As promised, here is part 2 in my ongoing set of video blogs. This is from mid May when I was still trying to figure out how to spend my time in Scotland and could be interpreted as a bit of a travel blog. I’m shooting a time lapse video during this with my Canon 7D. I’ve taken a number of time lapse videos so far while here in Scotland, but have not yet taken the time to process them all. You’ll have to wait just a little longer for that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NonfbfEBPIg
Hi again! If you’ve been trying to visit in the past few days, you may have had the (mis)fortune of watching me tinker with the website! That’s right dawg, I’ve was workin’ mah magic on this website of mine while it was live. Dangerous!
In recent memory, I’d been working on an indie game project with a little company I helped set up called Sprixelsoft. Unfortunately, independent development isn’t for everyone, and unfortunately it ended up not being for my partner. We decided to wrap things up earlier than I would have preferred, but later than we should have and so as you may already be aware, Super Hematoma is shelved. Read More >
Hey world! Allegro Digital is (for the most part) functional again! If you look around, you’ll see that the other parts of the website have all been updated. I’m still ironing out the blog’s css/php to get it looking the way I want, but I decided that as the content is functional it makes sense to leave it up for the time being rather than the “Under Construction” page that’s been visible for the past couple of days.
Hope to get it working as expected in the next day!
The biggest collaboration in the gaming industry
A few weeks ago, Twitch Plays Pokémon made headlines when 75,000 fans came together to play a single game of Pokémon. The event not only cemented Pokémon’s status as a worldwide favorite, but also showed what a community of gamers from all over the world could accomplish in 390 hours. Although playing with strangers, using an unconventional UI, and battling the immaturity of trolls, Twitch successfully beat the Elite Four, showing that with hard work and perseverance, the gaming community can conquer all.
But it’s not only the players that have come together for a greater purpose. Just recently, the Global Game Jam 2014 was held, bringing together thousands of developers, designers, and producers in a push to create as many independent games as possible — all over the course of one weekend.
The Global Game Jam (GGJ) is an annual event that is simultaneously held in physical locations around the world. Exploring the process of game development, narrative exploration, and even visual design, the event calls upon all game developers and poses a challenge in the form of a secret theme, which developers will have to base a game on. The event takes off on Friday afternoon, and ends on Sunday afternoon, meaning developers have only two days to complete a fully-functional game.
This year’s secret theme was the quote, “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” In the event’s opening keynote, Naughty Dog alumnus Richard Lemarchand challenged developers to create games that were experimental, and designer Kaho Abe called for games that reflected personal experiences, leading the way to these concepts being accepted into the mainstream.
Unsurprisingly, many developers and students poked fun at the hugely successful game “Candy Crush Saga”, and many others opted to focus on social games, following the trend that developers have now begun shifting to mobile and social gaming.
This would be enforced a few days later, with 20-year industry veteran Jim Veevaert leaving Zynga and console gaming to move to social gaming firm IGT. IGT, whose games are found on castlejackpot.com as well as in various land-based casinos, is one of the biggest developers in the world, and Veevaert says he’s never going back to console development. “The market here is so wide open, it’s amazing. And we see how fast games can grow… It’s incredible.”
GGJ also saw a host of other developers creating games for the mobile platform. Indie developer Exient, who worked on Angry Birds Go with Rovio, entered the provocatively-titled “Edge of Perception Saga: Crush the Candy Scrolls”, a perspective-shifting puzzle platformer. There was even a game designed to be played by licking your smart phone’s touch screen, and a game that used the concept of the “selfie” and turned it into an interactive experience with “extra bonuses for a duck face”.
All in all, GGJ brought together 23,198 developers from 488 locations in 72 countries, creating 4,290 games
PYTHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON GO!
Only did exercies 34->36 today and saw that 37 is going to be a lot of memorization…
Alright, it’s been a grueling, hard day of playing Rogue Legacy… now for a breather with some relaxing python.
We’re into lessons 26 -> 33 of http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/
When not learning Python, I’ve been playing lots of FTL, (totally beat it on Easy) and I’ve also been working on some artwork for Super Hematoma. You should click that there link if you want to learn more about the image that’s up above…
But you’re here because you can’t get enough of my notes that I take while learning python right? So without further ado, here we goooo!
Today I’m going through exercises 14-18 of http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/! Ooooooooh, what craziness will I learn today?! Exciting craziness, that’s what!
Well, I went through Exercises 0 -> 6 yesterday from http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/, and now it’s time to continue and learn some more!
Going to do a little programming learning in the upcoming while using: http://tech.yipit.com/2012/08/21/how-i-taught-myself-to-code-in-8-weeks/ as a guide.
I’ve never been a particularly technical person (in my opinion) which was part of the reason I felt that this was worth my time to make. Artists should understand some of the technical tools available to them, and I’ve seen enough people asking for python knowledge that I figure it’s about time that I adopt it into my repertoire.