Lack of blog posts due to lack of time, but you can follow me on Twitter if you like!

PresidentialPrizeFight.com is one of the more interesting (and challenging) projects I've worked on recently. It was a lot of fun discovering techniques to make a fun and hopefully challenging boxing game. Most 2D fighters allow for much more flexible movement (jumping, flipping etc...) but for boxing movement is pretty much just back and forth and attacks are limited to your gloves. This certainly made the enemy AI easier to program but made achieving enjoyable game play a bit harder.

Of course, the boxing was just part of this game. There's the whole electoral map/multiplayer issue as well. Google App Engine is used as the data store for all the state data, so we shouldn't have to worry about traffic issues if we happen to get dugg.

The coolest thing about the whole experience is that we actually utilized every production person in our studio on the same project (a first).

The goal in creating Presidential Prize Fight was to create a fun way to learn about the electoral college and to give you a chance to punch that "other candidate" in the face. I think we've achieved that. But don't take my word for it, pick your candidate and win the map!

P.S. It appears that more McCain supporters are fighting for this map than Obama supporters... if you support Obama you need to win a few fights (hint: focus on "battleground states")

Drag your mouse to look around.

take the survey!

Really cool video/experiment from Radiohead using no lights or cameras, just data points mapped using multiple lasers and a "light scanner." You can even download the actual data from Google Code and create your own visualizations (providing you are a nerd and have the time). You can also explore the data visualization in a 3D environment here. Here's the video:

Most of Portland Studios was at the midnight opening of WALL-E last night and I for one was blown away. Once again Pixar has demonstrated that near perfection in art, technology and storytelling is an achievable goal. There are so many great aspects of this film but I'll just highlight one that stood out to me: the color scheme.

Pixar's color schemes are always amazing. They find the perfect balance between pleasing and realistic, subtle yet emotional. WALL-E's palette is no different. Below I've create what I feel is a representative of the movies color mood:

You can download this color scheme on Adobe Kuler here

Are you a hip-hop loving gansta? Do you like to play chess in you free time?

Well if you answered yes to both of the above question be sure to check out wuchess.com. It's an online community for hip-hop loving chess players just like you. For rizzle.

Also, check out the Hip-Hop Chess Federation for shizzle.

On a side not, the game playing functionality looks like a really well-done Adobe Flex application.

After several grueling nights of hard labor, we've officially launched our Post Apocalyptic Robot Game (PARG) onto the interweb. It's certainly not bad for the time frame that we launched it in... about a week of after-hours "work." The environment and most of the character artwork is by Justin Gerard. The "Boss Bot" is compliments of Cory Godbey and other bot designs we're contributed by Zach Franzen, Hallie Gillett. The site design is by Matt Mantooth and the rock-your-face-off theme music is by Ben Kammer. It was cool to see all of the contributions come together into one solid product. It was also a pretty good development challenge. This is probably one of the most truly-collaborative projects we've ever worked on. Now we just need to get someone to pay us to do this! And oh yeah, here's the link: Play Parg!

Next Friday, you, yes you, will be called upon to defend the earth from the upcoming "robocalpyse."

At Portland Studios, we are all about productivity and "bizzness" but between all the productivity and insane profit-margins myself, Justin Gerard, Cory Godbey and a few others have been working on an apocalyptic-robot-themed flash game. It's going to be epic.

Here's a little of the flash motion based on a sample robot from Justin (click to explode):

And you also may very well end up being attacked by Cory Godbey's DOOM BRINGER ULTRA ULTRA 

For more details on next Friday's post, be sure to check the Portland Blog.

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