Over the past week I’ve been working on a multiplayer Social Network game utilizing dimeRocker’s self-publishing features. I realized at the beginning of this project that web deployment of a game has a few ‘gotchas’ which can hang up your development and debug for several minutes if you don’t take some precautions. I’ve come up with some helpful suggestions to make your dimeRocker testing and web deployment as smooth as possible.
Suggestions for Rapid Web Development
March 8th, 2010 By TempestUnity 3.0 Announced
March 8th, 2010 By Tempest
Unity Technologies announced the highlights of the next generation of Unity. iPad. Android. Playstation. Beast lighting. Umbra occlusion culling. Unified Editor (one application, regardless of deployment target). Source-level debugging. More.
Summer 2010.
dimeRocker: Accessing Runtime Assets
March 5th, 2010 By TempestdimeRocker allows you to upload an individual unity3d file, or a zip containing at least one unity3d file. What else can you put in the zip? AssetBundle, texture assets, sound assets, etc. You can load in assets during runtime using the WWW class to make your load time less.
I’ll show you how to access these files when you include them in a zip for your dimeRocker game.
Read the rest of this entry »
I am Social.
March 4th, 2010 By TempestThe project I’m working on will not be revealed prior to GDC. It is a two-player game utilizing Unity’s networking functionality and very simple game logic. It has been my focus of my work for the past few days, with a final day of bug checking and polish tomorrow (Friday before GDC). It is a demonstration of both of Unity’s multiplayer and dimeRocker’s social publishing capabilities.
I drink from the Keg of Glory!
March 2nd, 2010 By TempestI drink from the Keg of Glory, bring me the finest muffins and bagels in the land!
I have created a twitter account, KegOfGlory.
While writing code all day, there are moments of exuberant celebration. All I need is a couple of sentences of explanation of this accomplishment which is something that looks odd in a blog. This is where Twitter fits in perfectly.
What finally made me decide to create the account was reducing my networking traffic from 25Kbps to 15. To someone unfamiliar with networking, this may not seem like much, but the project now runs much more smoothly. It’s all about the little victories. When I get these, I just want to exclaim, “I drink from the Keg of Glory!”
Now I can.
Status Check: March
March 1st, 2010 By Tempest
March.
February was by far the slowest month for Pasture Pondering updates in a long, long while. It’s unfortunate, because the last week has been one of the busiest weeks I’ve had in such a time, and this is just the beginning. I’ve successfully relocated from Hamburg, Germany to Vancouver, Canada. dimeRocker is preparing for GDC next week and the engines are on full.
The Slow Roll
February 23rd, 2010 By TempestI get home Internet on Thursday, but development is beginning again very slowly. Most projects are on hold because my dev machine is currently on the Atlantic, being floated over here. This next year will be quite a different pace than the last. I imagine all the projects I’ve started thus far as as a very large boulder and it’s just beginning to roll again.
Getting Settled
February 19th, 2010 By TempestWe’ve arrived in Vancouver, during the Olympics. I cannot really explain the energy and atmosphere of the city at the moment, but it’s quite exciting. It’ll still be another week until we’re settled, so please be patient. 
Mid-Month Update, Big Move to Vancouver!
February 13th, 2010 By TempestThis last week has had progress on a number of projects, all of which unfortunately will be on hold for about a month while my computer (along with the rest of my household goods) are shipped across the Atlantic from Germany to Canada.
dimeRocker has asked me to put the tutorials are on hold. The dR website (and service) is going through it’s next upgrade phase. I will try to put out a tutorial, but it won’t be the “final” that I’ve been working on.
Digory, my RPG, will also be put on hold, at least for a couple weeks. I will be putting up some more screenshots and a new demo video tomorrow.
‘Getting Started’ Tutorial Taking Shape
February 7th, 2010 By Tempest
My first dimeRocker tutorial is nearing completion. In the next few days, though, there may be some changes to the dR website, so I’ll be waiting for those to appear before releasing this PDF.
I’m contacting the dR staff to get some official and better quality art for their own logo/etc. I’ll also be passing a draft by them so I can make sure the tutorial is as accurate as possible.
This screen capture of the pages is a rough layout, as the copy isn’t final. It is broken down into five segments (Introduction, Facebook, dimeRocker, Unity, and Deployment).
It will walk you through all the basic steps to get your game successfully deployed. The dR functionality such as leaderboards, etc will come next.
