Itty Bitty RPG Coding Update

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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.

Cool idea of the weekend: ibrpg on google apps

From the looks of the survey, folks are interested in hearing more about cool ideas. Tonight's idea is simply this - combine ibrpg, google gears, adobe air, and the new google apps for server stuff.

Textured 3D Objects using Canvas!

This person is both extremely talented and a madman. Check out this example of doing 3d texture mapped objects using 2D Canvas! Insane!

He also has a faithfully rendered version of super mario using just js and canvas -- doubly insane!

Random Dungeon Generator

I just discovered this random dungeon generator. It looks really interesting. I wonder if I can do something similar for my little rpg project.

RPG Maker VX English Version is out!

If you enjoy creating old skool RPG's like Zelda or Final Fantasy, and you have a PC - then jump over to this site and sign up in the forums. (Or dig around on download.com for another download mirror). I'm only just trying it out myself, but it looks to be very polished and easy to use. This could be the perfect tool to prototype your own games...

Open Source Game Neverending Clone: django-mmo

GNE or GameNeverEnding is one of the first web mmo's and I believe it helped take the genre into the next level. This game eventually spawned Flickr and helped its developers become successful programmers. I only just discovered this link myself, but I believe if you are interested in MMO's you'll dig this.

More Hidden YUI Treasures: Cheat Sheets

I believe by far the biggest challenge to using YUI is not it's feature set, or it's syntax. Instead it is navigating the documentation to tease out just what you want it to do, as well as get a plain example - not one that rolls up 10 different concepts into one. Well, if mastery of YUI is your goal, or "hidden treasure" then the YUI cheat sheets are your treasure map. The are easy to overlook if you are not careful in exploring the YUI website. However they contain many useful hints and best practices. I recommend printing them with a color printer, since they try to use a color coding system to help you find things.

Also, the cheat sheets try to help you with configuration settings as well - for instance in tabview:

All TabView events are Custom Events (see Event Utility docs); subscribe to these events using addListener (e.g. myTabs.addListener(‘activeChange”, fn); ).


A Big List of Ajax Frameworks

It is amazing to see that there are so many different kinds of Ajax frameworks out there. While I think you are best served by YUI, jQuery, or Dojo, you might find something out there that suits some specific need.

why doesnt google docs talk to google code?

I wish that google docs had a code editing mode and that it could talk directly to google code -- meaning it could open , edit, and save files via svn.... Or barring that is there an online editor anywhere that can talk SVN?

Greenhouse: New Indie Games Portal from Penny Arcade

It's always great to see a new indie games portal coming online. Check out the comments from Tales of the Rampant Coyote for more details.

2D MMO - Remnants of Skystone

From the site:

Remnants of Skystone is an upcoming online game that is part side-scrolling adventure, part community-based MMO. Players can explore expansive platforming environments in the single-player Adventure to exterminate the hostile alien Mimics, as well as teaming up with another player online in Co-op Missions to earn spoils. When not adventuring, players can relax in their own houses or visit with other players online, furnishing their dwellings with items bought in town with their spoils or other payment.

Cool Free Stuff

I ran into this blog via looking at comments about the Tor site. It's a pretty scattershot of random free crap, but there are most likely quite a few things you'll find worthy of checking on.

Tor.com -->next generation of sci-fi sites...

Tor.com looks very promising! I signed up for the mailing list and already have gotten some great e-books (html,pdf, and mobi format). I'm a big fan of science fiction, and often find myself reading at lunch time articles and things with my laptop. Now I can include some sci-fi (and fantasy) e-books in that time as well. It's already been well worth it just to sign up for the mailing list for the free books. And Tor.com is supposed to become the best thing since sliced bread for sci-fi fans. We'll see how that plays out, but so far even just the selection of books has been fabulous. Can you read a book in a week? Well then your thirst can be sated here.

New Itty Bitty RPG Forum at Lefora

Now that I'm spending all of my free time working on Itty Bitty RPG, I thought it'd be nice to set up a forum for anyone interested in learning more about it or possibly giving feedback. Sign up and I'll be posting regular developer diary posts there (moreso than here).

Indie Game: Cry Havoc

Imagine Advance Wars meets Final Fantasy Tactics. You might then get an idea of the kind of gameplay you'll see in this game. Created by the famed Fenix Blade, this game promises to be something truly special...

Hidden YUI Treasures: Find your Ancestors..

Once again I've jumped into the ocean that is YUI and retrieved a pearl for you to show proudly to your friends. Today's pearl is actually a string of pearls :)

Object getAncestorByTagName ( node , tagName )
Object getAncestorByClassName ( node , className )
Object getAncestorBy ( node , method )


These methods live inside the DOM utility and exist to make your life alot better. At least your coding life. Basically these methods are perfect for when you are trying to make changes to a page based on something you clicked on or some element that has 'focus'. For instance imagine if you had a list of elements on a page - each element had inside it an image, some text, and a button. Imagine if you wanted to change the background color of that element when you click on the button inside of it. You could do some code where you get the parentNode of your button and go up the chain till you find the right element to swap a classname on to change the color, or you can use these extremly handy methods. Basically they will do the legwork for you of crawling back up the DOM hierarchy seeking out the element you wish.

getAncestorByTagName is great for when you have clicked on a form element and want to find the form that contains it. getAncestorByClassName is awesome for looking for some specific element that might be several levels up the chain - and you dont know what the tagname is but you do know the classname. getAncestorBy is perhaps the most powerful of them all because you can create your own test to determine what is a suitable ancestor element.

One item to note - there are a few opals along with those pearls I found:
getChildren and getChildrenBy which fetch all children or only ones that meet some criteria respectively.

So, get in touch with your Ancestors and try out these YUI Treasures...