Andrew Wooldridge Dot Com

Unity3D Powers New Mass Media MMO

2008-07-24T14:06:00.000-07:00

I TOLD you Unity3D is going to be big. Really big. This article talks about how Cartoon Network's MMO is going to use Unity technology in their web mmo. I wonder if Unity might become the spiritual successor to Director on the web?

The Future of the Internet is Fabbing: Shapeways

2008-07-24T10:23:00.000-07:00

Fabbing is basically allowing anyone to create 3d objects. I firmly believe this will be as big or bigger than the inventing of the printing press. This is the inventing of the "anything press".

While I cannot get into the site yet (pleeeeeze beta me!) I can totally see this as becomming a part of the fabbing movement.

What should really happen now is Shapeways should team up with Ponoko....

Unity3D - the Killer App Tool for 2009

2008-07-20T02:31:00.000-07:00

Think about it. An application that makes it easy to create games for everything from a PC to a Mac to an iPhone to a Wii. And uses Javascript - one of the most used programming languages on the planet - as it's scripting engine.

The interface is awesome, the engine is fast and flexible, and if you are an indie game developer it's very affordable.

I would venture to say that 2008 may be a good year for Unity, but I think more likely the "inflection point" will hit some time in early 2009 and you'll see some really amazing things from folks that build with this.

If you are frustrated with Adobe with its Flash and Director stuffage - give Unity3D a try and see for yourself.

I'm seriously tempted to buy a copy if only to enhance my skills as a javascript developer.

Alien Terminator on Game Giveaway of the Day

2008-07-20T02:11:00.000-07:00

Since Giveawayoftheday doesnt release a new game every day, its something of an event when a new game comes up. This weekend's game is called Alien Terminator. While it seems like you might think it's something like H.R. Giger meet's Ahnald, it's really about piloting a space truck with a really big gun across a martian landscape killing suprisingly human-shaped enemies. I can't say it's the greatest game I've ever played, but the graphics are decent and the run and gun style gameplay makes it seem more like a kinda wave based shmup. And it most certainly is worth the price of admission.

If you are leery about Giveawayoftheday.com let me just say that I've been downloading games from them for at least a year if not longer, and there's never been a hint of spyware or viruses from them. Check em out!

Defender of the favicon

2008-07-20T01:23:00.000-07:00

I'm so very jealous. Here is another masterpiece of javascript development:

DEFENDER of the favicon is a JavaScript remake of Eugene Jarvis' brilliant arcade game Defender written by Mathieu 'p01' Henri and inspired by Scott Schiller's experiment with generated favicons VU meter. The idea was to push the concept of generated favicons further and pack a thrilling retro shooter in 16×16 pixels using JavaScript, canvas and data: URIs.

Who's going to create the first favicon RPG?

Grumble grumble.

These folks whip this stuff out in 3 days and I am still working on getting time to port an antiquated JS game library to modern times.

Grumble grumble.

find your strength

2008-07-17T23:15:00.000-07:00

I'm not really sure what this site is about yet, but it looks intriguing.

Hide and Seek Festival - this looks fun!

2008-07-17T23:08:00.000-07:00

This is a very interesting blog. Sometimes I stumble across something too cool to keep to myself. This person talks about a "Hide and Seek Festival" - which at first sounds kinda childish, until you read about some of the social realtime games they had come up with and played. Makes me want to start something like that here.

I gotta get back into blog posting. Twitter has poisoned my ability to post - when you can fire off little snippets any time, why blog?

QR Codes from Google Charts!

2008-07-10T11:17:00.000-07:00

This is really an amazing development. It's something that seems like a "sleeper" feature that could really take off. You can now use Google charts api to create QR codes which could then be used on websites, t-shirts, or anything you can think of. As more phones "read" that code, the usefulness will expand exponentially. Very cool!

Keeping busy

2008-07-08T14:11:00.001-07:00

I'm keeping super busy at work. You know, startup and all. I feel bad about not posting too much right now, but you'll see lots of amazing things soon.

Battle of Tiles: Tower Defense meets RPG

2008-06-01T09:34:00.000-07:00

I heard about this game from the GameTunnel what's new article this month. This game has very crappy graphics and the game text itself is pretty bad also. However if you put those things aside you will find yourself playing a very very fun game! Imagine if you took a tower defense game with tiles and such, and turned those towers into armies of wizards, skeletons, etc which you place in formation before waves of enemies.

As you march your formations forward you can arrange your armies and wipe out your enemies. However that might not always be the best strategy. You can earn money defeating enemies and use that to "buy" your enemy tiles! You might have a "boss" creature coming right at you but suddenly he's your ally since you built up a ton of money. This game has huge potential, and I'll be the clones will be appearing as soon as this game gets traction. Support this smart game creator and fork over the measley $5 it takes to register the game. Hopefully he/she will use that money to hire a decent artist for their next game!!

Experimenting with Dojo in Google Ajax Libraries API

2008-06-01T08:33:00.000-07:00

I don't think people have realized just what sort of revolution in web apps is about to happen because of the hosting of Dojo, JQuery and other javascript libraries. They are taking a step from being this random js library that you include yourself to a standard include that anyone can refer to in a normalized way.

Anyway - because of this, I am checking out Dojo's amazing suite of 2d drawing routines. Do you realize you could finally do rounded corners with no images using the hosted Dojo libraries?

Streaming Game Music : Rainwave

2008-05-22T10:40:00.000-07:00

I am so impressed with this website! Understated and javascript driven, you get a list of videogame soundtracks that are currently playing and you can vote for the next song to come up in the playlist. Very well done! You'll need a player that understands ogg streaming like videolan to enjoy the music.

Two thumbs up!!

Unity3D Game Engine getting traction

2008-05-21T00:35:00.000-07:00

I have seen some really fun 3D games in the past few months, and I have been astounded to realize that the vast majority of those were written in Unity 3D

To get an idea of just how cool / amazing they can be, check out the Dukateers game above. To see some more games and look at the kinds of things people are developing, check out this site: http://unity3d.com/gallery/developer-profiles/web-games/

Custom YUI Grid Column Widths

2008-05-20T11:24:00.000-07:00

Nate Koechley has a very useful post about customizing the column widths in YUI grids. This should be added somehow to the YUI Grid builder so that it can be automated.

NeoEdge and MostFun.com = free ad supported games

2008-05-14T11:18:00.000-07:00

You dont have to put coins in your television to watch most shows (outside of paying for cable access) and up until now you've had to fork over $ to play many casual downloadable games. This site takes the idea of advertisement supported media from the TV world and applies it to gaming. Neoedge wants to be the advertiser for free downloadable games and it means to you that if you can sit through "commercials" you can download and play many popular casual games for free.

It had to happen eventually, and perhaps having a free ad sponsored alternative to buying games might help curtail some of the desire for game pirates, since you can get the games for "free" w/o any effort.

Now supposedly NeoEdge has a "widget" that can be embedded on a site to offer downloadable games, but I was unable to find it. Mashable mentions this. Can someone from NeoEdge or related areas point out where to grab this widget? Or is it only for big wig portals? Hrm.

Apture - freaking amazing new way to add metacontent to your site

2008-05-11T09:21:00.000-07:00

You've seen those popup windows that come up when you mouse over some links on various sites - annoying and usually in the way. That was my first thought when I saw Apture. Boy was I wrong. They have taken the idea of adding metadata to your site to a whole new level of polish and ease of use. Plus, the UI is actually really pleasant to use and not "in the way" . Just add a bit of js to your blog, then run a bookmarklet when you are on the site and you can just highlight text and add flickr photos, wikipedia entries, and other cool things like google maps. If then open the api for third parties to add "widgets" this could be a really BIG DEAL. I wonder who's going to buy them up when the big co's discover this site.

Make Games with Microsoft Popfly

2008-05-03T00:15:00.000-07:00

Microsoft Popfly is a Silverlight based game creation tool. You are supposed to be allowed to share your game creations. Let's see if it works :)

Itty Bitty RPG Coding Update

2008-04-27T16:46:00.001-07:00

I finally got a few minutes to work in Itty Bitty RPG.... I got the dojo storage functionality working for my current version. This version is going to bring everything together -- graphics, storage, overlays, etc etc. Soon I'll have something actually looking like a real game!

How to Make Money from Virtual Worlds

2008-04-25T23:07:00.000-07:00

Oreilly has released a report on virtual worlds and how to create a business model from them. I think the real business is selling reports -- the document costs over $200!

Experimenting with Wix

2008-04-25T15:59:00.000-07:00

Wix is simply amazing - there are so many features and pretty pretty preset graphics its quite overwhelming! Imagine you took a huge clipart library, merged it with Photoshop and some psychedelic interfaces and you'd get something like this. I think this is going to be a phenomenal hit with social software kiddies. Plus it has a business side as well... if you can resist adding sparkles everywhere :)

Wix.com

Monster Bash - a free 3d game by Betapilot

2008-04-23T00:47:00.000-07:00

Shockwave does not get much love nowadays, but this game show's there's still alot of coolness left in it - and it might be seeing a revival as a 3d engine for games. This one oozes polish and its pretty fun. You play a baseball wannnabe monster who clubs a skull into the air. Try to beat your longest hit...

I'm a Mid Core Gamer

2008-04-22T08:23:00.000-07:00

I now know who I am. I'm a Mid Core Gamer. What is that? Well, check out the description on the article, as well as on Inverted Castle...

101 Adobe AIR Resources

2008-04-22T00:58:00.000-07:00

If you are working with Adobe AIR you know that the amount of information can be both disappointing in quality as well as overwhelming in quantity. This list of resources might help steer you in the right direction.

ProtoRPG - a javascript rpg using prototype

2008-04-22T00:38:00.000-07:00

Since I'm doing essentially something similar with YUI it's with a warm heart that I found this simple RPG demo using prototype... check it out!

A Baseball MMO?

2008-04-14T16:00:00.000-07:00

I'm not a big baseball fan, but I can see this as totally reaching an audience not attracted to the World of Warcraft style MMO's. Interesting.