Immanentize the Empathy
An update concentrating on some gameplay mechanics, mostly optimizing for speed and playing around with the effects of power-ups; specifically, allowing the player to fire multiple shots. Arrow keys move left and right, space bar shoots. Click the image to launch the game.
Photo taken a couple of weeks ago on the farm where I grew up. The corn behind Cynthia is at least ten feet tall, and quite likely over eleven.
Found this one on a light pole at work. I think it wanted to eat me.
Given that my dad lives just north of New Orleans, I have a vested interest in keeping an eye on things down there. Therefore I have made this page to be a repository of links relating to the approaching storm and (eventually) the aftermath. It will be updated regularly.
Webcam Lists
Master list of New Orleans webcams
Specific Webcams
NOLA.com Bridge Cam
Post of New Orleans
News and articles
Wikipedia page on Hurricane Gustav
Hurricane Gustav links at Google News
Click here to launch the maze explorer.
I have combined two of my experiments into something greater than the sum of the parts. Or at least, pretty close to equal to the sum of the parts. The height map explorer from a couple of weeks ago, combined with the maze from a few days ago. The combining took me all of ten minutes.
Now that I have got this far, I next need to start playing with collision detection so players can navigate the mazes, instead of flying over them.
A more technical description of this experiment can be found on my GameDev blog
A generated maze. Click the image to play.
Sorry for the title; I couldn’t help myself.
I took the Java code from the Wikipedia article on Maze Generation Algorithms, converted it to Actionscript, and Voila! A randomly generated maze of practically infinite variations. For all intents and purposes it is just an image at the moment, but I will soon add wall detection and turn it into a game of some kind. Click anywhere on the maze to generate a new one.
This is a young robin which took a breather on my front porch during a hard day of learning how to fly.
An update to the game. Click the screenshot to see it in action.
Still very rough, but playable for the moment. Arrow keys to move clockwise/widdershins, and SPACE to fire.
Click the image to see the experiment in action.
Arrow keys to move clockwise/widdershins. Click the movie if nothing happens at first.
My tile game experiments led me back to an old project where I was trying to recreate/reinvent the game Gyruss in Flash. I was playing around with the Perlin Noise generation functionality in Flash, and co-incidentally came across a polar distortion class at BIT-101. I took it, played with it a bit, and figured out how to go from Polar Distortion to Twirl, with the addition of one very short line of code. Voila! I had the thing you see above. The addition of a simple gradient provides the depth.
I have begun posting photos from the 2008 Grand Rapids Festival of the Arts. Click here to see the whole set. I will be uploading the rest of the photos (culled from over 600 taken by the extraordinary Sundesha) over the upcoming days and weeks.
