Kotaku just put up a short article about the Sherlock game. Very awesome!

Cat is out of the bag, time to announce where I’ve been the last few… months. I’ve been working on this:

The funny man in the video is Dave Marsh – a friend and also the creator of classic adventure games ShadowGate and Deja Vu – among quite a few others. He approached me a few months back and asked if I wanted to be part of this project. He’s a great guy and I saw this as an opportunity to try out some more mobile flash work (which I had already done with moderate success). So for what seems like ages I’ve been developing an engine that can turn around these adventure games with little to no effort. (if you watch the video you can see it being demoed on my Asus eeepad transformer)

This project has fully monopolized my free-time. So much so that I find my site to be in utter shambles which is not terrific for someone passively job hunting. I’ve had quite a few more posts ready to put up that I haven’t been able to complete and am still trying to find sources of some of my older projects. I will do my best to rectify this in the coming days.

Visit Zojoi’s website at Zojoi.com and support the game at Kickstarter.

Quick update. I’ve been developing a mobile game in my spare time and this has made my infrequent updates here impossible. It’s really a shame because I’ve got something like 5 posts prepped and ready. I’ve finished a pretty slick bitmap font system for flash and some other toys and whatnot for the portfolio page, but haven’t had the time to put them up. I’ve past bread on my game and am entering non-critical game features (read: things I’m going to cut). Hopefully I’ll post something of more significance soon.

If you’re wondering I can’t answer any questions about the game till its launch. But you can expect a full write up afterward.

Changes to my “Work” page! Now there are 3 categories under the “Work” heading: Portfolio, Games, and Experiments. “Portfolio” will have the little portfolio image viewer widget that you’ve seen before. Basically if I don’t have rights to the code/game I will build a portfolio for it and link it under that heading. The 2 previous entries I had in Work will now be under “Portfolio”. I will put any playable games I make in the “Games” section. This will only be games that are actually playable on my site, of which there are none… The last section is “Experiments” which is where I will put any little tech demos or experiments I’ve monkeyed around with. For example I just put up an experiment I built in as3IsoLib. Go check it out!

Put up another portfolio today for Tootsville.com! I am legally bound not to comment about that job or work environment! Seriously! Not joking! I had to sign a form saying I would never impugn or defame RES Interactive publicly so I could receive my final pay check from them that I was owed! So I am not impugning or defaming RES Interactive in any way! They are great people and I wish them the greatest of success in all that they do! Check the portfolio out by clicking the “Work” link at the top of the page. DO IT!

Mostly finished my portfolio viewer. It could still use some extra bells and whistles, but it works for now. I also put up my first portfolio game Mom, Wife, Bounty Hunter. It was a game I made back in 2006 for a quickly cancelled Women’s Entertainment TV reality show. The game proved to be better than the show which I think only aired 2 episodes before it was pulled. The game, however, stayed on WeTV.com for almost a year. Go check it out on my “Works” link. More portfolio updates on the way.

Winding down development on the Air Android game I’ve been working on. Now we’re just gold-plating the hell out of it. Do we need to add Facebook log in, or database storage, or sound effects, or bonus games? No, no we do not. It was just supposed to be a proof of concept. Oh well. As I always say, If you’re going to do something – do it to the point that you start scaring the people around you. Since this thing is technically owned by my parent company I haven’t figured out yet how I’ll be sharing info on it. We shall see…

Special shout out to my partner in crime in this little endeavor: Brian Lachniet. Go read his blogs and learn something! blachniet.com Unlike me, he pretends to be a professional. Oh to be young and stupid…

In other news I’m going to Adobe Max! I’m honestly quite excited because I’ve never been to like a real professional conference type thing. I’m sure I’ll make a huge ass out of myself and have to find a new career, so that will be fun!

Also, I ordered an Asus eeeeeeeepad transformer so that should be fun to break.

Peace and Hairgrease

So I got my hands on a copy of Flash cs5.5 (o.O) and I’ve been playing with the android system. Back when cs5 was released with the ios exporter I was very underwhelmed. It was cumbersome to use, it ran slow, and functionality was very limited. Well, Adobe has been very busy. The new system they introduced with cs5.5 and the continual player updates have made mobile air development real. My first couple of hours playing with it I went from hello world, to a simple touch game, and then to an app with google maps integrated. The ease of development and toolset offered by Adobe for mobile development is simply incomparable. Mobile air apps will never be able to compete with apps built on the native hardware/rendering systems, but for a cross platform option I’m impressed and excited. If only you could package the air player in with the app so it doesn’t require the user to download the separate air app. I’ll keep playing.

My never-ending battle with laziness wages on. To make matters worse a buddy of mine got me in the SWTOR beta. This has not helped my productivity. In fact, I took the day off today just to play it. So sad… so very sad. Well I am actually putting some time into the portfolio today. I’ve got most of the meat of the thing done, its just a matter of making it pretty and cranking out info on my work.

Also doing some really crazy stuff at work. I’ve been working on a Flash Component that will load swfs at development time. This would theoretically allow you to use the Flash GDI to layout swf or image based game objects and then you could use jsfl to export a game layout file. Then you turn around and use that xml file in PBE, or some other proprietary rendering system. (we’re using it for scaleform) If we get it working (big ‘if’ there) I will do a series of posts on it. Look forward to that!

I’m working on my portfolio, but it’s slow going. So to tide you over, my buddies at Infinity Beard (inc.) and I have developed a fantastic new game. The rules are simple, and I think you will enjoy it.

Game Rules

I expect everyone to be playing this all the time. Cause if you aren’t – know that I am. I’m always playing…

ENJOY!