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Today has been extremely painful for me, both as a nerd and as a human being. From a nerd perspective I have spent the day struglling to get a couple scripts to work and couldn't less impressed. I finally figured out what was happening with a script I was making that is supposed to merge two graphics in an application I am working on, and then promptly discovered that there might not be anything I can do about it. Then I ran into a number of issues trying to get an include file to work with a Blogger template. In fact, I will be nothing short of amazed if this post ever even sees the light of day.
What I have been doing to keep myself sane is listening to some of the amazingly fun tracks that are currently online at Bob Ricci's site. In fact, I recommend you head over there and give a couple of his tracks a listen, they are funny and a great way to kill some time and bandwidth.
In addition, I have been trying to come up with a way to finish several of the games I have been building, but every time I get home and get in front of the computer inspiration takes a nap, and I end up playing World of Warcraft for another couple hours. And to top it all off, my arms are killing me! I tried to do a fairly aggressive workout earlier in the week, and might have overdone it. Now, if you've ever met me you know that "overdoing it" for me is lifting about, ummmm, ten pounds. I am not a strong looking guy, and this is one case where looks really aren't deceiving, I'd put good money on your grandma being able to bench press more than me.
So here I am, physically battered, creatively humbled, and technologically impaired. And yet somehow I'm actually in a pretty good mood. I just feel like a break is right around the corner, just lurking, waiting to spring and make my day, or eat me... Either way works for me!
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Several exciting new developments this week for hobbyist developers, and an interesting item for all the gamers in the crowd who have ever heard, "Shut off that machine and go make your bed!"
I guess, after saying that, I had best start with the bed bit. This week I read an interesting article that claims that making your bed is BAD. Maybe even more than bad, possibly evil. Apparently dust mites absolutely LOVE a well made bed. When you tuck in the sheets and tidy the whole thing up you are essentially trapping moisture in the bed, which makes it a fertile breeding ground for the little buggers. But wait, there's still hope! You can save yourself by not making your bed! Don't believe me? Read the full article over at the BBC! Hmmm, it's a good thing I'm not completely crazy, or I'd be sleeping in a sterilized plastic hammock after reading that.
All right, on to fun development stuff. FPS Creator was released on Feb. 24th and I'm only just now getting around to mentioning it. It seems like a great way to break into game development if you have little to no experience with coding. In addition, it seems like a great tool for anyone who is more concerned with creating 3D models, animations, and textures. Essentially FPS Creator lets you click together your own game without too much hassle. I gave the demo a try and enjoyed it a lot, it's a relatively hassle free way to kill some time and make something cool in the process.
What REALLY makes me stand up and take notice about FPS Creator, however, is the fact that it was created using DarkBasic Pro. I had always felt that some really cool stuff could be accomplished with DB Pro, but until FPS Creator came along I wasn't really sure what those cool things could be.
Okay, one more thing about FPS creator and then I swear I'll move on to another topic... I just wanted to note that if you want to earn a little extra $$$ apparently they are running a screenshot competition over at the FPS site, and first prize is $250.
All right, and the last thing I would like to do is celebrate PopCap's decision to release their framework source code and start up a developer program. I downloaded their tools and it looks like a pretty great thing, even though I'm still completely lost in it. Still, I think this could really pay off for them in the long run, as I'm sure there are a lot of developers who would love to get a piece of the PopCap pie, and at the same time make PopCap a little extra bling in licensing.
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