28Jan

#1GAM: End of January UPDATE

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WOW!

This month has really kicked my butt! From having a baby in the end of December, getting a new job this week, finishing up part of a large contract last week, and having family in from out of town, I have had very little time left for anything else! Last week I think I pulled 4 x 25-hour work-blocks towards finishing a game for a contract. Would that game count as my January submission? :P (Unfortunately it won’t be available until February sometime.)

Looking toward the future…

FEBRUARY, you’re next! Simple plans for my February game are already under way! I have an idea that I’d like to check out and test… I’ll keep you posted!

14Jan

#1GAM January Update #1

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Can I PAUSE the Universe for a week?

Things are pretty hectic around me right now, and I could use a little extra time to get things done. My newborn daughter is 2 weeks old (read: no sleep), I’m starting a new job this month, and I’m finishing up a contract in the next 7-14 days… Needless to say: I’m busy. However, this does not mean progress has stopped! Tonight I had a chance to quickly model and skin an elephant leg. BEHOLD:

Elephant Leg!Toon Shaded Elephant Leg!

These are a regularly diffused and a toon shaded version of the leg. Sure, not the best, but it’s pretty good for programmer art! Ultimately, I’ll be toon shading all character art. if I can model and skin an elephant leg in less than an hour, maybe I can get all the rest of the art done AFTER my major deadline this Friday. (Perhaps on Saturday?)

08Jan

One Game a Month (#1GAM) 2013 KICKOFF

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The Plan

SO, I’m participating in One Game A Month this year and am thoroughly excited to see what I come up with! I don’t plan on finishing any game beyond basic playability and light polish for the sake of my #1GAM submissions. If any of my games are worth being made fully featured, then that’ll happen on the side during its own allocated time slot (eg: not during #1GAM time!).

JANUARY:

I plan on making a game where you play an animal hybrid and go around shooting people (with multiplayer support!) It’ll have a simple level(s?) and will spawn you on each death with a random configuration of an animal head, body, and legs. For example, you could spawn sporting a brand new rabbit body, equipped with elephant legs, sporting a laser-eye-shooting giraffe head. So far, all animations (purely code driven!), art, sounds, etc, will be made by me! I might pull someone in to help with some 2d graphics/textures later; but we’ll see. This game will be made using the Unity3D engine, and written in C#.

More to come

Please check out my profile and I’ll keep my progress posted here! Feel free to follow me on Twitter: @Mantic, and check out my #1GAM profile: Mantic

19Apr

Portal 2! (and node.js)

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Woot! I finally got Portal 2, and so far it rocks!

After playing for an hour, last night’s late bedtime catches up and I take a nap. What do I do when I wake up?

Well, I just finished compiling node.js and will be attempting to bust out some demo website with it. :P

01Nov

NEW GAME!

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Check out our new game: HALLOWEEN PANIC!

Screenshot from the 2nd level

GO HERE TO PLAY

:D We made it in the span of about 10 days. The last 4 days we got about 4-5 hours of sleep! CrAzY! I don’t recommend doing that. ANYWAY, we hope to continue making fun games for everyone! :D

-Mike

17Oct

WordPress White-Screen of DEATH

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Well, after neglecting this site for a while, I decided it was a good idea to upgrade WordPress for the sake of security. Then the white screen of death reared its ugly head! Unfortunately, I upgraded the site over the browser on my phone, so I wasn’t really in a position to fix it. … Then I got busy… then I forgot… TEN DAYS LATER I finally decided to start disabling plugins (by renaming their folders from “name” to “name.bak”) and renaming them back one by one; testing the site in between each one. Turned out it was just 1 plugin that wasn’t compatible w/ the latest version of WordPress.

SO, if you find you have a white-screen of death, try this:

  1. Make sure your database was updated correctly. (Google this; it’s just a php file you point to)
  2. Make sure your wp-config.php file contains the proper AUTH_KEY, SECURE_AUTH_KEY, LOGGED_IN_KEY, and NONCE_KEY.
  3. If still broken: disable each plugin by appending a “.bak” to its folder (in the wp-content/plugins/ directory) and renaming them back one by one, testing the page inbetween. Once it goes white again, then you have your culprit. This works on the assumption that disabling all of your plugins brings back the site.
  4. If all plugins are disabled, and it still doesn’t work, then (I’ve heard) check the end of the wp-config.php file and make sure there isn’t an extra newline at the end.

SO, what did I learn? (And what can you learn to?): Update your plugins before upgrading your WordPress version!

19Nov

Protected: Fiery Snowball!

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02Nov

mxmlc: “java heap space” crash

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Ever hit a “Java heap space” crash while running Flash’s command-line compiler: mxmlc? There are two ways to fix it:

1. Go to your SDK bin directory in a terminal window. (mac with FB: /Applications/Adobe Flex Builder 3/sdks/3.3.0/bin)

Mac / Linux:
2. edit the ‘mxmlc’ file, look for the “VMARGS=…” line, and change the “Xmx384m” to “Xmx684m”.

Windows:
2. edit “jvm.config” and edit the line starting with “java.args=…”, change “Xmx348m” to “Xmx648m”.

3. The “648” is the maximum heap size (in megabytes) that the JVM will allocate for the compiling process. You can change this to suit your needs.

If you’re not sure how much memory you’ll need, set it to 1024 (a gig) or so, and compile your app with the “-benchmark” arg. That’ll tell you how much memory was used to compile your app, and you can adjust the final size to be somewhere above what it used.