Planning a GameJam

Inspired by other game jam events around the world, I'm planning (with a friend) to run a game jam sometime soon in Perth, Western Australia. We've had a few game companies set up shop here in the last year or so, and there should be plenty of talent around to sustain a short event.

I figure with the right web app, most things could take care of themselves! I started to prototype something in GAE, but it was a bit tedious, so I'll jump back into the familiar and efficient territory of Pylons for this small project.

Take my money, damnit!

I've just spent that last 40 minutes trying to purchase VMWare Fusion through vmware.com.

I get to the end of the process, and receive this message:

"We are unable to process your order. Please verify your information and try again."

So, I go back, recheck information, try different permuations of my title, firstname, middle initial, last name. Argh. None of it works. ARRGH!

How hard is it to give me some relevant feedback so I know what is going wrong. ARRRHG AGAIN!

Top 100 Web Apps

Scouta, the web service I've been working on for almost 2 years, has come in at #9 in BRW's top 100 list of Australian Web Apps.

The scouta service is built on the Pylons framework, and uses large amount of SQLAlchemy.

Inertial Dampeners Essential

After an inspiring conversation with a colleague about our favorite game, Privateer, I was motivated to create a space ship simulation, controlled via 3 axis joystick.

I modeled the ship so it has two thrusters at the rear, which can pivot independently. I then apply separate forces to each thruster, which allows the ship to roll, and change pitch.

Unfortunately, the ship is extremely difficult to control. It would spin wildly, even with small amounts of thruster angle. The simulation only became workable when I added large amounts of torque dampening, and limited the thruster pivots to -+5 degrees.

Game Sound Effects

Looking for cool sound effects for your game?

Look no further.

This cool tool was written by DrPetter. It uses different synthesis techniques to create pickup, laser, explosion, powerup, hit, jump, blip and other random noises. Great fun.

Google AppEngine - Game Portal?

So, after years of procrastination, I'm building a game portal, for better or worse. At present I'm only intending to host my own games.

The decision I'm facing is whether to invest in google appengine, or not. My only concern is whether it's unnecessarily restricting my target audience, or whether it its actually supplying me with a read-made target audience.