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

Our project GPX Cleaner has been turned down after the second round of the international software engineering contest SCORE 09. The project started for CMPS 115 Software engineering was presented and won the Dean’s & Chancellor awards. The document submitted as a memoir to the SCORE was not rewritten to meet their standards and eventually turned down.

I’m quite disappointed with the passiveness of the rest of the members towards that project that could had gone way further with a little bit of work. I learned a lot through that project. Not only technical and engineering skills but also how important are motivated people in order to accomplish something.

Coded for CMPS128 Distributed file systems with Ethan Miller at UCSC spring 2008
The image is from my final term project deliverable. It is the framework for a networked multiplayer pong game. Features a multithreaded client/server with TK GUI.

Python

Lisp bits and pieces coded for CMPS140 Artificial Intelligence with Robert Levinson at UCSC winter 2008

The image is a cut of a screen shot from gnuplot of the data file generated by my agent in Stocker, one of the assignments.

Stocker is a investing bot that operates in a fictional stock market. Using a set of exponential moving averages it tries to detect changes in the tendency of a stock red line and decides when to buy and sell shares cyan dots in the top and bottom of the graph. It includes the monitor, my agent and some random sample agents.

Lowball is a learning game where players get rewarded when certain conditions apply to an investing game. It includes the monitor, my agent and some sample agents.

There are also included some functions from previous assignments I used as reference.

Lisp

Coded for CMPS105 UNIX Programming with Scott Brandt at UCSC winter 2008.

C & UNIX

Coded for CMPS105 UNIX Programming with Scott Brandt at UCSC winter 2008, session by guest lecturer Michael Mateas Introduction to hardware-level programming and the C language using the Gameboy Advance as the reference architecture.

The screenshot is the GBA emulator running my program slow.

C & Game Boy Advance