Help Joe Hewitt Improve Firebug...

Firebug is overdue for a bugfix/feature release, and Joe is now looking at what to prioritize for the next round of coding. Use the comments feature on that link to add your favorite bugs/features.

Game Tunnel.. Magazine!

The great indie game site GameTunnel has released a PDF suitable for printing which contains articles around indie gaming. If you dig indie gaming then it is worth your while to go check it out!

Getting Started with XNA Studio Express

So, you are a budding game designer and you are looking for a sweet new way to create games for windows. Well, perhaps you are just kinda sorta interested in game stuff and happen to use windows as well. Either way - intense or laid back - it's in your best interest to begin to look at what is being touted as the "YouTube" of game building. Microsoft things everyone and their sister will want to build games once this tool is out of beta. What do you think? What can they do better? Try it out and see.

Javascript Animations Made Easy

The Yahoo UI Utils are the bread and butter of my work. I deal with them on a daily basis and are always learning more cool stuff with them. One of the weaknesses, however, of the excellent Animation lib is the difficulty with chaining animations together. This site has a collection of 3rd party add-ons to the YUI that make all kinds of new things possible -- concurrent animation, pausing, sequencing, etc.

WidgetBox - bringing order to chaos of widgets

If you want to embed "widgets" onto your page you have to go to each site which provides the widget and figure out how to configure it, embed it, etc. etc. This service wants to make that easier for you by wrapping all the inconsistencies of widgetry with a unified UI and give you flexibility in using widgets. Developers of widgets register their widget or even have it hosted there and benefit from a sort of unified interface. This is kinda like what FeedBurner is for RSS, this is for Web Widgets.

Javascript Performance Techniques (in IE)

This article is a nice reference to techniques for increasing the speed of your javascript code. It mentions IE, but the techniques can be used for all browsers.

LumaLive - interactive glowing images on your clothes!

The future is here. Phillips is working on LED technology which is weaved into clothing. Extremely cool! I could image tons of uses for this thing. Imagine a cheap computer which consists of a tiny button and a fold out fabric?

Updates to Safari's Javascript Engine (and CSS)

In a promising blog post it looks like Safari is getting some much needed javascript improvements. Can't wait to try them out, I wonder when this will get pushed to the world?

Webmashup - Web 2.0 and API Open Directory

Got a web mashup? Open API? Post it here. Nuff said. Seems to have quite a few.

Qooxdoo - DHTML GUI Toolkit

Yet another funny named Javascript library for doing gui's for webapps. It's some very impressive work - with themes, tons of gui elements, etc. I wonder, however why not spend all that time and energy helping to improve a more mainstream toolkit like Dojo?

Games from Within: Bringing Back The Dream

This is a great article about why this person started programming (because of games - and a simple programming language) and why having the release of Game Studio Express may revive that dream.

Indie Game Goodness: the2bears.com

It's all about games. That's my new motto. Some of the most interesting, innovative, and downright fun games you can find are indie games. One of the best places on the net right now to find out about the indie gaming "scene" is this site. If you are into indie or indie-curious then add this site to your daily browsing.

Sabifoo - IM to RSS feed

Sometimes it just seems like I'm making these sites up :) This site has an interesting service which allows you to send an IM to an RSS feed which get's updated immediately. Kinda a cool idea if you want to broadcast to a ton of people at once. See also Big In Japan for complimentary services.

SocialMeter - who talks about you?

This is a nifty little search aggregator (they should use dappit?) which scans the social search sites to see who is talking about your urls. Nice for vanity searching.

Canvex - a new canvas based duke nukem clone!

Canvas is one of the coolest enhancements to the browser in a long time. This is another FPS in the spirit of the Canvas Shooter demo that was released a while back. Super cool!

Metaverse RoadMap - a thought leader for virtual worlds - and stuff

I dont claim to know everything that is going on with this site, but it talks about a hot topic of virtual worlds like Second Life, There.com etc. and it talks about a new meme "The 3d Web", which I'm sure is going to catch on as the next cool thing since podcasting...

Web 2.0 Central - web 2.0 link goodness

Have you had enough of web 2.0? Then you should probably avoid this site. However if you do, you may miss out on the next cool thing for the web. I've already found a few links I hadn't seen before - and that's a novel thing for me :)

Flash Game: SkateFall (based on Pitfall)

Ah, memories of old Atari games after school. Bleeps and bloops and liberal use of imagination to make up for the blocky graphics. This fun game from John Freeborn represents two years of on and off work on a homage game to Pitfall. Since it's in flash, you most likely can play it right away. Great retro fun!

Yahoo Messenger Plugin Game Update #2

I thought I'd post a teaser screenshot for you:
The character graphics are from the open source project RL Tiles...

Yahoo Messenger Plugin Game Update

Things are progressing nicely for my Messenger Plugin game - I have the core game working (you attacking your friend via chat) and I've got a fix for one of the tester's issues with avatar images not loading. It's really wierd but I assume if this person's got the issue then someone else out there probably will as well.

I'll be posting a url to this game once it comes out of yahoo gallery - but if you want a sneak peek please email me and let me know.

Protolize - cool web developer junk

If you do web development in any measure then you will squeal with delight when you load this page. Tons of great resources for web developers like backgrounds, tool, css help, etc.

Zelda on Ukulele

A friend of mine just sent this to me - Zelda - on Ukulele. Rad-ical.

Reviving the Javascript Gamelib!

It is with great pleasure that I write this blog post. I've been working on the web for quite some time - more than a decade in fact. (Man, I'm getting old!) One of the most interesting and potentially underused DHTML libraries is the one created by Scott Porter called GameLib. This is a small, fast set of functions that make creating a simple arcade style web game pretty easy to do. Around 2004 Scott's excellent javascript-games.org site closed down and along with it the GameLib. However Brent Silby continued to use and expand on the library since the code was released under the LGPL. I ran across a copy of this great library over on Sean McManus' site. Amazingly enough, even after all this time the library still works fine although support for newer browsers is not there, and it still warns you that "Mozilla may not run this fast enough".

Given that this library might simply fall away into the history of the web as something that was cool for a time but became more and more out of date I decided to take it upon myself to work with Sean and Brent and get the latest version of the library and place it up on Google Code Hosting. The idea is this - given that this excellent library is LGPL'd it allows folks to build on the code of the past and make it better - I'm going to take on the task of updating this library to modern browser standards, increase the support for browsers like Opera and Safari, and make this a great tool for folks to create web games.

If you visit the link above you'll see that there's also a link to a discussion group where you can send feedback and you can file bugs if you like from the Hosting site. I'm excited to be able to build on the great work of Scott, Brent, and Sean and hopefully see tons of folks making web games! (Brent is also going to continue to contribute to the codebase!) If you feel like you want to also contribute code or bugfixes to this great library please let me know via the forums and we'll look at taking additional contributions / fixes.

Gaming FM - streaming game music goodness!

Whether you are a console game fan or a die hard PC gamer you'll find something to like about this site. Grab one of the streams of game soundtracks and relive memories of Zelda or many other games. A real treat! Is it just me or does most game music have some sort of acoustic guitars?

Yahoo! IM game update

I did some informal testing with a friend yesterday with an alpha version of my fantasy fighting game and learned quite a bit. Writing code for a Messenger Plug-In is quite a bit different than just a static web page. I'm basically going back to the drawing board and redoing how events, actions, etc happen. I hope that folks here will really enjoy doing battle with their friends once this comes out.

Torque X - Develop games for Xbox 360 using Torque

Microsoft recently announced that they will be releasing a SDK that will allow indie game developers to create games based on their XNA platform. This will allow anyone to create games for PC and if you spend 99 bux a year you can play it on your xbox 360 (and share with others who also spend 99 a year). The idea is that at some point if your game is hawt you'll be able to publish it on the XBOX 360 and make tons of money and retire.

Given that, the folks at garagegames have looked at this as an opportunity to extend their game platform and have plans to create a version of their torque toolset to support XNA.

So, if you grab a copy of their game engine, get familiar with torquescript, and have a great idea for a game, you may someday see it playing on an A-grade console...

RPG Motivational Posters

Life getting you down? Perhaps you need an RPG style pick - me - up. Note: if you don't play RPG's then don't bother clicking :)

Test posting from Windows Live Writer (beta)

I'm trying out the latest wysiwyg tool from microsoft for blog writers. Will it work?

More on IM Battle game

Just another update - I've been working on my Fantasy IM battle game - using the new messenger plugin api - and it's fabulous. Like learning DHTML all over again, except you have a new dimension of instant messages passing back and forth between the plugins. Stinkin' fun stuff.

Right now I have you and your opponent trading blows and keeping score on both sides. There's some oddity with the plugin loading images after onload but I'll work around that. It's wierd once you have this immediate mode how you have to change the way you think about your app. At one point I had it messed up where one side couldnt attack until the other did (you should be able to set up your attack any time, then wait for your opponent). And all kinds of wierd things were happening.

I cant wait to show it to everyone - and perhaps get my butt kicked by you!

The fun part will be when I add some web 2.0 goodness to the game -- sekret sauce.

Extremely happy this morning - call for testers!

My sekret project is going really well! What is it? Well I can tell you a little about it. It's a fantasy game for Yahoo Messenger where you'll be laying the smack down on your fellow IM friends in a Final Fantasy style battle. I just got the plugin working this morning and I'm so happy I could squeal like a little girl.

Now that I have it working I need a few able bodied folks to help me test this. What I would require from you:

1) Dont share this with non beta testers
2) Willing to in install Yahoo Messenger 8
3) Willing to spend at least 10 mins a day trying out the plugin
4) Live in a timezone close to California (unless you really want to be up at 3am IM'ing a stranger?)

If you agree to the things above please contact me or post a comment to this post.

Sekret project...

I'm working on something fun - kinda sekret - and something I hope you'll be able to see in the next few weeks...

ScrapBox.net - Scrapbook just became the most essential mozilla extension!

Scrapbook is a Firefox extension that no-one should go without - it allows you to save pages, snippets, etc. to a local database that you can edit, sort, and search. Now it appears that you can now extend scrapbook to talk to Box.net - an online storage site that is very snazzy too. Now imagine that when you save a snippet to your scrapbook it can sync with box.net as well! This means you can save a snippet on one computer, walk over to another and get it back! HUGE! Needless to say I'm very excited. Can't you tell?

Best Kept Secret: Yahoo Messenger Plugin SDK

I think many folks who are doing web development have no idea that an amazing new platform for web applications has quietly launched with the release of Yahoo Messenger 8. Imagine if you could create a web application which had chat built in - and you didnt have to manage a buddy list, sign on, etc. Now you can create either tab plugins (that live under your buddy list) or conversation plugins (that live during an im session with someone). All using javascript and HTML. It seems like a incredible opportunity to combine web 2.0 with messaging. I know I have something cool up my sleeve soon. I've been waiting for this thing for years...

The panda golf game is really fun, and only scratches the surface of what you might be able to do with this SDK.

My All Time Favorite Link Series: #2 Independent Gaming

This site comes up short in the area of web design - but you'll never notice that because you will be busy reading the dozen or so posts a day the author makes. This is a no-nonsense independent gaming site that covers everything from Klick n Play games to Point-and-click Adventures to Shmups. Definitely a site to check obsessively every few hours to see what's going on in the indie gamer realm.

Jitsu - Rich Web Application Framework

Yes, yet another framework - however this one seems to be trying some new things, and claims to be more designer friendly than your average run of the mill DHTML framework. I took a look at it and it definitely seems to have some promising features. Plus a cool ninja logo :)

DHTML games

Every so often I run across a "kindred spirit" site. Often they actually have real released stuff (unlike me - but that's changing). If you like the idea of games created with DHTML, check this out.

Also check out his DHTML 3d dungeon demo.

Calculator BookMarklet

Sometimes simple things are the best. This is a page which includes a very simple calculator which you can use anywhere on any site via a bookmarklet. Nice idea!

Face : Faruk's Animated CSS Enhancements

If you find the prospect of working with alot of javascript daunting, and aren't ready for mucking about with flash, this might be right up your alley...

GP2X - handheld gaming heaven?

I've been eyeing this new handheld for quite some time - wondering if it's going to stick around or just be a flash in the pan. The specs for it are impressive - linux os, 4x as powerful as a Nintendo DS, and is open for anyone to develop for. It looks like a gamer's dream system. If anyone out there has a desire to send one my way I'd be your close personal friend for a very long time :)

Indie game: Guardian of Paradise translated

Japan has all the good games. Period. I wish there was a company that would recognize this and just go through all of the terrific looking games and translate them into english. Until that happens we get cool thinks like this indie game "Guardian of Paradise" translated into english. Enjoy.

IE programming bugs

Why do most of the issues in my life recently begin with "Well, you see, there's this obscure IE bug that...."? If you are finding that you have felt this way as well, you may find this list of IE programming issues to be a good reference point. My current nemesis: OPERATION ABORTED ....