ben is on the inter.net

Day/Night cycle requires Day/Night music duh.

 Sup Blocks - Night Leap: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is for a long night after a long day.

 Sup Blocks - Sundown 2: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I made what I guess is my first for reals chiptune. It’s called “Beat It Out Of You.” It’s CLOSE to what I want in sup blocks, but not exactly right. That said, I think I’m getting to the point where I can make MilkyTracker do exactly what I want. This is SO much better than working in GarageBand or Logic to make this stuff. Man.

 Beat It Out Of You: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Supblocks needs a very specific sound, and it’s stuck in my head, and I’m going to have to finally learn how to write mods in order to create it. The garageband plugin I’d been using for sine wave music doesn’t really fit the bill anymore; it sort of crashes a lot and honestly I should just be doing this in a mod tracker, so I am. Currently learning MilkyTracker on OSX, and I might try out a few PC ones soon enough. I’d considered just working in CSound to program all my own sounds but it’s so unforgiving and I’ve honestly forgotten the syntax. It’s actually great to be in a tracker, writing music non-linearly. I’ll post samples once I have the thing I want.

Persona 4!

That’s right! Another Persona game is going to drop… someday. Persona being my favorite game series in which I have never had any fun playing, this is some really exciting news!

Check out more scans here.

It’s been hyped since it took IGF 2006 by storm and it sort of disappears for a while and them comes back and people are all like “hey it’s Braid again” and it still isn’t out. It’s really incredible that a six level platformer game can take years and years to make, but through it all the game always looks better. When I first learned of it, the team had yet to contain David Hellman, the man who made the game truly beautiful. It comes out for Xbox Live Arcade soon, probably in about a month I guess, and you should absolutely buy it when it comes out.

I went and nabbed some full resolution screenshots of this thing. Every last screenshot of this game feels like an individual painting, and, well, it is. At times I find them ugly but then I find them wondrous again, which to me is a real mark of success, as it spills over into how the game plays as well. This is a game where the designer has tried to make you examine what a platformer videogame really is. And, I feel, you’ll have no choice but to pay attention while playing Braid.

This is the most atmospheric game I have ever played. Astute readers of my blog will recall that this was one of my favorite games of 2007, and to be honest, it’s probably one of my favorite games of all time. And it’s absolutely free over at Nifflas’ site. You should play everything this guy has made, but Knytt Stories was the first game from Nifflas that I feel gets it so right it borders on wrong (even when compared to the original Knytt, on which this expansion game is based). I’ve never felt so relaxed and tense at the same time. Even now, six months after I first played the game, the music calms me down and the gameplay cheers me up.

Also, there’s a level editor, and people have made some wonderful things using this very simple but very potent game. Here’s what I’m talking about.

So two weeks ago, apple got lots of street-cred for “democratizing” iPhone software development. I am writing today to tell you that they have not done this. So, they gave the SDK away for free. Awesome! Now you can compile applications for the iPhone for free! Unfortunately, you can’t sign the applications and deploy them to an iPhone unless you join the iPhone Developer Program (which costs $99). Without the ability to deploy, you’re limited to using the iPhone emulator on your mac. And this emulator can’t run OpenGL applications or emulate real world use with things like data transfer rates or use the camera or use multitouch or really any of the cool features on the phone itself. It’s a pretty good emulator, but it’s FAR from the same as the real phone.

The thing is, they don’t even tell you explicitly that you have to be a Developer Program member in order to run applications on the phone… You just get a “no connected devices” error in XCode (which should take a few hours to download and install), and then you have to look through documentation to see why you’re getting that error (”is your device plugged in via USB? Have you tried another USB port?”) until you ultimately breakdown and read the full iPhone Developer documentation and see that the iPhone can only run signed applications (again, no indication that you can only sign applications unless you’re a Developer Program member).

So you go to apple’s developer site and try and enter the program, because hey, why not, maybe that will work… I did this two weeks ago. I got a message saying that they’ll update me on the status of my enrollment request soon, and that as soon as I’m in the program I’ll be able to sign applications and deploy them to the phone. Well, they updated me today:

Dear Registered iPhone Developer,

Thank you for expressing interest in the iPhone Developer Program. We have received your enrollment request. As this time, the iPhone Developer Program is available to a limited number of developers and we plan to expand during the beta period. We will contact you again regarding your enrollment status at the appropriate time.

Thank you for applying.

Best regards,

iPhone Developer Program

That’s mildly infuriating! I’ve waited two weeks to be told I will no longer get more information soon, but instead, at the appropriate time.

So be warned dear reader, it seems that Apple still holds all the cards in this game; you won’t be making anything for use on actual phones until they decide you’re allowed to do so!

UPDATE: in the past few days, apple has updated their site to say “The iPhone Developer Program will initially be available to a limited number of developers in the U.S. and will expand to other countries in the coming months.” Before, it only mentioned that it would not be available to other countries. Boo on them. When XNA launched its Xbox 360 capabilities you could run games on the 360 on the first day, and Microsoft never approved nor declined applications (you just paid and then you had the rights).

I finally picked up that last issue of Y the Last Man today and I just mowed it down. I have to say, I’m reasonably depressed right now! It was, in my opinion, an extremely good ending to a series that was pretty good most of the time. I’ll have to pick up the trades at some point so this can live on The Shelf instead of in The Box. There are only a few comics that have made me really FEEL something. It was a really courageous way to end the series and still leave everybody involved with a significant amount of dignity (most notable, our author, Brian K. Vaughn).

However, now I’m kind of bummed. I went to the comic store today and picked up the last issue of Y, the last issue of Cable and Deadpool (which I read for the hahas), and what I think is the final “monthly” issue of Astonishing X-Men. Other than Fables, I’m not really addicted to any monthlies right now, and I think this is strange, since when I got back into comics 5 years ago something like Y or Fables or whatever was starting up every couple months, and right now there’s nothing that really feels like it’s so well written you should read it instead of a book. Bummer.

Jack vs. Fat Momma, originally uploaded by bburbank.

This is a picture of her punching Jack in the face!

Megacon was, as usual, decently entertaining and way too crowded. George Lowe (voice of Space Ghost) wasn’t doing any announcing this year, and that was kind of sad. But I also met Adrian Pasdar (a.k.a. Nathan Patrelli from Heroes a.k.a. The Only Brother Charcater On TV That Appears To Be Gay For His Brother Character) and I got him to sign something “To Ben: Brothers Rule!! Best Wishes.”

So the thing runs OpenGL. I’m really, really excited. This is my current Technology Plan:

1. prototype games in XNA
2. port my core XNA libraries to cross-platform OpenGL stuff (this is funny, since much of my code in my XNA codebase started as mac/windows C++ code that I used back in school)
3. port the good games over to the OpenGL codebase
4. distribute games on windows via XNA or OpenGL, on 360 via XNA, on Mac via OpenGL, and on iPhone via iPhone OpenGL which I assume is going to be pretty close to Mac code.

I for one welcome porting code across multiple platforms and languages! I’d really enjoy making free games for people available on all those platforms!

Also, XNA will almost definitely continue to be my lead development platform, since it’s totally easy mode for cheaters.

UPDATE: just remembered that XNA games can run on the Zune!