For the third straight week since it came out, Strong Bad’s Cool Game For Attractive People: Episode 1 has remained the #1 selling WiiWare title! Sweet. Episode 2 is just around the corner…

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Is it possible for a game to prove your intelligence? No, I’m not talking about Brain Age. I’m talking about Braid, a new-ish game on XBLA by Jonathan Blow. While it’s pretty interesting, I find myself only able to solve about 25% of the puzzles before my brain explodes and I pass out.  Still, it’s a good game that I’d recommend checking out. I’m not sure how well it’s selling, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people don’t feel up to the mental workout and just decide to replay that old copy of Deer Hunter instead.

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Strong Bad’s Cool Game For Attractive People: Episode 1 has finally been released! It’s now available for PC and WiiWare. It’s funny and it’s cheap, so you can’t lose. Originally I wasn’t going to do much on this game, but I ended up programming a lot of stuff around the track and putting together the photo booth. I may have even added an easter egg or two, so have fun finding that.

Episode 2 is well underway… although I’ve been busy working on Wallace & Gromit and haven’t contributed much to that episode. I look forward to playing it, though.

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So the project I’ve been working on for the past few months has FINALLY been announced. It’s Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Adventures, an episodic game series from Telltale Games. We’re planning on releasing it for multiple platforms (which I can’t discuss yet). I’ve been doing most of the content programming up to this point, but now with production in full swing, things are really ramping up. Unfortunately (or fortunately), I was out of the country on vacation when the game was announced at Comic-Con, but it’s cool to see that people are excited about what we will do with this franchise. Telltale is known for quirky and funny storytelling in games. This one will be no exception.

I will say that if you’re looking for some crazy FPS where you play as a space marine… you might be disappointed.

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As we moved into our new 2 bedroom apartment in the beautiful hills of Oakland, my face was slapped by reality. I had taken for granted that anywhere you moved in the Bay Area, you were surely going to be able to get some kind of broadband service. Not so in my new place. Although it’s located in a major US city, neither Comcast nor AT&T would give me service. This caused me to have a minor freak out.

Then I realized how much of a slave I am. The thought of going without high speed internet made me wonder how I would keep my sanity. Gradually I realized that I existed without it before, so why am I freaking out at the idea of going without it now? Because modern comforts have a way of owning you.

Anyway, it might all be moot anyway. It turns out that AT&T will possibly bend the rules and give me service anyway. And if not, I can explore the whole mobile broadband avenue. (I refuse to use satellite.) We’ll see what happens, but after that mirror was held up to my face, I realize now how screwed up that is.

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The interesting thing about developing a game for a next-gen console (you know, the ones with a gamepad instead of a fancy white magic wand that you wave about the room) is that, as a first-timer, I feel a certain amount of pressure to utilize all the buttons. Not that this pressure is coming from anyone else on the team, mind you. It’s just that you look at the analog sticks, the d-pad, the triggers, and the colorful buttons… and when you’re not using some of them, you feel a little guilty. It’s like an elaborate meal was prepared for you and you’re skipping the buttered corn because you’re filling up on turkey. (I don’t know if that metaphor works, but whatever.)

Until someone says, “Uh, why are you trying to make all these buttons do things that are necessary to gameplay? Just make it easy to play, stupid.” Oh right, I almost forgot. Games don’t have to come with a steep learning curve, do they? It’s like I almost threw out my entire education about making interactivity fluid and intuitive, just because I felt some obligation to the hardcore gaming crowd that loves all sorts of crazy control. Lesson learned, I guess. Unnecessary buttons don’t need to be made necessary.

 (By the way, before anyone asks… no, I’m not working on a new port of one of our existing games. I’m just experimenting until our new game is announced.)

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Yeah, I’m one of those bloggers who goes months without an update. But hey, a lot has been going on in my life, both professionally and personally.

The biggest thing I can mention is that I’ve started work at Telltale Games as a content programmer. And by the way, in case you’re unaware, we just announced Strong Bad’s Cool Game For Attractive People, a WiiWare title based on the popular Flash cartoon. It’s interesting to see how more and more Flash content is finding its way onto next-gen consoles… although granted, this is not Flash. It’s a full 3D game that faithfully replicates the vectorized look of the original cartoons. Around here, we call it our “Flash Shader” instead of just your average “Toon Shader.”

So it is going to be a little weird to not be primarily working in Flash anymore. Currently I’m using the LUA scripting language to code our games. Hopefully before too long, I’ll be able to talk about the title I’m working on. But until then, I’ll be as vague as possible. People love vagueness.

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This is a post for anyone who may run into the problem I had and couldn’t find a blog entry regarding this issue. ( At least with Flash 8 )

If you’re attempting to load Unicode Japanese characters from an XML file or something similar, you might want to consider using the font Arial Unicode MS for your text field (at least if you’re on a PC.) You’ll most likely have this font on your system, since it comes with Office.

At first I was just trying to use straight Arial with the Japanese characters embedded in the font. Curiously, this won’t work, and will just display “[][][][]” block type characters if you’re loading Unicode text. Using Arial Unicode MS will display just fine when you embed the Japanese characters.

If you don’t have to embed at all, then you can just get away with using Arial. However, since my text was to be under a mask, I did have to embed just to get any text to show up at all. Thus, Arial Unicode MS was my best option… seeing as how I didn’t have a Japanese font handy.

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This week, the agency I work for launched a microsite for Windows Mobile 6 in which I was the lead developer.

As I mentioned earlier, the challenge with this site was having a (nearly) full video background with animations and content layered on top. So here’s what I learned during development of a site like this:

Read the rest of this entry �

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In leu of being there, I’ve received a few text messages this evening from people telling me that I just won the award for Original Sound at the 2007 Flash Forward Film Festival in Boston. I’m kicking myself for not being there, but work schedules wouldn’t allow it… but I am about to get on the red eye flight to Boston to enjoy the rest of the conference.

Although only one award is given (I think), I will say that Luminous Sound deserves credit for their music contribution and props should also be given to the Art and Creative Directors…. Brandy Cole, Darrell Loden, and Christian Wojchiechowski. Thanks, guys!

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