This weekend I’ve been playing with stop motion.
This is a time-lapse video captured during about 8 hours by the the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk in Santa Cruz , California.

A day by the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk

Wanna hear something funny?
Let’s start with a couple of questions; Who thinks that knowing assembler is relevant for a web design internship? What about C and Python? What kind of web site (of a book publishing startup) is made using Lisp and Java?

Here is an internship description (non paid) from the web site of a startup I’ve interviewed with some time ago.

And here is an extract of my resume at that time:

I got my resume copied! (I highlighted some stuff).
A word of advice; If you ever found yourself interviewing with Dan H. run for your life!

As if it hadn’t been enough last time, this weekend I participated in another programming jam. This time using the Python web framwork Django. At least this time I didn’t participate alone. I tagged along Jeff Galper, a wonderful programmer interning with me at Createspace.

http://www.djangodash.com/

S’han anunciat els premis de la San Francisco bay area Game Jam. En la segona ronda, m’he classificat en primer i segon lloc!Se han anunciado los premios de la San Francisco bay area Game Jam. Me he classificado en primer y segundo lugar con mis juegosThe listings for the SF game jam are published. I secured first AND second places!

I’ve embedded the game in my various websites, I created a game development blog, I created widgets at Widgetbox, ClearSpring and iGoogle and I’ve emailed friends from all over the world. And looks like it worked!

I’ve received several e-mails from people asking about the development platform. I’ve received congratulations and more than one person asked me about Mac support (a call to the developers here!). I tried to reply all of them and asked them for their votes and eventually it paid back.

At the end of the game jam I was really disappointed with the results. I really liked the Brains game. When the popular choice opened I had big hopes and was expecting the top runners to be Brains, In Space It Only Rains Space Rocks and Shoved.

I guess that there were no incentives to continue Lava ball or Cement tower, in which I had seen a lot of potential too. Too bad. I was also disappointed at the other winning teams not pursuiting their creations. Bumper Bash had some fixtures but what happened to Save the boy?

I never really understood Lost soul but it has very polished visuals. I guess that the promotion through the development blog also helped there.

The voting for the People’s choice award for the SF Game Jam is open.

I’d like to invite you to play my games and vote for them.

Thanks!

http://www.wildpockets.com/bounceemdown

http://www.wildpockets.com/thetank

I’ve started a new blog about video game design using Wild Pockets

http://wild-pockets.blogspot.com

There was a prize to win and I had to try. I decided to give Silverlight a shot. I attempted to port my tank game. After some research, there was an appealing physics library and I got hands on.

Today, 4 days to the deadline I decided to pursue other projects.

I got a fairly good glance at the Microsoft approach to Flash and although interesting doesn’t appeal enough to me. Although the Microsoft surface is a good incentive, the low penetration of the plugin, the higher complexity compared to Flash and the tools were major turn downs.

http://www.valls.name/content/games/tanksilverlight

I’ll be updating my website, adding new stuff. I’ve just updated to Wordpress 2.7 and all of the plugins after 2 years of stanging broken plugins.

Last weekend I attended the SF Game Jam.

Here are two pictures of the games I developed. Not bad for one-man team in 24 hours, aren’t they?

Note: You will need to install the Wild Pockets plugin to play from your browser.

Bouncing ball game. Use the ball’s motion to bring the structures down.
http://www.wildpockets.com/bounceemdown

Miami!