i felt really honoured to be invited to speak on a panel at the Toronto Fan Expo this weekend alongside a number of other local industry pros. i couldn’t attend the event as a non-cosplayer, so my wife Cheryl whipped up a little something to satisfy my desperate desire for attention, and my [...] Keep Reading

Introduction For Spellirium we had to develop a system that could determine the most efficient path between a series of nodes on a point. After some diligent research and careful consideration it became clear that the A* search algorithm was the way to go. Now, I was familiar with the basics behind A* but had [...] Keep Reading

So we shopped Spellirium around at the Casual Connect conference in Seattle this past week, and the consensus was that the game was good … for them to poop on. Category Exclusivity i’ve been billing Spellirium as a “word puzzle/adventure game hybrid”, or “Jim Henson’s Labyrinth meets Boggle.” Er – that’s “Boggle”, not “Hoggle”. To the casual games portals [...] Keep Reading

Last week, i was invited by New Brunswick Community College in Miramichi to speak at their Jalloo animation and gaming festival. i was a last-minute replacement, which was expected … i’ve only ever been asked to speak at one other event, as a late-breaking replacement on a panel at a local Toronto conference. [...] Keep Reading

Prerequisites: Basic Flash Project Setup Drawing with Strokes and Fills Groups and Layers Begin Flash wasn’t always this difficult to get your head around. Before it was hijacked by codemonkeys, the software was a very capable animation program. The focal point of Flash animation is the Timeline, and all the wonderful things it can do. This lesson [...] Keep Reading