http://www.gamedevblogs.net/
A new blog that lists other game dev blogs and promotes interesting stories, so a good resource to check out a lot of industry stories and information.
Check it out folks
Monday, July 26, 2010
Monday, July 19, 2010
Boston Post Mortem - Indies Will Shoot You in the Knees
The last Boston Post Mortem meet up was recorded by, Darren Torpey.
Information about the talk can be found here. The discussion panel was talking about indie game development, a repeat subject from the PAX East discussion, but an awesome talk by 3 Boston indie studios on the subject.
The youtube video is in six parts -
Link to the Youtube page with info is here.
Information about the talk can be found here. The discussion panel was talking about indie game development, a repeat subject from the PAX East discussion, but an awesome talk by 3 Boston indie studios on the subject.
The youtube video is in six parts -
Link to the Youtube page with info is here.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Toddlers and Toothpaste
So we've started to use some Toddler Training Tooth Paste by Orajel.
Seems to work a treat, doesn't have fluoride so safe for the little one is she swallows a little bit of the stuff.
Not sure about the flavours that they offer, we got the girly variety, which is "pink" flavoured, bit general and don't have a clue what they mean by that.
Best thing about this though, it gets rid of bad breath and after the amount of yoghurt and cheese our little one goes through, that's a really good thing!
Well worth checking this out, but look for Orajel coupons first because you can usually find quite a few online as well as in the usual newspaper flyouts etc.
Seems to work a treat, doesn't have fluoride so safe for the little one is she swallows a little bit of the stuff.
Not sure about the flavours that they offer, we got the girly variety, which is "pink" flavoured, bit general and don't have a clue what they mean by that.
Best thing about this though, it gets rid of bad breath and after the amount of yoghurt and cheese our little one goes through, that's a really good thing!
Well worth checking this out, but look for Orajel coupons first because you can usually find quite a few online as well as in the usual newspaper flyouts etc.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Boston Unity Group - First Meet up
Boston Unity Group - BUG
This is a new meet up group organised for the Boston indie dev scene, though anyone who is interested in, or has used Unity were more than welcome to the event.
The group met up in Northeastern University for the first time, a good venue, organised my Elliott Mitchell and Alex Schwartz.
Kicking off the event, Tom Higgins, community manager at Unity Technologies, spoke about Unity, the company, the product and what will come in the future as well as understanding how to get the best out of it with various pricings and features. The afternoon session held an all-day workshop dubbed ‘Unity Day’. This was a series of tutorials on Unity.
Below is, in three parts, a video of the talk given by Tom Higgins.
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
The next of these bi-monthly Boston Unity Group (game developer meetup) meets will be August 31 @ the Mircosoft N.E.R.D. center in Cambridge, MA. 7 p.m.
This is a new meet up group organised for the Boston indie dev scene, though anyone who is interested in, or has used Unity were more than welcome to the event.
The group met up in Northeastern University for the first time, a good venue, organised my Elliott Mitchell and Alex Schwartz.
Kicking off the event, Tom Higgins, community manager at Unity Technologies, spoke about Unity, the company, the product and what will come in the future as well as understanding how to get the best out of it with various pricings and features. The afternoon session held an all-day workshop dubbed ‘Unity Day’. This was a series of tutorials on Unity.
Below is, in three parts, a video of the talk given by Tom Higgins.
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
The next of these bi-monthly Boston Unity Group (game developer meetup) meets will be August 31 @ the Mircosoft N.E.R.D. center in Cambridge, MA. 7 p.m.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
2 Year Baby Check up
So a little while back we had the 2 year health check up on our little one. This trip was much the same as previous ones.
She was weighed, but this time on a proper scale rather than the basket style as she was able to stand still long enough. Her length and circumference of her head were also measured.
The doctor checked her eyes, ears and prodded all her limbs and organs as usual and checked her walking by having her walk along the corridor towards us.
The questions were much the same as usual, how much milk is she drinking, what kind of foods is she eating and liking, how is she doing with her words and how many two or more word sentences can she speak. How well does she feed herself and is she showing signs of using the potty and other gross motor skills.
As for the jabs, she had another Hep A shot and another booster jab because there was a change up in that kind of booster.
All is well and she was booked for another visit in six months and again for her third birthday.
She was weighed, but this time on a proper scale rather than the basket style as she was able to stand still long enough. Her length and circumference of her head were also measured.
The doctor checked her eyes, ears and prodded all her limbs and organs as usual and checked her walking by having her walk along the corridor towards us.
The questions were much the same as usual, how much milk is she drinking, what kind of foods is she eating and liking, how is she doing with her words and how many two or more word sentences can she speak. How well does she feed herself and is she showing signs of using the potty and other gross motor skills.
As for the jabs, she had another Hep A shot and another booster jab because there was a change up in that kind of booster.
All is well and she was booked for another visit in six months and again for her third birthday.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Game Sauce - Free Developer Magazine.
Game Sauce
This is a new game developer magazine, the second edition has recently been sent out and has roughly 20,000 users, mostly developers with a couple thousand journalists. It is a free magazine and with that in mind and the fact that it is new, the thin nature of the magazine can be over looked, certainly for now.
It has a different approach to development, a lot of stories from those involved with development, talk of casual games, projects being cancelled and in depth interviews from people behind some game franchises.
What this magazine doesn't have, tutorials and in depth talks in code base, art work or tools reviews. I don't think that is a problem though because there are plenty of other magazines out there which cover this.
Also unlike some other free magazines, this isn't over loaded with advertisements which is quite refreshing, but that could also be because it has quite a small readership right now.
Either way, it is worth checking out and you aren't losing out as it is free, so check out the signup link up top.
This is a new game developer magazine, the second edition has recently been sent out and has roughly 20,000 users, mostly developers with a couple thousand journalists. It is a free magazine and with that in mind and the fact that it is new, the thin nature of the magazine can be over looked, certainly for now.
It has a different approach to development, a lot of stories from those involved with development, talk of casual games, projects being cancelled and in depth interviews from people behind some game franchises.
What this magazine doesn't have, tutorials and in depth talks in code base, art work or tools reviews. I don't think that is a problem though because there are plenty of other magazines out there which cover this.
Also unlike some other free magazines, this isn't over loaded with advertisements which is quite refreshing, but that could also be because it has quite a small readership right now.
Either way, it is worth checking out and you aren't losing out as it is free, so check out the signup link up top.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Sony Playstation - Move
This is just a little summary of information gained at the last Boston Post Mortem, held 20th May.
So what makes this a good thing to develop on? Hard question to answer with out seeing any killer apps for it, though the tech demo was pretty interesting and does show some potential for tools creation and as a editor for current games.
What Sony are doing to help developers is providing the Live Motion 2, the motion library for free to all licensed Sony devs and they are trying to make a push for people to use this by offering various bundle deals, most including the Eye Toy camera which is need to get this working, which is a good thing as they have only something like 10M Eye Toys out there at the moment.
What doesn't help, certainly devs going for the casual sports and pub type games, there won't be any controller add ons, such that you get with the Wii controller with all those baseball bats, golf clubs etc. This I think is a bit of a short fall as it breaks the illusion of being part of the event, sure this thing is accurate but there is a much larger level of disconnect from the game because of that.
A concern for who will use this is another big issue. For a party accessory, unlike the Wii, this becomes very expensive, having the PS3, the camera, the Move and the navigator, not a cheap toy to bring to a party. Also you need a certain level of light for this to work, and it needs to be consistent light for it to work at its best, so that could rule out anywhere with strobed party lights. A nice tough though, the controller can phase out colours which are similar to the background and lighting so that they won't create problems with the controller and if two or more controllers are using similar colours, it can auto change the colours for you to make game play smoother and easier.
You can have up to four Move controllers on any one system which is good, but there was no mention if that included the navigator controller or not and they would take up a joypad spot, so limiting how much of a mix and match you can have.
Allowing older games to function with these, should be easy apparently, though this is a little more in the programmer sphere than I understand, it did sound relatively simple because the units used very little system resources with a 13m/s latency per SPU for each controller. I think I got that right.
What was very nice, the face detection, this could add quite a bit of fun to game design because it could track relative age, eye movement, head movement, if you had glasses and whether you were smiling or not. It could also consider your height, if you were sitting or standing. This was a nice mechanic for game show puzzle type games because it could indicate various facial factors.
Gestures, which was also quite nice, but very glitchy. It allowed you to create a rough skeleton of your height and build, so you could control yourself and using the buttons on the controller to add fine hand control, something they pointed out that Natal didn't have. It was nice to see, but it didn't work that great though.
Big issue was the line of sight, the light on the Move controller had to see the camera and getting in the way either because you were moving around, someone passing through, or you swinging the controller back behind for something like a baseball swing broke the controller, left you hanging in the air as it were. It was quite quick to pick you back up, but it still broke the illusion.
So what makes this a good thing to develop on? Hard question to answer with out seeing any killer apps for it, though the tech demo was pretty interesting and does show some potential for tools creation and as a editor for current games.
What Sony are doing to help developers is providing the Live Motion 2, the motion library for free to all licensed Sony devs and they are trying to make a push for people to use this by offering various bundle deals, most including the Eye Toy camera which is need to get this working, which is a good thing as they have only something like 10M Eye Toys out there at the moment.
What doesn't help, certainly devs going for the casual sports and pub type games, there won't be any controller add ons, such that you get with the Wii controller with all those baseball bats, golf clubs etc. This I think is a bit of a short fall as it breaks the illusion of being part of the event, sure this thing is accurate but there is a much larger level of disconnect from the game because of that.
A concern for who will use this is another big issue. For a party accessory, unlike the Wii, this becomes very expensive, having the PS3, the camera, the Move and the navigator, not a cheap toy to bring to a party. Also you need a certain level of light for this to work, and it needs to be consistent light for it to work at its best, so that could rule out anywhere with strobed party lights. A nice tough though, the controller can phase out colours which are similar to the background and lighting so that they won't create problems with the controller and if two or more controllers are using similar colours, it can auto change the colours for you to make game play smoother and easier.
You can have up to four Move controllers on any one system which is good, but there was no mention if that included the navigator controller or not and they would take up a joypad spot, so limiting how much of a mix and match you can have.
Allowing older games to function with these, should be easy apparently, though this is a little more in the programmer sphere than I understand, it did sound relatively simple because the units used very little system resources with a 13m/s latency per SPU for each controller. I think I got that right.
What was very nice, the face detection, this could add quite a bit of fun to game design because it could track relative age, eye movement, head movement, if you had glasses and whether you were smiling or not. It could also consider your height, if you were sitting or standing. This was a nice mechanic for game show puzzle type games because it could indicate various facial factors.
Gestures, which was also quite nice, but very glitchy. It allowed you to create a rough skeleton of your height and build, so you could control yourself and using the buttons on the controller to add fine hand control, something they pointed out that Natal didn't have. It was nice to see, but it didn't work that great though.
Big issue was the line of sight, the light on the Move controller had to see the camera and getting in the way either because you were moving around, someone passing through, or you swinging the controller back behind for something like a baseball swing broke the controller, left you hanging in the air as it were. It was quite quick to pick you back up, but it still broke the illusion.
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