Upcoming Panels (September 2017)
Anime Weekend Atlanta, September 28-October 1, 2017 RPG Maker Scripting Crash Course – Learn the basics of customizing your RPG Maker VX Ace game using Ruby scripting. Otaku Board and Card Gaming – A...
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RPG Maker MV Scripting First Impressions
I started looking into RPG Maker MV to update some of my VX Ace scripting panels and posts, and… it’s different. If you’ve read some of those posts, here’s a few things that might help with the...
View Article“LINQPad Cookbook” slides and samples from CodeStock 2018
Here are the slides and sample code from my presentation “LINQPad Cookbook” at CodeStock 2018. (Sample code should contain test data and all necessary DLLs.) Slides (Google Slides) Sample scripts (zip)
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Four ways to handle UI text in Unity
While converting some old 2D Toolkit-based Unity code to plain vanilla Unity recently, I ran into a conundrum: Unity’s got great support for standard font formats, but still isn’t quite up to par with...
View ArticleUsing a Kindle Fire as a demo device for gamedevs
I’ve been readying my demos for the Knox Game Design booth at the Knoxville Gaming Convention, which includes setting up some new demo tablets. Having used a Kindle Fire for demos a before, I feel like...
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Stupid Unity UI Navigation Tricks
A few months back, I played around with (yet again) rebuilding a half-finished Metroidvania-style game I’ve played around with off and on over the years. One of my goals in this experiment was to use...
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Running a Board Gaming Event: Intro
Five years ago, I was offered the chance to run analog gaming for Hamacon, a small anime con run by some of my friends in Huntsville. My only qualifications were (1) I had played tabletop games at...
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Running a Board Gaming Event: Your Toolkit
Over my years running Hamacon, I built up a Google Doc I called the “Hamacon Analog Gaming Bible.” These first few posts will be an adaptation of that. The first section is my packing checklist, so...
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Running a Board Gaming Event: Setup and Teardown
The next section of my “Hamacon Analog Gaming Bible” is a setup and teardown checklist. There’s nothing revolutionary here, but it’s helpful to remember a few things that will make your life easier...
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Running a Board Gaming Event: Game Check Out
If you’re running a free play board game library, you’ll need to have some sort of check-out system. It doesn’t have to be complicated–and it’s better if it’s not–but there’s a surprising amount of...
View ArticleRunning a Board Gaming Event: Remember Your Contacts
I updated one section of my “Hamacon Analog Gaming Bible” after every event: a list of people who had run something or otherwise provided content to the event. (This is the primary reason I’m writing...
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Running a Board Gaming Event: Scheduled Games
One of my main goals for Hamacon analog gaming was running events. This is typical when you’re talking about CCGs (tournaments) or RPGs (one-shot adventures), but I wanted to extend this to board...
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Running a Board Gaming Event: Running RPGs
Successfully running an RPG at a convention is an art form (one I haven’t mastered). It’s loud and everyone’s under tight time constraints. (Dire Bear Adventuring Co. did an excellent job running...
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Running a Board Gaming Event: Intimidation Factor and Name Recognition
This is a bit of a tangent on something I touched on in the “Scheduled Games” and “RPGs” posts. Have you ever played Takenoko? It’s actually a fairly beefy game. There are three types of goal cards,...
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Running a Board Gaming Event: Cards Against Humanity
Yes, a single game merits an entire post, because there’s a pretty good chance that this game will be your event’s problematic fave. I’ll be honest, I liked Cards Against Humanity. Liked, past tense....
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Running a Board Gaming Event: Games You Might Not Have Tried
RPGs Golden Sky Stories: I first learned about this game via a Japanese RPGs panel at Anime Weekend Atlanta, and immediately bought a copy because I loved the concept so much. Then I gave it away,...
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Ludum Dare 46: Procedurally generating potted plants in Unity
For Ludum Dare 46, I created a very simple tamagotchi game called “Potted Plant Simulator” in Unity (you can find the code here). We kicked around this idea for “Keep it Alive” at the Knox Game Design...
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Recording a panel video with free software
After MomoCon moved online, I had to record a video for my panel, The Joy of Game Development. Since this was a live coding demo, I needed to capture my screen and vocal narration. To make it feel...
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