Intel Build of Black Cube
An Intel build of Black Cube has been released. This makes the game much more efficient on Intel-based Macs (almost every Mac sold from 2006 onwards.) Other minor changes:
- fixed a problem that could cause sounds not to play
- updated contact information
The original PPC build of Black Cube is still available for older Macs.
Black Cube Postmortem Available Once More
Back in 2002 I wrote a short postmortem analysis of my game Black Cube. For quite a while the uDevGames contest postmortems were unavailable at the iDevGames website, and even now some of the older ones are missing pictures or proper credits, but Black Cube's at least has been restored.
Even the incomplete articles can be worth a look. I remember learning for the first time about SWIG and using Python as a game scripting language from the Kiki the Nanobot postmortem. And fans of the Freeverse game Kill Monty might get a kick out of the Kill Dr. Cote postmortem. At a minimum, anyone entering a game development contest in the future might want to read a bunch of these to see the ways each developer handled the time pressure, and how the successful ones were able to reach the finish line with something resembling a fun and complete game. (Some success factors I've noticed over the years: teams with well-defined divisions of labor; passion for their game; scope control; and plenty of play-testing and feedback from the community.)
Housekeeping on old uDevGame entries
I updated the website and contact info in the Readme files for my three old uDevGame contest entries- Black Cube, Asteroid Rally, and WordBeGone.
I considered updating the 3d Brick/Paddle Bash readme's as well but I don't currently have a way to recreate the old binhexed Stuffit archive file format that really old Macs prefer. So I'm leaving well enough alone for now.
New website
Welcome to MindTheCube's new website! In addition to a nicer appearance, it now includes a blog, RSS news feed, and a Contact page for reaching me. (Speaking of which: if you notice something broken or missing in the new website, please let me know!)
News about my games will be shown on the home page and the page of specific games. Occasionally I will also write articles about programming and game development- these will appear solely in the blog section. If you are interested in either of these please subscribe to the news feed to be notified when I post something new.
Enjoy!
Pawns Being Used In Classroom
This made my day. I just stumbled on the fact that Pawns was used in a course in an international school in Geneva! Looks like a teacher was using it to introduce young students to thinking logically and using trial and error, as a first step towards teaching them programming. Interesting!
If you look carefully at the banner image you can even see a glimpse of some kids playing Pawns there:
Students pondering Pawns