42 today. If you wanna make a Hitchhiker's Guide reference, feel free to do so in the comments. Today will be the only day that it will be allowed. I've already covered the comedic possibilities of the number 42 (i.e. virtually nil) quite some time ago. Still, if…
November 20, 2008
Sorry if this appears to be in code, regular listeners. I'm posting to George Hrab here for two reasons. . .
1. I didn't see his email address right off on his site.
2. He apparently has a google alert set up for his name.
Heard the mention of good D/FW BBQ. Thought I'd post my faves. . .
1. Feedstore …
1. I didn't see his email address right off on his site.
2. He apparently has a google alert set up for his name.
Heard the mention of good D/FW BBQ. Thought I'd post my faves. . .
1. Feedstore …
November 17, 2008
Awright, I've had a request to post a deal and some black-friday info, so here goes. . .
First off, the deal. Free office-supply bits for a limited time. Print out the coupon here and take it over to your local Staples store. They have a new line of products under the label "M". It's reasonably pric…
First off, the deal. Free office-supply bits for a limited time. Print out the coupon here and take it over to your local Staples store. They have a new line of products under the label "M". It's reasonably pric…
November 10, 2008
Since I had some Saturday errands to run, I decided to take the kiddo with me. And if you have a six year-old, you know that you can't just bundle up the kid and do your errands. You have to make it something SPECIAL.
Thankfully, that's easy to do. I took the kiddo with me to Starbucks and got mysel…
Thankfully, that's easy to do. I took the kiddo with me to Starbucks and got mysel…
November 04, 2008
Okay, we've had the EEE PC for a week, and the critter's still really happy with it.
Turns out that it's not possible to combine the 4-gig C: and 8-gig D: drives into a single drive, as they're two different Flash drives inside the unit. But thankfully there's a pile of information on the internet a…
Turns out that it's not possible to combine the 4-gig C: and 8-gig D: drives into a single drive, as they're two different Flash drives inside the unit. But thankfully there's a pile of information on the internet a…
October 30, 2008
Here's my programming productivity idea, and it's so absurdly simple that there has to be something wrong with it. . .
I noticed recently that I use lots of bits of free source code from various places. Stuff like SWFObject or cunitescore or PHPFlashMyAdmin pr AMFPHP or other little bits of eternall…
I noticed recently that I use lots of bits of free source code from various places. Stuff like SWFObject or cunitescore or PHPFlashMyAdmin pr AMFPHP or other little bits of eternall…
October 29, 2008
Well after griping about the quality of the software on Maggie's OLPC laptop a couple of weeks ago, we decided to do something about it. After a little discussion, we chose to ebay the OLPC and replace it with one of the legion of baby laptops that hit the market recently. Given that OLPC's are hol…
October 23, 2008
Here's a nice hint. Since I run a little engineering shop, I'm always on the lookout for little utilities that make our system more automated. And this time it turned out to be one already built into Windows.
Since I have a big terabyte NAS drive hooked up to the network and it's important to keep b…
Since I have a big terabyte NAS drive hooked up to the network and it's important to keep b…
October 20, 2008
Not at all game development related, but we did Maker Faire in Austin this weekend and had an absolute blast. Shelly was accepted as a "maker" for her little antique sock-knitting machine hobby. She was pretty-much tied down to her booth all weekend, but she still had lots of fun talking to people …
October 05, 2008
Ahem. . .
Putting Windows XP on the OLPC is a terrific idea.
My kiddo has had her little OLPC XO laptop since February. And it's an awesome little piece of hardware. It's got a great screen with a high-contrast-ebook-mode that looks great and a built-in video camera and it swivels to work as an ebook…
Putting Windows XP on the OLPC is a terrific idea.
My kiddo has had her little OLPC XO laptop since February. And it's an awesome little piece of hardware. It's got a great screen with a high-contrast-ebook-mode that looks great and a built-in video camera and it swivels to work as an ebook…
October 03, 2008
So what is the proper way to respond to a blog comment? Do you comment on your own blog, email the comment-er, or make a new post?
Eh, I'll do the last. A couple of posts ago, Bryan offered to test the waters for me regarding the iPhone development. And I'm always up for that.
If you (you being Bryan…
Eh, I'll do the last. A couple of posts ago, Bryan offered to test the waters for me regarding the iPhone development. And I'm always up for that.
If you (you being Bryan…
October 01, 2008
I worked a bit on the retro pack today. The biggest change I have to make is to eliminate the .HLP files. That format has been discouraged since Windows 2000 and is basically unavailable under Vista. You can still download the .HLP viewer on the Microsoft site, but I'm not gonna put my users throug…
September 29, 2008
I got a couple of bumps from people interested in getting my games on an iPhone and/or helping me get there. Looks like it'll require an iPhone SDK subscription ($99) an OSX update on my little Mac Mini ($129) and an iPod touch for device testing ($229). Unfortunately I already wrote a paycheck fro…
September 22, 2008
First off, I'm back from Austin. I believe the coverage is going to appear on the site tomorrow and Thursday. I need to forward my notes and pictures to Drew, and the ball will start rolling on that.
Second, I found a really excellent list here on lifehacker. Basically they have a weekly "hive five"…
Second, I found a really excellent list here on lifehacker. Basically they have a weekly "hive five"…
September 17, 2008
Day three of the Austin GDC and everybody's tired. One fact of life of trade shows is that the last day is the one where everyone's tired and whiny about the grind. Everybody in the expo hall will be ready to break down and leave even though the thing opened yesterday afternoon.
Myself, I got to bed…
Myself, I got to bed…
September 16, 2008
Lessee, it's about day two-and-a-half in sunny Austin. We went to see the nonexistent bats under the Austin bridge, which was cool. And by "cool", I mean "the food at the restaurant was cool where we could eat and wait for the bats to not arrive". I'm sure Drew has more details. Today he's going to…
September 13, 2008
Starbucks now has free wifi, but you have to know how to get it.
Actually it's not 100% free but it is really cheap and since Starbucks' are everywhere, it's a good thing to have when you're on the go.
Basically you need to have a Starbucks account that's linked to an AT&T account. And the accoun…
Actually it's not 100% free but it is really cheap and since Starbucks' are everywhere, it's a good thing to have when you're on the go.
Basically you need to have a Starbucks account that's linked to an AT&T account. And the accoun…
September 08, 2008
First thing, I sat down at my desk this morning to find my ICQ account 102% inaccessible. Password wouldn't work. Password recovery didn't recognize my email. Either my account was stolen or it's been banned or it's just disappeared from the system. Why someone would want to steal a throwaway accou…
September 04, 2008
Not sure if this applies to anyone here, but it applied to me. If you are using SWX as your client-server layer for Flash, your communication will completely break under the soon-to-be-released Flash Player 10.
The bug appears to be security-related. I haven't investigated it enough to see if it's a…
The bug appears to be security-related. I haven't investigated it enough to see if it's a…
September 02, 2008
Since I make money by putting stuff on the web, I like to make sure that my stuff works on the web. Duh.
And whenever a new browser hits the scene, I like to make sure that my content doesn't royally honk it up. Hence I'm a browser early-adopter. Thus far I'm happy to confirm that my site and games …
And whenever a new browser hits the scene, I like to make sure that my content doesn't royally honk it up. Hence I'm a browser early-adopter. Thus far I'm happy to confirm that my site and games …
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