Berserker Breakfast – Global/Nordic Game Jam 2010
The Global/Nordic Game Jam has ended and as usual the experience has been great. A lot more people participated this year, which also meant that a lot more games were created. Theme global theme was "deception" and the local contraints was either to have a monkey, donkey, or key in the game. Friday night we got settled on a game idea - vikings eating mushrooms. This meant that we on Saturday could begin implementation. There was a bit more stress Sunday with the deadline fast approaching, compared to the other two years I've participated. We hadn't had time to play the game except once during Sunday and even after that huge modifications were made. However, I'm quite pleased with the final result taking the time into account. There is of cause still a lot of stuff we'd like to do and who knows, maybe we will ;)
Try it out here.
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Pluralsight on trial
I have recently had the possibility of trying out Pluralsight. A site focused on providing e-learning for .NET. I was given access to the video material and used some time on C# and WPF. I was quite satisfied with the way the C# tutorials had been done. Different content was explained while also shown in real-time code. I was slightly disappointed when I moved over to the WPF tutorials. For the record I must say that I'm already skilled in C# whereas WPF was new to me. My subscription ran out during my focus on WPF, but from what went through it seemed less hand-on and I felt I had to go through a larger portion to actually be able to do anything in WPF. I think it's fair to point out that another reason might due to how WPF is structured, but again I'm not familiar with it enough to be able to assess whether this is the case or not.
ImagineCup 2010 is open!
The ImagineCup 2010 is open. There are several different challenges to compete in: Software Design, Embedded Development, Game Design, Digital Media, and IT-Challenge. It's free to participate and you can participate as a team or individual and there is of cause prices to be won :)
Scott Guthrie in Copenhagen
Scott Guthrie, the corporate vice president of Microsoft's .NET platform. Since 1999 he has been one of the big players in the development of Visual Studio and the .NET platform. You can sign-up here. The page is in Danish, but the event will be held in English :)
Downtime again…
Apparently I exceed the traffic limit on my webspace, so I've taken the consequences and moved all the videos to youtube.com. Hopefully this will avoid downtime in the future :)
Using Unity for 4th challenge
Unity has recently been made available for free for privates and hobby developers. I have long wanted to try it out, but haven't had an excuse so to speak. However, the fourth challenge in my Experimental Gameplay course requires us to make a game that easily can be run from the net. I have tried the Unity web player a couple of times and it seems awesome! I’ve begun the tutorial step while trying to come up with my take on an experimental climate game using abstract shapes as the fourth challenge more or less dictates.
I got the first prototype/toy done, which can be played with here.
Downtime, but back again
Surprisingly my site was suspended due to exceeding the bandwidth quota. I think it's because of the videos, though the limit is 10.000 GB per month. I might have to move them to youtube.com though to prevent this from happening in the future.
Card game prototype
As part of studies I'm following a board game design course. Tonight I have been pondering on what to do. Up until now I have been thinking about doing some sort of drafting/deck building game, like Dominion, Magic the Gathering. I began working and ended up with something which is a bit different from what I had my mind set on. There hasn't been any playtesting, so a warning should be given that it might be flawed, but here goes:
A regular deck of cards can be used, which limits the players to four.
1. Each player is given cards from 1-8 in the respective suit.
2. A starting player is selected.
3. Beginning with the starting player and going clockwise, each player puts down a card facedown.
4. The starting then puts down a (bidding) card and going clockwise the rest of the players follow.
5. The player with the highest bidding card “wins the pot”. That is, every player turns over their face down cards and the winning player collects them. The bidding cards goes to a mutual discard pile.
6. The starting player is advanced to the player left of the previous starting player and the game progress again from no. 3.
7. When no more cards remain (after four rounds) everybody adds together the cards they have won and the player with the highest total score wins.
Please feel free to leave feedback if you try it :)
Code contest
Allan Juhl Petersen is holding a "light" contest consisting of seven questions within the code domain. Different prizes can be won! Check it out, here.
IronPython by Harry Pierson
By invitation by Martin Esmann, Harry Pierson will be touring Denmark during week 37, that is from the 7. of September. He will touring Denmark and coming at a place near you (should be read with an advertisment voice ;)). He is in the big league when it comes to IronPython which the talks are also going to be characterised by - be warned ;) So, when? For the Copenhagen area it will be:
Time: Friday the 11. of September, 9-11.
Place: Microsoft Development Center, Frydenlunds Alle 6, 2950 Vedbæk.
Requirements: Sign-up. It is free!
For information about the other dates keep yourself up-to-date by going to the bottom of Martin's post, here.