Amazing Aaron

What have I been up to lately… Well the weather is starting to look, and feel good. So I planted some seeds in there starter greenhouses. I planted things for the garden mostly, but also some flowers. They should be ready to plant outside in a few weeks, and I’m sure the weather will be good for them then too! I also have gone on a vegetarian diet. I have not ate any meat in over a week. I decided to go on this diet because it is supposed to be more healthy, and make you feel better, and I do feel a lot better so far. You would think that I would be missing meat, but its the complete opposite. I actually am starting to detest even thinking about eating meat. I never thought that would happen! I still eat dairy products like milk, and cheese. I eat eggs too. I just don't eat the animal they came from :) LOL. I'm also trying to get away from processed, and non-organic foods. Which is one reason I've got my seeds planted. I Should have a big enough garden to supply me, and my dad with the fresh fruits, and vegetables we need till fall.

I’ve also been reading “Designing Arcade Computer Game Graphics”. Its a book by Ari Feldman about… well..  Designing Arcade Computer Game Graphics! Its a good book about game art design, color theory, and other game graphics principles. Its a little dated (published in 2000), but still contains a lot of interesting, and helpful information. Its actually kinda funny to read things like:

“Despite rapid advances in communication technologies, most people do not have very fast Internet access, especially outside the United States. In fact, the vast majority of users are still connecting to the Internet with 33.6 Kbps and 56 Kbps modems. Therefore, online game developers face a nasty dilemma: they have to create games that are compelling enough to attract players, yet small enough to access and play through relatively slow Internet connections.”

Nice to remember where all this started :)! The books available free online as a PDF if your interested. The reason I'm reading it is, because I'm hoping to start working on designing games again. Maybe I could actually finish one this time! anyway I’ll keep you posted. I also went up to see my little sister the other day as well. The main reason was to give here the lizard, I wrote about a few post back. She wanted it, I don’t know why, but she has it now. She has already made a video with it on her YouTube channel! While I was up there, we also made a video called “BagMan”. We had Greg (Minta’s husband) dress up in black garbage bags. It was fun, and its up on YouTube. The only problem we had making the video, was my camera. I think it wants to die. In fact it did die last week, and I had to go get a Mini DV Head cleaner to fix it! It might just be needing a new Mini DV cassette to record on. Who knows how many times I’ve rerecorded over that one! I would like to have a new camera, but I can’t afford one right now. I really want one that uses Mini SD cards. That would make live so much easier! There is an online video contest right now, and the prize is a new Waterproof Sanyo Mini SD camera. I'm going to enter it. Maybe I’ll win, and if I don’t, it still gives me an excuse to make a video LOL! :P. Well I'm going to get back to my book (PDF). I hope to have it read soon!

I finally got a chance to watch the iPhone 3.0 SDK presentation over at Apple. I really like the new features, and WOW the iPhone is looking better, and better as a game developing platform. It looks like apple is really trying to make the iPhone a great mobile gaming console. They have added things like, peer-to-peer communication between games (and apps), and voice in game, so you can communicate like on Xbox Live with your friends, while you play a game with them. It seemed like most, if not the majority of updates, and upgrades to the SDK were for gaming (at least it seemed that way to me :P). I would love to make a game for the iPhone/iPod Touch, but I have no experience with Apples core this, and Xcode that programing. They say its easy, but I don't know? I would just like to give it a try, but its $99 to join the developer program, plus the software only runs on a mac! Maybe I could get a Mac Mini, there the cheapest, and pay the $99 to give it a shot. Its still a lot of money, so I will really have to think about this one! Another idea is, you could try and use a Hackintosh to run the SDK software, but I don't know how great that would work, If it would work at all. I don't know if anyone has tried it before. I'll check into it, and let you all know! Apple says theres over 100 new features in the 3.0 update. Here is a least of some of the biggest: Cut, copy and paste- Wow finally, what took them so long! Spotlight searching- This is really timely. I'm starting to have a hard time finding my apps! Plus it searches music, and emails too! Push notifications- Lets apps send notifications to your home screen. Like small text messages, and number badges on there icons. In-App purchasing- This sounds really cool for games! They showed off a Sims 3 demo, that let your purchase extra items from within the game, when they came available from the publisher! MMS- this is something I would never use, but a lot of people ask for in iPhones. For some reason it does not work with the iPhone 2G. They say its because of hardware constraints on the older hardware. I just think there trying to get people to upgrade! Peer-to-Peer connectivity- Again really cool for games. It lets you play ad-hoc like you can on a DS or PSP! Third-party Accessories- This lets accessories makers tie directly into the hardware, and make apps that interact with there products. They showed off a glucose meter that could send the blood test results back to an iPhone app. Turn-by-Turn- This finally lets TomTom (and others) make a turn by turn GPS app for you car. Landscape keyboard- All native apps are now compatible with landscape mode. Which means you can use a full virtual keyboard when typing emails or txt messages. Voice memos- This is a new native app that lets you record messages with he iPhones mic, and then you can send them by MMS. I also think you can send them by email. Stereo Bluetooth- iPhone and iPod touch will now support stereo Bluetooth headsets. All these and more features will be available this summer (sometime). Its a free upgrade for iPhone 2G, and 3G users, and $9.95 for iPod Touch users everywhere. The beta is already available to people in the developer program :(

I uploaded a very early release of my Game Maker game, ‘Lost Civilization‘. I hope you head over to YoYoGames and give it a try. It still has a lot of work to be done to it, but it is playable. I would love to receive some feedback, and direction on how you think the game should go.

I have decided to buy an Xbox 360 Pro. I know I already had an Xbox 360 Elite, but that was like a year ago, and now I want a 360 again. Plus, I have a good reason, I’m going to be making an XNA game. For those of you that may not know what XNA is, its basically just the software, or framework, that you build games for Windows, and games for the Xbox 360 with. I have not decided what kind of game I’m going to make yet, but I have a lot of that’s for sure! On my last post, I talked about how I was making a game for a contest on YoYoGames.com. Well I did begin to make a game for the competition, but like a lot of things with me, it never got completed, for one reason, or another -I don’t even know why I didn’t complete it now :). The game was called ‘Lost Civilization’, and I got it to where it was playable, and was pretty near completion of it, but it still needs a lot of bug smashing to do, among other things. I’ve been wanting to finish it lately, but don’t know when I will get around to it -if i ever will. I might just throw it up the way it is on YoYoGames as a beta -more like Alpha really :). I will however put a screenshot of the game in this post for you all to see! I have made a few new videos, and put them up on YouTube, but nothing great, just me rambling about things. Mostly just about my new iPhone, and no, not the new iPhone 3G, but the first iPhone. I got it when it was the only iPhone, that shows how updated I keep my blog. I will tell you what, I will promise to post more, if you all tell me you want to see more posts, more often. Just leave a comment on this post, and I’ll see it. It will encourage me to write more, if I know someone is really reading it, LOL! Well, I’m going to sign off for now, I hope this was a good enough update for you! Till next post, I’ll C-U!

Okay, so I have decided that my show on hacking, modding, fixing, and all around taking things apart, is going to be called HackThat. I have already registered the domain HackThat.tv, where I will be posting all the videos for the show. I have only just started to get the site up and running, so it does not look like much right now. I am also pretty sure that I am going to be uploading the videos to the internet using MetaCafe, because they offer $5.00, for every 1000 views, which I think is pretty good! Especially sense YouTube only gives me…. hmmm…. well nothing. I also have been working on a game for a competition over on YoYoGames.com. In case you do not know about YoYoGames already, its a website where you can upload games that have been created with a program called Game Maker, that well, lets you make games. The completion is for the best casual video game based on an ancient civilization. I only have about 30 days left to complete the game, and I only have just started on it, so I am trying to make a very simple to make game. I will fill you all in on the game later on, when I get a little more of it done.