| An Oversized Expo For Gamers | |
My wife and I made the six-hour drive over to Boston a few weeks ago to attend the 2011 incarnation of PAX East. It would be our second PAX, having attended the 2005 expo in Seattle. I have been a huge fan Penny Arcade since sometime in 2001 when I was in the small Computer Science program at SUNY Geneseo.At that point in time we were quickly approaching the launch of the Nintendo GameCube. I was struggling to find as many avenues for news updates on the new console. Two sites stood out to me. The first was Planet GameCube. I’ve since become a writer for the site (now known as Nintendo World Report) and one of the reasons I was heading out to PAX East 2011 was to meet a bunch of friends from it. The second site I found was Penny Arcade. They covered the launch in a different sort of way. Both sites are still on my relatively small list of daily web stops. I avidly read Penny Arcade over the next three years, through the first incarnation of PAX in 2004. Reading about the expo in the comics, news posts, and forums for the site made me quite jealous. Thankfully, as 2005 rolled around I had just gotten a job that enabled me to make a cross-country trip out to Seattle for the second PAX ever. The guys I worked with were all Penny Arcade fans too. One day at work, my cell phone rang. It was a number I didn’t recognize. As I picked it up, awesomeness ensued. I mouthed "It's Tycho!" to my friends, ran out of the room. Next thing I know I was pegged to be an Omeganaut in the Omegathon game tournament. Read more... |
|
| Topic(s): industry thoughts | |
| By Pale on April 3, 2011 at 6:37pm EDT | Add Comment |
| PaleHour Blog Engine | |
Well this is kind of silly. I never put a post on here about the blog engine that runs this site! I call it the PaleHour engine. It is a fairly straightforward and custom blog engine. Several of my friends and family use it for their blogs. All of them come together in one location at PaleHour.com. Check out the About page for more details.The entire thing is developed in object oriented PHP with a MySQL database back end. I decided to roll my own blog engine for two main reasons. Firstly, I just wanted to stay up on my basic web programming skills (CSS, XHTML, AJAX, PHP, etc.). Besides that, I just knew I would never be happy with one of the many blog engines out there. There would always be some level of customizing that I wouldn't be able to easily pull off. The features of the engine are constantly changing. As new ideas are thought up, new things are implemented. Its nice to have a side project like this in the background. Any time I get that programming itch, I can dive in and tweak some things. |
|
| Topic(s): programming blog css xhtml php mysql ajax | |
| By Pale on February 12, 2011 at 4:38pm EST | Add Comment |
| DSi XL Unboxing Post | |
NWR received the DSi XL from Nintendo yesterday. I'm not the one doing the review, but I still cracked it open and did a quick unboxing post over there. Check it out below.DSi XL Unboxing at NWR |
|
| Topic(s): writing nintendo world report | |
| By Pale on March 23, 2010 at 8:43am EDT | Add Comment |
| Star Formation: The Game | |
Last summer Adam Frank and Discover Magazine approached Second Ave. with the idea of creating a game to go along with an article for the Discover Magazine web site. The article is about how stars form. The game was supposed to take this base concept and add some scoring elements to make it fun and addicting.The result is Star Formation: The Game, which I was the primary programmer on. It was designed to target the audience of the Discover Magazine website, specifically trying to include a concept that is easy to understand in a game that can be completed in a relatively short amount of time. We wanted to take this goal and also build in a competitive high score list to encourage players to try the game over and over again. The game consists of three stages of increasing difficulty. Two simple score concepts drive the high score mentality. Firstly, if you use too many novas in one level, additional novas will cost you some points. Second, chaining star creation will work up a points multiplier, allowing for scores to skyrocket. In its first few days of being live it has proven to be quite successful. The high score has gone all the way to 40 thousand. I wrote the code and I can't even break 10 thousand. The reception has been great, including some positive blog posts and Twitter comments. Overall, I'm extremely happy with the players' reactions. Check the game out for yourself below. Star Formation: The Game Adam Frank's Accompanying Article Star Formation: The Game Mirror |
|
| Topic(s): programming flash second avenue software | |
| By Pale on March 29, 2009 at 1:18pm EDT | Add Comment |
| New Play Control! Mario Power Tennis Review | |
My latest review went up over at NWR recently. This one is for the new remake of Mario Power Tennis on Wii. I ended up liking it considerably.New Play Control! Mario Power Tennis Review |
|
| Topic(s): writing nintendo world report reviews | |
| By Pale on March 14, 2009 at 12:21pm EDT | Add Comment |
| Log In | |
| Username: | |
| Password: | |
| register | |
| Popular Topics |
|
nintendo world report (13) writing (13) reviews (7) programming (5) flash (3) second avenue software (3) previews (3) torque (1) industry thoughts (1) mikegamin.com news (1) |
| Recent Comments |
|
My New Role at NWR |
|
Congratulations! Maybe now they'll fina... |
|
My New Role at NWR |
|
Congrats! Very exciting cause you got g... |
|
The World Ends With You Review |
|
I know it's late but I just read some of... |
|
Mario Kart Wii Launch Event Recap |
|
Which side of the argument is he on? =P... |
|
Mario Kart Wii Launch Event Recap |
|
I am excited to get this game, but I hav... |
| Archive |