It certainly has been a while, hasn’t it. No, I haven’t dropped off of the face of the Earth. I’ve been rather busy with wrapping up college, working on a few client projects, and preparing for the big day in September when my daughter Autumn is born! Conjurer got pushed back because, frankly, Conjurer doesn’t pay the bills (yet).

However, as you can read from the title, Conjurer is back on track. This time it’s serious. A lot of new changes are getting worked out for reasons that I can’t tell you yet, but they’re VERY exciting. Sorry about being so cryptic, but non-disclosure agreements are a bitch. I can tell you that I’m going to try and utilize a lot of GPU acceleration and 3D effects, as well as possibly support game pad input from Xbox360 controllers. Fun fun fun!!

It’s good to be back.

You’re probably wondering why there hasn’t been a lot of posts lately. Well, sorry about that. Conjurer is a bit on hold for a while. Here’s why:

I’ve picked up a gig with a well known publisher.
I can’t really say any more (Pesky NDA’s), but you’ll definitely enjoy it when it’s wraps up in about 3 weeks.

School is back on in full force.
I have three classes. Two of them are hellish; A project course in database management/web app development (a time sink), and an upper division linear algebra course (a test of my sanity).

I’m running the Video Game Developers Club at my college.
The VGDC is running hot this year. I’m planning a lot of speakers, organizing events and workshops, and working with UCI’s Research into Gaming and Virtual Worlds.

It sucks for Conjurer, but it’s good for me.

I HATE IT WHEN PEOPLE USE MUSIC FOR THEIR RING TONES!

… unless they’re 8 bit Nintendo songs. That’s technically a beeping ring tone.

I LOVE the Soul Calibur series! Though, Ivy looks weirder and weirder with every new release. Those boobs are gonna pop!

I’ve been toying around with making a scrolling background using bitmap data instaed of an array of tiles. I’ve noticed an almost 50% increase in efficiency, which INCLUDES the parallaxing foreground with alpha values! Check it out! Scrolling backgrounds with Bitmaps!

Note: I know that the two images don’t match up on the right and bottom corners. I merely tore some photos off of google images for testing. Now I have to figure out “If the background moves at 2 pixels per frame and is 1200 pixels wide, then the parallaxing foreground above it that moves at 4 pixels per second should be XX pixels wide.” Simple proportion formula. XX = (4*1200)/2 = 2400 pixels

On to building the platforms!