Game Jam for Developers, Artists, Designers..

Are you Canadian? Are you interested in spending a day or two with a bunch of other wild and crazy Canadians who like to make games? No? Then don’t go here:

Game Jam in Edmonton, Alberta

For the rest of us, it’s an excellent opportunity to network, socialize and of course improve game development skills. I don’t know if I can make this particular one, but there is another coming up soon in Winnipeg (sometime in May.) Whether you’re an accomplished programmer or a total neophyte designer, it’s a good experience.

Posted by JP | Published March 29, 2010
Posted in Announcements, Inspiration | Tagged , | Comments Off

GiraffeRPG

I’ve started work on another new project, a collaboration with one of the artists I’ve met through TIGSource. It’s under the tentative title of GiraffeRPG for reasons I am sure you can hypothesize on your lonesome. For the man known only as “J.R. Hill”, it is an outlet for his desire to draw giraffes. Many of them. Cute ones. My own ambitions were simply to create an RPG. I think that sums it up.

GiraffeRPG in Development

Right now GiraffeRPG has a working Tile Map Editor written for Adobe AIR. It’s also built on Flex 4, so I’ve been fiddling around with the new Spark components. Flex to me is far too cumbersome in most cases and I’m not even sure I really like it here. On the other hand, it did make rapid development of a functional editor quite easy and the ability (thanks to AIR) to access local files is really, really handy.

Next phase of the game is to start working on building out some areas for Giraffey to walk around and some collision code to accommodate the various edge types. After that we will move onto ‘entities’, which include the characters and enemies of the game.

If you’re interested in some of J.R. Hill’s artwork, check out his site Time For Cute.

Posted by JP | Published March 15, 2010
Posted in Announcements, Work in Progress | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off

Rock, Paper, Zombie Playable

Well, I think we’ve sat on this long enough. Go ahead, jump on in.

The only weird thing you might see is this fuschia coloured button.. click it to flag yourself as ‘ready to battle’. The next person who clicks it will be paired up with you.

Posted by JP | Published February 10, 2010
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Comments Off

Digger Dwarves

Digger Dwarves Gameplay Screenshot

Digger Dwarves Gameplay Screenshot

Digger Dwarves was the original We Get Signal project, and quite an overambitious one at that. Still, we’ve been chugging away on it… slowly. The game is really just a prototype right now, but you can do some neat stuff, like dig in the snow and throwing snowballs.

All the terrain is generated from a bitmap, and the collisions are determined pixel-by-pixel. So far it’s a neat demo, not much else.

For the controls, the arrow keys move you and down arrow digs. Spacebar jumps, and the ‘Z’ key throws a snowball.

The newest addition has been the loading of external bitmaps, and ‘undiggable’ terrain (dark blue snow/ice.)

So, give it a try.. and let us know if you like it.

Posted by JP | Published January 28, 2010
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

Rock, Paper, Zombie

While Mushroomer is being judged, I’ve started work on a new project that was originally penciled out several months ago. The concept is simple: Rock, Paper, Scissors… with Zombies.

Now of course there’s more to it than that!

Sadly, for the moment I’ll have to leave you with just a tiny hint of what’s to come. Enjoy.

Rock Paper Zombie Logo

Rock Paper Zombie Logo

Posted by JP | Published January 18, 2010
Posted in Announcements | Tagged , | Comments Off

Mushroomer in for Judging

Mushroomer Preview Image

Mushroomer Gameplay Screenshot

As you may already be aware, Mushroomer was my (somewhat sad) entry into the TIGSource Assemblee Contest. Part one of the contest involved all sorts of great artists and musicians creating assets. Part two was for developers and designers to put together a game.

Having never designed a game before.. it was a challenge, to be sure. After three grueling weeks of cramming all my spare hours into a new game engine, Mushroomer was born.

Unfortunately a lot of stuff got left undone mostly due to my inexperience and time constraints. If you have a minute, try out the contest entry version of Mushrooomer. If you’re feeling particularly verbose, you can leave some comments in the Assemblee Mushroomer Forum Thread.

I’m looking forward to doing more of this in the near future.

Posted by JP | Published January 17, 2010
Posted in Announcements | Tagged , | Comments Off