So hit up their web page, check out the trailer below, tweet about it, and tell your friends. This is on my eagerly awaiting list.

http://www.hobbygamedev.com/beg/cs-major/

For my take on the subject see below…

I’m not a video game professional, indie or otherwise, but I am a comp sci major and very interested in the video game industry. So mine is also an outside perspective.

The TL:DR (man I hate that) version of Chris’ article to me is: “A Computer Science major is still valuable for game programmers, even if it’s difficult.” I particularly like the line “…for a CS degree is that its emphasis is on fundamental concepts, which aim to extend well into the future largely independent of specific technologies or how the market may change.” (Emphasis added.)

The changes in the world of programming in general is staggering, doubly so for game programming where customers drive development towards the latest and greatest. Consequently every new platform has to throw away a certian part of their knowledge and experience because they’re not applicable to the new platform. Have you ever noticed that the end of a console’s support cycle, or sometimes after it, is where the really amazing games manifest. Developers at this point have learned what they need to learn and can really focus on making a good game, instead of the part game/part learning experiences that preceded them. That’s why in my opinion PC games tend to be, on the whole, on a higher level. It’s an older platform that, while it is in constant development in some ways, has a large base of developers with enough knowledge in the inner workings (at any given point) that they can focus all their energies into the game part of the game.

I support the weekend developer. If your only goal is to be able to program for fun and show off your stuff to family and forums then take the easy road. Self-teach, use online tutorials, ignore any problems you don’t want to deal with and have fun. But if you have any aspirations to make a living doing video games, or even some pocket change, you need to be ready to learn something new. I mean studiously grapple with knowledge that you haven’t got and in some cases may not yet be readily available. So if you’re thinking about dropping out of a college program because it’s “too hard” then drop your dreams of being a professional game programmer. Because not only are you throwing away basic knowledge that is very applicable but you’re also training yourself to give up.

And if you say…

that’s alright, I’ll just do game design and leave someone else to program. I’m more of an idea person anyways.

…you will be putting me in the uncomfortable position of having to find where you live so I can visit you and deliver you a kick to the genitalia.

His latest offering is fun to play with, but not really fun to play. It promises to be the first of a weekly set of prototypes. It’s a great window into the creative process, great inspiration, and I feel worth your time.

If unfinished prototypes aren’t your thing, first of all why are you here, secondly here’s a list of my favorite of his games of the past suitable for blowing an hour on:

Game 2 – StarGrazing -  My favorite but only play the boss rusI love the “collect their power and throw it back at them” mechanic.

Game 39 – Snake Oil – The “close but no touch” aspect of needing to round up the oil blobs and compress them without contact really works in this game. Great pacing.

Game 6 – Dragon Dot with revised flash version  – Everyone’s favorite and for good reason. You play a dragon on a quest, tho that’s hard to tell because you’re just a dot. But a ton of fun and very beatable.

Game 28 – Vex – A really cool twist. You can’t attack, but you can annoy a giant into doing your attacking for you.

Game 18 – Dragondot’s Sky – Not a rousing success in my opinion because it’s so hard to play. But even hard to play it’s worth the time to try to master and very satisfying to.

SOPA and PIPA must be allowed to pass. The world needs the technological infrastructure that American business will bring when these laws pass. As a decent citizen of the world I demand we pass these legislations.

While it seems that this PIPA and SOPA put too much power in the hands of chuckleheads who’s only concern is recouping the losses of the latest Big Mama movie what’s really going on here is the undermining of their power and handing it over to the world. See, SOPA and PIPA are American legislation, meaning they can only dictate what American DNS providers, American financial services, American search engines, American web sites, and American ad services do. But they can not dictate what foreign providers do and there’s no reason you, as an internet user, can’t use a foreign DNS resolver. In fact according to the language of PIPA and SOPA your website can still be hosted domestically so long as a foreign DNS provides the link.

Here’s what’s going to happen. Every website which hosts user generated content, even text comments, will be liable not only for copyrighted violations but for facilitating copyright violation. This means all you have to do is find one place where you can post a comment and put up a mention of how to rip a BluRay and the whole site is blacklisted. No American DNS can resolve to them, no American ad provider can service them, no American search engine can refer to them, and no other site can legally link to them, meaning every site on the internet will be required, to remain in compliance with the law, to be ready at a moments notice to scour any mention of any blacklisted site from their pages or they too will be liable to prosecution. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the internet is kinda connected. There is no way every site will be able to comply. The ban hammer will spread like wild fire.

Soon, to avoid prosecution every DNS provider, ad generator, online financial service, and search engine will either move to foreign shores or foreign services will pop up to take their place free from fear of this evil legislation. With this deAmericanization of the internet will come a building up of the technological infrastructure of the rest of the world. And the chuckleheads who have worked to pass this legislation will watch as their power slips through their clenched fingers.

Sure it’ll be a rough couple of months, maybe couple of years, and some sites won’t make it. Chances are your favorite site won’t survive the transition since most of the internet is physically hosted in America. But hey, that’s the price of progress. Can’t make a worldwide omelet without breaking a few eggs.

Still think this is a bad idea? Good. So do I. Want something you can do about it?

Watch this video. (wish I could embed it)

Sign this petition.

Spread the word.

The funny thing is I feel like I can’t talk about the stuff I’m doing because it doesn’t “fit” with what Cymon’s Games “is”. However I’ve never really defined what Cymon’s Games is. It started out as a type-in revival that never really took off. Now it’s a library of reference code and tutorials. Of course for many people the only time they’ve heard of Cymon’s Games is through ASCIIpOrtal… which I have neglected for far too long. For some it’s the MrJoeRants… which I’ve also neglected, but that’s not my fault. This Android game that I’m dabbling in is getting the “Cymon’s Games” logo on it, so maybe Cymon’s Games needs to change into more of a game development company? Maybe Cymon’s Games should just evolve to be “Whatever Joe is working on at the time.”

There are things I want to do. I want to change the programs section so it will more easily accept user generated content. I want to update ASCIIpOrtal with a wiki and links to the github for it. I want to make an interactive lesson section to teach programming online. I want to do a video review series on the classic BASIC books that I’ve collected. I want to get a 3D printer and make a video series about the projects I’m working on with it.

And maybe that’s my problem. No focus. Or rather there’s focus but not in the right areas.

Sorry, this is turning out all livejournally.

The point is, I’m sorry about the hiatus and if you have any suggestions for what you want to see more of comment below.

We had a local talent show so, to be different, I decided to bring a video game. Set up my laptop and put on “Rover Wars“, a personal favorite of mine. Getting someone to play to play your game really makes you realize how bad a job you did the first time in making your game playable. But I got a few kids into it and they played it the whole time. Loved it. They even had some suggestions. Together with some idea of my own for making it more playable, I decided it was time to update Rover Wars.

The problem is my poor old laptop had been reformatted and reinstalled since I made any game in Allegro. A couple of times, actually. So of course I haven’t reloaded allegro yet. Hit the allegro website and… oh wait, they’ve changed things. The old install instructions don’t work. Now I need CMake. Well, I’ve got CMake, but the instructions on the allegro wiki aren’t very clear about making Allegro work with MinGW and Code::Blocks. No problem, I’m a professional, I can handle this. Setting up CMake and building the libraries only took me a weekend, hampered somewhat because it relies specific DirectX binaries that you can only get off their website but for some reason aren’t included in the download. This seems like an odd choice, but I persist because it’ll be worth it in the end.

While CMake and mingw32-make were running I perused the SDL documentation and noticed that lazyfoo’s instructions which are super clear, super easy, broken down for whatever IDE you prefer, still work for the current version of SDL. I’ve actually already installed SDL a few months back so I could work on ASCIIpOrtal a bit and it went like butter. Way different than the trouble I’m going through now. Still, I reason, allegro is easier to use. Then again, what’s the point of being easier to use if you’re behind a wall that no one can get to?

Oh, the compile is done. I’m finally I’m able to edit my own game. But it’s late so I’ll take care of it another time.

That other time never came. A nasty bit of malware sneaked past Microsoft Security Essentials and the process of removing it somehow broke my network drivers. I was incapable of finding any wireless networks at home, work, or school. I had no choice. I have to reformat and reinstall again (poor old laptop). The good news? The reformat and reinstall worked and I have a functional, if barren, poor old laptop again. The bad news? I have decided I’m not going through that Allegro install ever again. I’m so upset I can’t even bring myself to link to them. Allegro is dead to me which is a shame because I have a number of games on the site that use it. But it is just not worth it to me.

The allegro team has made some nerdy, elitest choices lately that took their easy-for-beginners library and ruined it. I am not going back and if I want to make an edit to any of my allegro games I’m just going to have to rewrite them. I hate that that’s the case, but there it is.

1. Steve is apparently married to Liza Gibbons (News)
2. He may or may not work for Bank of America (linkedIn)
3. He has a website that wears his ASCIIpOrtal work like a badge.

Wow, google. What would I have done without you?

And there it is on Steve’s website, under ASCIIpOrtal, the song “Almost Invisible”.  It thrills me to see this for reasons I can’t quite enumerate. Go check out his site, check out his other work, and compliment him for all the ear candy on ASCIIpOrtal.

So the humble indie bundle. Ever heard of it? Started when a bunch of indie developers got together and offered up their wares, which often was half or all of their available library, DRM free, with the promise that they’d be cool with whatever you gave them and, even more, would hand over whatever you specified to charity. Very humble. Very indie. We saw incarnations 2 and 3 of this and while no one really talked about the numbers I don’t think anyone suffered too badly for what might have been seen as a bad business decision by anyone else.

I make the assumption that the participants did well enough for themselves because between 2 and 3 we saw the “FrozenByte” Humble Indie Bundle. Just one developer saying “We got this whole thing covered, stand back you little guys.” Not quite as humble but I guess they’re still indie. And it was for charity so no one really said anything about the lack of humility. At least it was still a bundle.

Today we have a brand new Humble Indie Bundle and… it’s not even a bundle. It’s one game. By one developer. Humble, out. Bundle, out. Technically if you beat the average you get the bundle from the not-so-humble FrozenByte bundle, so I guess it might technically still be a bundle, but just barely.

But it’s for charity, right? That means I’m going to be the bad guy if I call this what it is: a marketing ploy. Gasp, I’m a bad person. To even suggest that Frozen Synapse has anything but the children in mind is unthinkable.

I don’t mind a company trying to do something for a good cause, but let’s have a little honesty here. This is not humble and it’s not a bundle and the only reason they want to use those words is because they know their game won’t sell as well if they don’t. They’re using a pale imitation of other people’s noble intents to line their pockets and heaven help me if I can figure out why the people behind the humble indie bundle website are supporting them. If EA wants to sell Madden 2013 and call it a humble indie bundle, so long as they’re donating to charity, is everyone going to be okay with that?

Short version: Follow this link and use your facebook, twitter, or LinkedIn to vote for my 2D6 spinner box.

Long version: Have you heard of 3D printing? The possibility of owning a replicator in your home is quickly becoming a reality. And while it’s a still a fledgling technology recent ventures like Makerbot and Ultimaker and projects like RepRap are bringing the technology within the reach of more people. One day a 3D printer in your home will be as ubiquitous as 2D printers.

I would love to get in to the ground level of this new technology. Ever since I’ve seen what was possible I’ve got the 3D printing goggles on, seeing opportunities where this technology would be very useful.  Unfortunately even at it’s cheapest I have a long list of expenses that come first. However there have recently come up a ton of opportunities to WIN one, and you had better believe I’m gonna try my best every chance I get.

I need your votes!

Follow this link and use your facebook, twitter, or LinkedIn to vote for my 2D6 spinner box. The 3DPrintingEvent.com contest ends in October and so far I’m the only entrant, but that just means I can get a headstart on the popular vote.

Now in reality this is just them trying to spread the word because the winning entry will be picked by a jury, but hey, they deserve the free advertising and I’m sure I can leverage an early relationship. So give them what they want, vote for me, and leave a note in the comments suggesting what I could do for your guys in remuneration if I win.

PS. There’s also a contest where Makerbot wants a mascot? Well How about a mascot that helps you make stuff? A maker-Bot of sorts. But you’re votes won’t help there but you can send positive vibes my way.

PPS. Ooh, there’s another one. If I don’t win at least one of these I’m gonna be ticked.

PPPS. Feel free to enter any of these contests yourself, by the way.

The new guy at work has been running weekly Banqi games and I must admit I’m hooked. For such a simple rule set there’s a lot of depth. Occasionally you get the throw-away one sided game and often times the end is a forgone conclusion fairly early on, but it’s the journey that’s the fun bit.

So how do you play this marvelous new old game? Let me show you:

Rules for Banqi do vary. The rules presented here have been found by our group to have the best balance of luck and strategy. If you have a favorite variation comment below.

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:10500 – Print your own iconified Chinese Chess set (by me).
http://woodpress.org/banqi/ – Typed rules and board with key for beginners.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqi – Some alternate rules.