Please play the game now – and bring a friend with you! If you have your own site / blog / page, I highly encourage you to embed the game in it as well. Basically, please help me promote this game all over the net!
I had a lot of fun implementing this classic pencil and paper game, writing the client in pure ActionScript using the free Flex SDK, and the server using Visual C# Express. This is truly an exciting time to be a game developer – multiplayer Flash games that can be played across different sites all over the net can now be built easily using free tools only!
To put things back on track, I hope to release the source code of the game in a week or so, but in the meantime, please share this game with all your friends! Thank you!
]]>Yes, it has been a very long time since I posted on Python. As I have said some time earlier, I’m trying to refocus this site to deal with more general game development. A side effect of this is, I’ve spent a lot more time coding and learning, and no time writing 
. In particular, I’ve been looking at writing games using Adobe’s Flex SDK.
I find working with Flex appealing because of the potential of the output to reach a large number of people. But Python is a language that is very close to my heart, and I’d be very interested in a Python based environment that would allow me to make games for the web. Fortunately, such an environment exists already, in the form of Microsoft’s Silverlight, paired up with IronPython. I’ve been dabbling with this platform as well, and I hope to write games for it once the platform matures.
If you’re interested in learning more about writing web games with Python, I recommend the excellent article Creating a Game Using Python and Silverlight 1.1. Are there any other resources about game programming using Silverlight/Python that you would recommend?
]]>I haven’t posted anything in a very, very long time, and I apologize for this. Recently, I have had time to pursue game programming again, and as a result, I was able to learn programming Flash games using the free Flex SDK, a programmer-oriented SWF development tool from Adobe. For my first project, I have decided to rewrite my favorite one-button game, Herder, and it is now available to play on my site, and also on Facebook, if you want to compete with your friends for the highest score. Here’s a video:
The video and screenshots are available on the game pages. I hope to write more about this project and Flex programming in general, but in the meantime, I’d be happy to hear your comments. Enjoy the game! 
Hi everyone. I know that it’s been a very, very long time since I last posted. I’ve been doing some thinking about the direction that this site should take, and I was able to make some “preliminary decisions” in the process, which I hope to explain more in a future post.
In the meantime, I would like to present my most recent project, Herder, which you can now play online using any Java-enabled browser. Basically, this is a port of one of the Python/Pygame projects that I did before, and is my first project made with the Processing programming environment, which I’m trying to learn to use at the moment.
I’d love to hear about what you think about the game, and I would really appreciate any comments and suggestions that you may have. Please post them below. Thank you so much for trying out Herder, and I hope you liked it.
The next challenge is PyWeek 4, which will run in the first week of April.
Register NOW!
The PyWeek challenge:
- Invites entrants to write a game in one week from scratch either as an individual or in a team,
- Is intended to be challenging and fun,
- Will hopefully increase the public body of game tools, code and expertise,
- Will let a lot of people actually finish a game, and
- May inspire new projects (with ready made teams!)
Entries must be developed in Python during the challenge, and must incorporate some theme decided at the start of the challenge. See the challenge rules for more information.
I haven’t tried participating in one of these yet (I got as far as signing in and writing a very enthusiastic plan of action, but no code 
), but I think I should give this a shot this April, and you should, too! I’m amazed at the output that this has generated so far – in a span of just one week, plenty of very good games have been written. The physics-based Nelly’s Rooftop Garden and the well-polished Trip on the Funny Boat are personal favorites – try downloading these games and see what can be done in just a week.
Making good art has always been my weakness – that’s why I rely so much on SpriteLib. Maybe I should consider using simple geometric objects and pygame.draw…
Once again Charles River Media and series editor Steve Rabin are looking for game developers to share their wisdom in the next brand new volume of the groundbreaking AI Game Programming Wisdom series. Anything that an AI game programmer would typically deal with is fair game, including pathfinding, AI architecture, animation control, scripting, learning, and various decision-making techniques. Selected authors will have several months to write and will share in a portion of the book’s royalties. Proposals for 8-20 page articles are now being accepted until March 31st.
For those of you who are in a position to contribute to this volume, here’s your chance . I have a copy of the first book in this series, and I have to say that it is a very useful and impressive volume. It’s not the type of book that you would read from cover to cover. Instead you are presented with a series of focused articles that deal with cutting-edge game AI techniques. It’s more of an encyclopedia/cookbook than a textbook. Emphasis is on depth than on breadth, and this can prove to be very useful if you’re trying to solve a very specific problem that’s actually already covered in the book.
Maybe I’ll try to contribute in AI Wisdom 5. I’m particularly interested in the racing articles provided by the series, and I thought that the articles contained in AI Wisdom 1 are all top-notch. I find Euan Forrester’s Intelligent Steering Using PID Controllers (contained in AI Wisdom 2) article very interesting – probably, the information contained in this article will be especially relevant to today’s games, because game AI would have to be designed to consider the underlying physics engine. Unfortunately I don’t have a copy of AI Wisdom 2 YET. Hopefully, I’ll have access to this article soon and hopefully write a follow-up to it – I did some work with optimal control theory as an undergraduate and I’m thrilled at the possibility of applying it to (hopefully cutting-edge) game development!
Of course, if you find the above interesting as well, go ahead and write about it. I would love to read the result, and hopefully build upon that work eventually.
Be sure to read the guidelines before submitting your proposal. Now go work on those articles! There are royalties to be earned! 
Intel® Game Demo Contest 2007
Show us Your Game!
Win great exposure and your share of over $95,000 worth of Prizes, including:
- Meetings with game company executives — for a possible bundling deal
- A Gateway gaming machine worth at least $3,000
- $5,000 in custom art for your demo
- A Giga pass to the Game Developers Conference 2008
- Copies of Garage Games’ Torque Engine Advanced and other content prizes
- An International Game Developers Association membership
- A full suite of Intel® Software Development Products
- and of course, loads of cash.
If I find extra time on my hands, I’m really considering joining this contest. I think that this is a great opportunity – and the prizes are really attractive .
More importantly, by joining this contest, there’s a need to follow the set deadline – executables must be in by August 15. Having a clear deadline helps in setting concrete dates for milestones, etc.
Regarding the chance of winning, Intel has given a very encouraging words on this:
The chances are good! AAA developers often have exclusive deals for distribution of their game demos, or they have an existing technology relationship with Intel which would disqualify them from the contest. We expect that the vast majority of our entries will be from small developers and student groups.
Intel also hosted a similar contest last year, and the 2006 winners page should give everyone a good idea of what constitutes a winning entry.
There’s a special mention of Garagegames‘ Torque Game Builder and Torque Game Engine products. Fortunately, I won indie licenses to these products some time ago, and hopefully they’ll be put to good use in this competition.
I’ll see all of you at the competition! And hopefully, I’ll see myself as well!
. I will be making posts about this at this forum page on DonationCoder.com. Thanks in advance for trying my games! ]]>
.I can see at least two lessons which can be learned from this post, depending on the time that you have spent game programming. For those who are new to game programming, this post demonstrates that a lot of things can be done within a span of one year, as long as you set goals, and act on them! For those who have been into game programming for more than a year yet have no game to show (again, including me! ), this is a reminder of what could have been if you (and I ) had taken the plunge to make that first game, regardless of how simple it is, without worrying too much about getting it perfect the first time, with all the debates about the best language, the best approach, etc. It’s time to stop reading about games, and to start actually making them! Of course, reading shouldn’t stop completely – you (and I, again ) just have to apply what has been read .
With this, I would like to make a few comments about the direction that this site will take over the next few months. Of course, the production of game programming screencasts will continue, and I will start a few more game programming projects. At the same time, I will also try to make some posts about game development, in particular, topics which are of interest to the beginner.
Of course, I would love to hear about what you think, so please leave comments on the site if you have any questions or suggestions on how this site can help you better. I would like us to take this journey together, hoping that the coming year will be as fruitful, if not more, as that of Jon’s for all of us.
Here’s hoping that we will have new, complete games to play next year (or even sooner)!