Baaawww! Our Imagine Cup entry didn’t get to move on the next round of competition. I was told not to let that reflect the quality of our work, but how it stacked up next to other entries in the national competition.

Still sucks, though. Here’s our demo reel.

Here’s a fantastic article that voices out against all the bullshit that flash portals like Kongregate, ArmorGames, and Mofunzone force upon developers who submit to their sites.

I cannot tell you how much this echoes my grievances within the flash gaming industry.

The honeymoon abroad is over, the holidays have passed, and school is back in full swing. It feels good to be home.

Thailand was a wonderful adventure! I think I experienced about as much as a tall, pigment-challenged foreigner could thanks to my wife’s incredibly hospitable family. There were ups and downs, on account of my annoying fear of flying and a wonderful stomach bug halfway into the trip. It was my first international trip in 23 years and I must say that I look forward to many more. Perhaps we’ll look at Europe or New Zealand for our next excursion.

Since we’ve returned I’d heard that the 80 GB Playstation3 console had dropped to a acceptably expensive price, so now my home has a new BlueRay DVD player and 9-Core Cell processor gaming system. I have to admit, I’m quite impressed. Somehow, my wife and I were able to find the only remaining copy of Little Big Planet within 10 miles of our house, and since then I’ve had the pleasure of listening to her energetic squeeks of joy while controlling the game’s painfully adorable Sack Boys. More on that later.

Production on Conjurer is back in full swing. I’ll be wrapping up the enemy archer character soon, and should hopefully start in on the first level boss. We’re approaching a year anniversary since production began last February. That’s a lot longer than I thought it would take, but then again I’ve never designed a game with this level of production quality. I’ll admit I’ve learned a lot. Falling down and learning from your mistakes is the best way to be a better developer, and I can definitely assert that my next project after Conjurer will be much more streamlined.

Here’s to a new year chock full of new potential.

I don’t want to get your hopes up. There aren’t any noticeable milestones on Conjurer. Lately, the only new additions have been some engine tweaking and some development with the Troll Archer enemy. Not enough to make a YouTube video out of. I’ve been VERY busy with school. Now that I’m in the latter years of my bachelor’s degree, it’s much harder to find free time with these upper division courses. Especially with the likes of Intro to Artificial Intelligence, Computer Graphics (3D design and openGL shenanigans), and Software Design courses. We’re in finals week now, and the homework and projects have been nothing short of soul sucking. Unfortunately, I’d love to say that work on Conjurer will resume this weekend, but I’ll be in Thailand with my wife until January 1st. Honeymoons are a bitch, right?

There is another reason why production has slowed on Conjurer. I’m actually trying to get an internship at Blizzard Entertainment. Their offices are about a 3 minute drive from my house! Unfortunately, I’m going to have to learn a bit of Lua and C++ game development. For those of you who have never seen C++, it’s nothing like the comfy confines of ActionScript. A brave new world of programming that my university somehow refuses to teach as stringently as Java, thus leaving me to battle it out on my own.

On the plus side, learning Lua means that I’ve gotten back into World of Warcraft. When you’re required to play one of the most addicting games in the world to learn how to build custom add-ons and thus add a bigger golden star to your resume for Blizzard, it feels pretty good.

Also, I picked up a copy of Left 4 Dead off of Steam, and in my humble opinion… it’s one of the top 3 games of all time. As some of you know, I have an abhorrent fear of zombies. Very few games have made me whimper in fear. This broke me in half an hour.

James is gonna go pour one for his homie.