Posts Tagged ‘ Games ’
Haven’t posted recently… been soooo busy (work\home).
Been playing some war games (COD, MOH, etc…). There is a condition when you try to lay down… go ‘prone’, but you can’t. You’ve been proneblocked. I felt compelled to illustrate this when an informative graphic:
While I’ve really been enjoying coding with Pygame and Python… one thing they don’t seem to be able to do is play well with mobile phones. Specifically things like the iPhone and Android devices. Everyone I show my BubblePaint Pygame program to has the same comment: You should put that on the iPhone! And I’d love to! But I don’t see Python entering into the iPhone’s future anytime soon, and I have no real want to learn Objective-C or C++ for iPhone dev. Plus, I really don’t want to have to buy a Mac just to release my iPhone apps :-S
Enter Android. Can develop for it on the PC (plus!). Uses Java as its programming language. And now appears to support Python scripting! So far so good! (well, other than the fact I signed a 2-year deal with AT&T so my wife could get an iPhone <wink> )
I’m a bit warmer to Java than other languages based on my familiarity with Processing. But I still really don’t “know Java” (however I have to say that Processing was a gentle introduction). So I went out this weekend and picked up these books:
Then I:
And finally I:
I’m now on… day 3… of 21. It’s going pretty fast since Java is not so unlike Python in many regards. The only thing I find unfortunate is that the more I learn of Java… the more I miss Python. Python’s dynamic typing is sooooo much more conducive to my brain than Java’s static typing, and the stripped down syntax of Python just makes me feel… cleaner, compared to all the brackets, semi-colons, variable casting and whatnot needed in Java. Bah! End rant.
We’ll see where this leads: I really like the idea of making games on mobile devices, and Android seems like an accessible platform. I just hope AT&T starts selling the devices soon (the emulator will only get me so far) and learning Java doesn’t cause me to rant too much….
…thanks to today’s press release: Sledgehammer Games is official. But we still don’t have a web site 😛
I started work here a couple months ago after departing EA (after 7.5 years, wow!), and it’s been a great experience. Making that change was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do: leaving great friends, years of tech, and job stability. But onwards and upwards!
Here’s what Kotaku has to say on it <link>
After 7.5 years of employment at Electronic Arts, I’ve decided to change jobs. It’s been a fantastic time, with an amazing group of people I only wish the best for. It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make leaving the company; they’ve treated me very well over the years and I have no major complaints. The way I was treated by the upper management through the exit process was handled with the utmost integrity, which I greatly appreciated. But the opportunity I am leaving it for with both grow my career, and allow me to focus on projects that are more in-line with my personality.
So it’s a very bittersweet parting, but onward and upward
Yesterday I downloaded Kodu Game Lab from Xbox Live Marketplace. I’d seen some demos of it online of a young girl (10?) programming games on the fly on the Xbox, and thought it would be something cool for my son. Well, I was right, he hasn’t been able to put it down (although, we do make him 😉 )
Here are some links:
It’s a very visual programming environment, letting your quickly sculpt terrain, program bots, and plot paths. Kind of like a mashup of Spore, The Sims, and Civilization. Of course this is all sharable over Xbox Live. I’ll be looking to see what kind of “expansion packs” they provide over time. I now need to go help my son program a robot to shoot something…