Tony and Paige.com

I’ve added a new game to my projects page, For now I’m calling it Tony’s Blocks. It’s a falling block game similar to tetris. Here’s a shot of it in action:

There are lots of websites selling independent games these days. Most are small puzzle-type games, not much more complicated than this one. Here are some of those sites:

GameHouse
Garage Games
Pyrogon
RealOne Arcade

The point of all this is, I have the programming skills to make a game that would sell on sites like these, but I need art to make a great looking game. I would love to find someone looking to spend a few evenings a week drawing simple 2D graphics. So, if you’re an artist looking to get involved with something like this, e-mail me or comment below.

Here’s the screenshot of my home computer. This shot is RedHat Linux with GNOME 2.0. I’m playing Final Fantasy 3 using ZSNES, while watching the second short film from the Animatrix. If you’re into anime and you haven’t watched any of the Animatrix yet, you should really check it out.

Naysayers often claim that there aren’t any games or multimedia applications for Linux, so I thought I’d dispel that myth.

Now I’m off to write a paper – spring break is over so I’m back in class next week.

Here’s quick screenshot of my desktop at work running Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 and GNOME 2.2.1. I’m just doing normal stuff – browsing the web, listening to DMB, and browsing files. The theme is called Ocean Dream.

I’m running RedHat Linux at home. I’ll try to post a screenshot of it tonight.

It finally happened. The Beta version of NeverWinter Nights has finally been released for Linux.

I’ve been using Linux off-and-on for a long time now – since the days of RedHat 5.2. Recently there have been huge improvements in Linux on the desktop. I really like the GNOME desktop environment. OpenOffice.org does everything I need as far as word processing and spreadsheets. Everyone knows Mozilla is the best web browser ever. Not to mention that I’m much more productive on Linux as a programmer.

So the question is why wasn’t I using LInux all the time. There were two things stopping me – Microsoft Money and games. I’ve recently started playing around with GNUCash, and it really has the potential to replace Microsoft Money for my needs. Now that NeverWinter Nights is available for Linux, I really don’t have any more excuses.

I’m writing this post from Linux (RedHat 8.0 that has been heavily customized), and I plan on continuing to run Linux until I find a compelling reason to go back to Windows. I’ll post some screenshots of Linux once I finish downloading NeverWinter Nights, so people who aren’t familiar with it can see what free software is capable of…

I uploaded my fifth tutorial last night. This one is called Managing Game States in C++. Maybe one of these days I’ll write a book.

I still have a little bit of cleaning up to do in the text of this tutorial, and some parts will need to be explained more clearly. But, the code should be good enough to explain exactly what’s going on.

I’ve already gotten some nice feedback on my Lua tutorials, and I’m interested in hearing what people think of this one.

I’ve added a new tutorial to the site. This one covers the Simple DirectMedia Layer. SDL is a library for creating cross-platform multimedia programs. If you’re interesting in learning how to write games that work on Windows, Linux, and MacOS, this will get your started.

The beginning of my projects page is online now. It lists a few things I’m working on right now, plus a couple of my first ever programs. I’ll add more screenshots to that page when I get more time.

Also, I’m finished with all of my tests this week, and I have a week off from school. I really like going to school, but it’ll be nice to not have to drive over 300 miles next week.

Very observant readers will notice a new link under navigation called tutorials. This is where I’m planning to put a lot of the things I’ve written about programming and system administration. There will be another new section added soon for my projects.

Right now, the only available tutorials deal with the Lua scripting language. If you’re a programmer interested in integrating Lua into your C or C++ programs, this will be wonderful news for you. If you aren’t, this will probably just give you a headache…