Paint splatter simulator for use with Photoshop




When you're a hobbiest programmer, every problem looks like it can be solved with a little scripting. This Holiday season I was working on a for-print art project and I needed some paint splatter for texture. Splattering paint is a great way to get some organic texture into a piece of art, but it's messy and requires a lot of room. So I decided to try writing a quick script to see if I could accurately simulate it.

The end result is this little web app I wrote. It's got a little bit of GUI to make it easy to adjust the amount of splatter you need. The end result is an image that you can use in Photoshop.

Splattr
Here's a brief rundown of how it works:

+ The canvas is made up of "passes" of paint splatter. You can Add and delete as many passes as you want.
+ Each pass has it's own set of settings. you click on a pass on the left, then you can change the settings for that pass.
+ double-headed sliders set minimums and maximums for settings.
+ As you change settings, you'll see a realtime preview of just that pass on the right.
+ when you stop dragging a slider, the big canvas will re-splatter with your new settings.
+ To get the image into Photoshop, you click on the "Copy to clipboard" button or "copy inverted", which reverses it for better channel creation.
+ You can tweak with a small sized canvas, then when you got it the way you want, make the canvas bigger.
+ There's no way to save settings yet.

you may need to install the latest Shockwave plug-in to make it work. Enjoy

Best Christmas Eve Ever ... the Amiga and Populous II




I can still remember it crystal clear: Christmas eve, 1991 -- playing Bullfrog's Populous II on the Amiga until my mouse hand was chilled to the bone.

Happy holidays everyone! Here's to 2008, and posting a whole lot more.





Tiki Central's San Francisco Tiki Crawl is being webcast live




Hi all ... long time no post. I've been busy with things, but I wanted to give an update to everyone: If you're in the San Francisco area, come out and join us for Tiki Central's 7th Annual Tiki Bar Crawl. And if you're not in the San Francisco area, watch it live on our mobile webstream, 3:30pm - late on Friday, 2:00pm - really late on Saturday, and 3:00pm till evening on Sunday.


Details available on tikiweekend.com!

Indie game marketing secrets from Russell Carol




At the Independent Games Summit at GDC 2007, Gametunnel's Russell Carol gave an amazing talk on how indie game makers can get off their asses and market their games. I'm no stranger to indie game marketing, but Russell really did an amazing job on showing exactly how to go about doing it. I really think that this is the area that indie game makers (including myself) need the most help in, so it was a real pleasure to see Russell cover it in such depth. It's a must watch for anyone who wants to make money with their games:


[Via GameSetWatch]

Beta late than never




If you're a close friend of mine, or if you were anywhere close to me at GDC, then you heard my latest game was going to be hitting beta in June 2006 and ya'll were invited.

Well, please don't take the fact that you never got an invite as a sign that I uninvited you. The fact of the matter is I've slipped my deadline. No one's playing the beta because the beta has not happened yet. But I am still rolling forward, so hang in there.



Pownce invites




UPDATE: I've given them all away. Sorry!
Pownce screenshotI have six Pownce invites (thanks Chad!). If you're a regular reader of my blog and want an invite, hit me up for one. It is not quite first-come first-serve, but almost. So let me know.


My iPhone Wish: Signal Strength Tracker




CPU UsageI would like a signal strength grapher, that plots out your signal strength on a little chart over time, much like Windows CPU usage meter.

The idea is that if I'm waiting for a call and I'm out somewhere. I can turn on the meter, drop it in my pocket for a minute, then pull it out and see if the phone was getting proper reception while it was in my pocket. Likewise, women could use this to determine signal strength in their purse, etc.

There's a few different ways this feature could be implemented other than this, but this seems the most straightforward. Another way could be to have a special ring that lets you know you've lost signal; but that seems like it could get annoying.


Second most popular MMO is Shockwave-powered




Habbo HotelAccording to popular technology news blog GigaOM, the most popular MMO behind World Of Warcraft is the shockwave-enabled Habbo Hotel. I know that for a long time now Director has played second fiddle to Flash, but this shows that Adobe Director is still a great choice for games.

The Java-powered dungeon game Runescape comes in at number 3, the Flash-enabled Club Penguin comes in at #4, and PR-savvy SecondLife ranks at a lowly 10. It's quite an eye-opening list for those who believe MMOs are all swords and dragons *. Check out the entire list over at GigaOM.com

Other Director news: Director Survey

There's a semi-official Director survey that's been put together by Charles Parcell. The results will be collected and given to Adobe, who is currently hard at work on Director 11.

Take the Director Survey now
*: If you're got the hardcore-mindset that a game can't be an MMO without 3d dragons and swords, check out the excellent free Shockwave game Sherwood Dungeon, and my interview with it's creator.



Safari for Windows: Apple doing unto others ...




Safari for Windows... what PC developers have been doing to them for years.

Safari for Windows is out. And so far, I'm not liking it. I am a PC user, but I own a Mac machine as well and I've used Safari on it a fair amount.

So what am I hating about it? First and foremost, Apple broke the golden rule that every PC software developer that ported to the Mac was shamed for doing: Apple has forced their OS's s look/feel and UI conventions onto another OS. Take this screen shot of the Safari for Windows Preferences panel:

Safari for Windows Continued

DRM phobia and its impact on games




I'm worried that DRM phobia is going to have a negative impact on gaming. Specifically indie games and casual games. Because contrary to what a lot of popular consumer-friendly websites want you to believe, not all DRM is bad.
Rocknor's Donut FactoryI'm talking about DRM that enables try-before-you-buy, pay-as-you-go, and rental models. Try before you buy is an absolute boon to the user. Things absolutely sucked for games before it. TBYB allows a person to actually play a game (or a tool, or a service) without having to shell out money for it, to see if they like it. Continued



      
 

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