Archive for February, 2008
Cellphones are For Calling… Things
Posted by SimianLogic in Uncategorized on 02/26/2008
While I’ll give the iPhone a pass because it’s pretty cool and the battery actually holds up nicely, by and large I feel like cell phones are made for calling people. I don’t need it to play music–I’ve got an MP3 player for that. I don’t need it to get on the internet–I’ve got a laptop for that (and before anyone says “But it’s not as portable,” I carry my little 8″ Fujitsu Lifebook just about everywhere I go). All I really need from a cell phone is the ability to make and receive calls, and the ability to send/receive text messages. What’s the point of this micro-rant? Read the rest of this entry »
GDC Party Roundup
Posted by SimianLogic in blog on 02/22/2008
I didn’t actually go to the GDC this year–on Monday, I was making up for the fact that I ducked out at noon on Friday to go to Yosemite, and our third employee (not counting interns) started on Tuesday. I don’t think the bosses would’ve signed off on a week-long game conference anyway, but there was legitimately a lot going on this week that I didn’t want to miss. Luckily for me, GDC attendance has absolutely nothing to do with GDC party attendance (well maybe for The GDC Party). I had a couple of invites, so last night I took a few friends and hit up the Mochi Media party, the MTV party, and the Kongregate party. The three were a pretty striking contrast–actually reflecting the three different companies pretty well. Read the rest of this entry »
I Heart Adobe
Posted by SimianLogic in blog on 02/19/2008
When I first started making games (well, when I first took a class about making games), it was under the tutelage of Dr. Allan Partridge–one of Director’s greatest champions. I’ve since moved on to Java and then Flex, but I never forgot my love of Director’s simplicity (doing Ruby now, it’s actually kind of nostalgic). Besides a couple of casual games, I worked on my first major 3D game (doing parts 3D modeling, animation, and AI programming on a team of 5 or 6 people). I think it’s pretty safe to say I wouldn’t have taken the path I took if not for Director (before grad school, I was still pretty split on whether I wanted to continue on to get a PhD in Film Studies or give this whole interactive thing a more serious shot).
I’ve got a couple of more detailed games in my notebook, and I’ve been trying to decide if I want to build them with Apollo, go old-school with Director MX, or try something new entirely (like XNA). This announcement is something that will certainly have an influence on those future plans–and hopefully in a good way. I can’t wait until some more info hits on the new features.
Filler at One Month
Posted by SimianLogic in blog on 02/11/2008
Today marks the one-month anniversary of Filler’s release, and the folks over at Mochi were kind enough to post my sponsorship rundown over on their MochiLand blog. You can check it out here. As of this morning, the MochiBot stats were sitting at 2,824,283… a figure that I’m still just astounded by (and that doesn’t count a couple of the special versions I’ve done where the portals’ contracts required that I remove the MochiBot). I tried not to post too many specific details (sponsors tend to frown on that, and I don’t want to burn any bridges), but I hope that anyone who’s interested in flash game development will find some value in my experience–limited as it is so far.
Edit: I guess the guys over at Newgrounds read the MochiLand blog. Here’s a compressed screenshot from my MochiBot stats from yesterday:
I think it’s pretty safe to say that the percent is juuuuuuuust a bit off, but I certainly can’t complain about the traffic bump. At $0.50 eCPM, that translates to around $6 a day while it’s on the main page. And more money is always fun.
The Price of Good Popcorn
Posted by SimianLogic in blog on 02/05/2008
When my co-worker told me he was ordering “some really good popcorn,” I was expecting a box to show up full of unpopped popcorn. I’m not a big fan of the stuff anyway (though I do like kettle corn), so I wrote it off as an eccentricity. The box arrived today–a humongous one, at that. It was filled with 20 large bags of Herr’s Original Popcorn–a gas-station, pre-popped variety. At $0.99/bag, he spent around $20 on the popcorn and around $20 on the shipping (all the way from Pennsylvania). To his credit, the popcorn itself is pretty awesome–though I’m not sure it’s worth all the fuss. I guess that would be like me getting 20 bags of Pork Rinds shipped from Atlanta.