Retro Cruiser!

I still enjoy making games and I was very interested in playing with Phaser. Here’s a simple game I threw together using phaser. The embedded demo is below. If you’d rather play the game in full browser window you can do so here. Enjoy!

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Off Canvas Transition: A Progressive Enhancement

Don’t wanna read here’s the big demo.

I don’t recall the first place I saw the off canvas pattern implemented but when I first noticed it I was a huge fan. I’ve read some recent articles that have been advocating against the off canvas pattern. Mostly in the context of using it as a menu. The idea being that hiding a menu creates a poor user experience. In general I would agree, but in the spirit of responsive design there are some places where it just makes sense.

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Raised Garden Bed

If you read my Decomposed Granite Pathway post then you knew this was coming. As I mention in my previous post I started this project to fill my time with something meaningful and also improve the landscape of my home. As a bonus I was able to get a fair amount of organic produce grown by Laura and myself, YUM!

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Tupper Crap

Do you ever find yourself frustrated and just outright hating something. I Do. One thing in particular I came across today. Tupperware, in a cabinet, that’s just a mess of tupper-crap. Here’s what I like to do to cope with my hate for tupper-crap.

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Decomposed Granite Pathway

Last January I thought it would be nice to get outside and start some new projects that would occupy my time and also improve the value of my home. My original plan started with the side yard of my home which wasn’t much to look at and being on the opposite side of where the back door is I didn’t go over there much. So to make use of that part of my yard and give me an excuse to walk over there more I choose to put in a raised garden, but that’s a later post. This is about making a decomposed granite pathway.

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Platform Independent 2D Game Engine

I’ve finally done it!! My platform independent 2D game engine is finally here. I’ve tested this engine on Mac OSX, Ubuntu Linux, Windows, and here’s the really awesome part iPhone. That’s  a pretty large scope. Now you can make one game and distribute on just about any platform that supports C/C++.

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2D Game Engine Mac OSX/Linux

If you’ve read my earlier posts then you’ll know that I previously developed a 2D game called Space Challenge. While I developed all of the game code the engine I was using was mostly developed by Mike Daley of 71squared.com. For anyone who is interested in developing an iPhone game I would recommend you check out Mike’s site. I enjoyed what I learned from Mike but I really wanted an engine that would work on multiple platforms so that I could reach a larger audience.

So to get an engine that would suit my needs I decided to develop my own game engine using platform independent C++ code. This has been quite an under taking and my engine is not yet complete nor completely platform independent. However, I have finished a significant part of my engine and it works on both Mac OSX and Linux. Continue reading 2D Game Engine Mac OSX/Linux

EKG Monitor

WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?!

This application was a big step up from my Cook Book and from the screen shot you can see it’s got a lot of buttons to play with! So what does this thing do anyway? Well I made it to graph your heart beat and provide a GPS location of your position, the EKG itself is wireless after all, but it provides a much more general function than just that. This GUI will actually read and plot any data coming in on a serial port.

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Space Challenge

WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?!

This is where the fun starts. Game development!  This game is a 2D retro block smashing game. Yes, there are many like it but this one is mine. The game was developed for the iphone so it uses some of the neat little hardware gadgets that are included with the iphone. Like the accelerometer which I used to control the players ship or paddle if you prefer.

With this game you attempt to destroy all the blocks on the screen by hitting them with a ball that is bouncing around the screen. The game includes a small physics engine to give the ball and ship a more realistic feel. When the ball collides with something it will react based on real world physics calculations. This mean the ball has mass which is obviously simulated and when it hits something of greater mass, which is everything else in the game, I know I designed it that way, it will react appropriately by bouncing off in the appropriate direction and with the appropriate velocity. Continue reading Space Challenge

Cook Book

WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?!

Well as you can see from the screen shots below it’s not a very graphically pleasing application, but it does what it was designed to do. So what’s that? I’m pretty sure from the title you can probably guess, but just in case you can’t, it’s an application for holding on to all of you recipes!
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