Direction, Accountability and a Road to Success (DARS)

Hello World!

 I love chatting with people. Not the networking walk around and see what I can get kind of networking, you guys know what I mean. Those conversations have their place, and there's plenty of strategies to show up as a high value rock star in those networking events. Another blog post you say? Count on it.

 I'm talking about those private conversations with a close confidant, in the coffee shop corner, losing yourself in your imagination, intentions, and stream of consciousness.

You know... That kind of meeting.

 This brings me to something new that I'm working on. Something long term. Something successful. Something exciting.

 We're getting our first home. WHOO HOO! Not just any home. We're getting a multi-family. We're going to House Hack. It's pretty sweet.

 DARS is a new series on this endeavor. It's meant as a weekly update, very likely in bullet form, to create accountability. After all, if the internet says it's true, then it must be.

What have we done so far? I'm glad you asked:

• We got pre-approved for a mortgage.
• We have a modest down payment and a budget.
• We have reached out to our accountant to discuss this purchase.
• We reached out to someone in his network that can act as both an agent, renter, and a property manger. (big win.)
• We found a way to calculate the deal of the property to maximize the return once we move out.
• We looked at 2 properties in our target area and are developing a good picture of what to expect.

I'm acknowledging myself for this work. The final step is finding the profitable deal and making offers.

The next DARS will be a brief post discussing the plan.

Thank you world!

Construct 2 - C202 - A Bee's Life

Caffeinated Wizards!

 Project 2 is another avoid blocks game.

• The player traverses the game space collecting stars while avoiding black squares.
• Players scores each time they collect a star.
• Squares are destroyed is they touch a star.
• If the player touches a square, they lose.
• (NEW) Some squares fall from the top and bounce off other squares.
• (NEW) The player increases in size every 3 seconds.
• (NEW) When the player collects a star, they decrease in size.

Voila! C202 complete!

Keep being awesome!

Construct 2: C201 - Get to Work!

Caffeinated Wizards!

 Project 1 is a simple avoid falling blocks game. We are tasked with adding an additional mechanic to the base course project.

• The player strafes left to right to avoid falling objects.
• Players accumulate score each second.
• (NEW) Players can gain a score multiplier by risking proximity to a falling block.

Players gain increasing score multiplier as they risk proximity to the falling blocks. Mastery comes in knowing the bounds of the player, the bounds of the enemies, and can make decisions based on the environment (the grouping of the falling blocks.)

Voila! C201 complete!

Keep being awesome!

Construct 2: Intro

Hello out there!

 Welcome back my caffeinated wizard fans! At last, we will visit the luminescent landscape of the craftsman's journey. As I embark on this journey, I invite you to sit back, relax, and enjoy the discovery.

 Over "time" I will create 60 simple playable games with minimalist graphics. These games will be playable on this website for your entertainment.

 Abra cadabra!

Keep being awesome!

hello world!

hello world!

Many moons ago there was a youngling who remembers hiding into between office desks in a labyrinthine world of bigger peoples. This youngling grew up with interesting metal boxes with curious buttons, large slots, many long multicolored cords, and the din of office clicky sounds, phone calls, and paper shuffling. In short, I grew up around computers. It's as good a beginning as any.

When I was very young my father introduced me to basic programming. First, I built a loop that's featured as the title of this blog. Then I built a short choose your own adventure game where I created a simple world that progressed with multiple choice selections. It was rudimentary. It was simple. It was my beginning.

Declarations are powerful. As is the structure surrounding it. Should one use punctuation? Complex sentence structure? Single words? Proper capitalization? Why not an exclamation point? That choice is still significant for me. At that young and tender age, I knew my actions were important. I knew that adding the exclamation was a declaration. How could I guess that that first step would culminate is a journey for the next 30 years? I knew it was a beginning.

I had barely been playing with the Atari 2600 let alone Nintendo or the Sega Master System. There was no such thing as the web, Netscape, yahoo chat groups, AOL, or other older, massively adopted technologies of the time. I knew nothing about Pascal which was my first REAL programming language. I knew nothing about MUDS and LPC which were my first REAL game dev projects. I knew nothing about pen and paper games where I got my first REAL call to action. I knew nothing about testing system extents (Thanks Dax!) I knew nothing and it was a beginning.

Hello World is a strong, meaningful, historic, and powerful statement. Hello World is the first print statement using any programming language. Hello world... was also the first chapter of the basic programming textbook I read. I didn't know any of that when I was a youngling. And it was my beginning.

And so, it's not the 80s anymore. That's my beginning as I remember it. It's faulty, very old, yet full of promise and led to a fantastic journey.

I took programming courses in high school with Pascal and C all the while working and playing on an LPC MUD building content, classes, and enemies for folks to digitally beat up. I minor'd in computer science in college, while working on those same MUDs. I've been a game designer for 9 years and so we come to today.

Hello world! Let's get cracking.