Problems with our Hosting

Our long, reliable host, which we've been hosting with since the 90's, was bought by another company called "agavue" recently, and already the service is careening downhill. We sell digital puppets for Halloween, and on October first, of all dates, all the files we had hosted on their servers vanished. The entire directory is just gone, so it's not even something that could have been user error on our part. And our original host's late-hours technical support has been replaced with a nine-to-five tech support, so I can't even talk to them about it until tomorrow. Super.

If you were trying to download one of the demo versions of our digital puppets in the last few days, and were told that the file no longer exists, well, this is why. I've updated the demo download links to grab them from a different server.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

LetterWriter: Oceans Now Available in the App Store

It's official! We're a published iPhone developer now!

LetterWriter: Oceans, our handwriting training game for kids, is now available for sale on the iPhone App Store. It's $1.99, and packs a lot of underwater fun and poetry into a little package.

If you download it and enjoy the game, I'd appreciate it if you write a glowing review for us, and tell your friends about the game. We need some word of mouth to get the news out, because a whole raft of letter-writing games showed up on the App Store in the last couple of weeks. (Bummer for us!) So far, ours looks like a standout, but it won't take much to get lost in the glut.

We hope you enjoy it!

Gameplay Video for LetterWriter: Oceans

I uploaded some gameplay video of LetterWriter: Oceans last night to YouTube. You can get an idea of what the game looks like and how it plays.

In the clip, you get to see several of the features:

• The panorama where you select the letter to practice.
• Several of the letter backgrounds.
• The earning of starfish as you complete letters.
• Earning four starfish unlocking the storybook.
• The options screen.

Enjoy!

LetterWriter:Oceans

I just submitted our first iPhone game for approval at the Apple App Store. It's a game called LetterWriter:Oceans, and it's an educational app that helps kids learn how to draw the capital letter glyphs in a fun undersea environment. Follow the link for more screenshots.

We've been working on this for several weeks, because we have a child who is just learning to write, and we've been unhappy with the quality of iPhone apps out there for this. So, for our anniversary, my wife and I took a vacation up to Cloudcroft and designed the game we wished was available, and now it's done.

Watch for it at the app store in a couple of weeks.

Bhut Jolokia Brownies

Hot on the heels (as it were) of releasing "Holy Jolokia," a hot sauce made with Bhut Jolokia, the NMSU Chile Pepper Institute is now selling Bhut Jolokia in powdered form. It's a boon to chefs everywhere who like their food spicy.

(For those of you who don't know, the Bhut Jolokia is the world's hottest pepper, rather recently discovered, whose heat goes into the millions of Scovilles.)

To celebrate, my wife made a whole tray of brownies with only a teaspoon of powdered Bhut Jolokia mixed in. And boy, did it add some zip! Not enough to be painful, but certainly enough to give you a pleasant chile burn for a while. If you're looking for a way to add a little zing to your cooking, just a little bit of this stuff will go a long, long way!

(Cue jokes about putting mind- and body-altering substances in brownies...)

Preloading Flash SWF's without Executing Scripts

For a project we are doing at work, I had a game engine shell which would load .SWF's into the shell for playing individual vignettes and cutscenes. Because it was going to be served via a web server, I wanted to preload these vignettes during play so that when the vignette was encountered, it would play immediately, instead of the user having to wait to download the item.

However, one of the vignettes had a custom cursor in it, which would hide the regular cursor. The end result of this was that when I preloaded that SWF, it would execute that code and hide the cursor for the movie before displaying that vignette.

The solution was to use URLLoader to load the vignettes to get them into Flash Player's cache, and then, when they were needed, using the Loader class to load them into the engine:

import flash.net.*;
public class SWFPreloader {
 public function SWFPreloader() {
  //  Preload a list of SWFs here, or call preloadSWF()
  this. preloadSWF( 'intro' );
 }
 
 public function preloadSWF( url:String ) {
  var urlr:URLRequest = new URLRequest( url );
  var _loader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
  _loader.dataFormat = URLLoaderDataFormat.BINARY;
  _loader.load( urlr );
 }
}

Using this method, you could preloadSWF() the MovieClips you will need later, and the Flash Player will put them into the cache. Load the MovieClips normally using the Loader() class, and Flash Player will pull the SWF's from the Flash Player cache instead of downloading them again from the web server.

Sometimes, it Takes an Outlaw to Bring Justice

I've updated the original version of Big Hearts in Big Country to version 2 of the rules.

In this new set of rules, you will find:

• Rule tweaks and clarifications, including a full example of a sample gunfight.
• More good guys to befriend and more bad guys to stand against.
• More detail and story hooks for the sample setting, Sangre De Dios.
• Spiffier, more western-themed layout.
• More detail in the character archetype generator.
• More artwork.

Enjoy. If you play it, please send me a play report - I'd love to hear how it goes for you.

More work on "Big Hearts in Big Country"

I've been working on fleshing out the rules from Big Hearts in Big Country a little more over the last week or so. It's starting to look really good, and the more I work with it, the happier I am with the original rules I wrote.

I'm finding that I have less cleanup than I originally thought. It's funny - I went back in to add a lot of detail and complexity, and found myself, after much typing, deciding that I liked the simpler, original mechanics better, and deleting everything I'd typed and instead just doing an editing pass on the original content, clarifying what was in my mind as I wrote the thing. I think the 24 hour limitation actually made the game better, because it kept me from going in a direction that would have weakened the game.

Out of my wish list of new features, I've got just about everything but a map for Sangre de Dios, the sample setting for the game. I'm also a lot happier with the layout:

I'm toying with the idea of commissioning some original artwork to be created for the game, such as portraits of the various characters in Sangre de Dios and some more scenic set piece type illustrations. I know better than to try to illustrate the game myself; I'm not "Mr. Stick Figure," but for a game that's all about mood, drama, and character, I know my drawings wouldn't be able to set the tone I want to set. In order to recoup the cost, that means I'd have to try to sell it (or ask for donations, or sell ad space on a web site for it, or something.)

The question is: is there a market for something like this?

Big Hearts in Big Country

I just finished an entry for the 1KM1KT / FreeRPG Blog 24 Hour competition, a competition where you have 24 hours to design a tabletop RPG from the ground up. You pick a theme from a list, and I chose the theme "Cowboys with Big Hearts." Since my life has kids and work in it, my game represents far less than 24 hours of work - more like 6 or 7.

My game is called Big Hearts in Big Country. Here's the pitch:

Welcome to Sangre De Dios.

The villagers stare as you ride into town. They don’t know what to make of you. Strangers are rare here, and usually don’t stay long. They either have a drink and continue on their long journey northeast to Las Cruces, or they take a much shorter trip southwest up to Boot Hill.

Long ago, the townspeople stopped daring to dream that a big hearted gunfighter would come clean up the town. But then, they’ve never met you...

Big Hearts in Big Country is a cowboy-themed RPG which centers on what cowboys do best, at least in the movies: staring down the villain in the black hat, waiting for him to twitch, and then being fast on the draw. You’re the guys (or gals) who clean up bad towns.

Featuring six pages of simple rules, a starter setting for gameplay, a simple core mechanic for telling dramatic, character-based stories, a tense, edge-of-your-seat system for high-drama shootouts, and theme-appropriate game materials like poker cards and chips instead of character sheets, "Big Hearts in Big Country" is quick to pick up and play, and focuses on telling stories that would make Sergio Leone or Sam Peckinpah proud.

Enjoy. If you have any questions, suggestions, or play reports, let me know in the comments.

Update to MVC Framework

I've released an update to the MVC framework for developing Shockwave3D applications in Director. Changes include:

• Models now receive the act() message each frame.
• Fixed bug that makes demo scene not work.
• info() gives more information, and more complete information without parameters.
• Fixed thumbnailer to include headings on member thumbnails.
• Added floor() and ceil() math functions.
• Added event() and replaceController() to the Controllers object. The Controllers object is now implemented a little differently, but the API should be the same.
• Added centerImage() imaging lingo routine.