This week I have finally made a commitment to eating healthier. My approach is a little different as I still intend to eat the kinds of foods I have always enjoyed. I am not on a gimmicky diet, and I sure as hell am not going vegan, but I am making better choices, and getting creative.

It’s only been a day and a half since implementing this change, but I already feel more energy, and the food I’ve been eating is pretty frikken good. I’ve decided to track my progress here on my blog, and share any of the recipes I come up with during this transition.

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Ingredients:

1 lb Lean Ground Beef

2 Cans of ‘no salt added’ diced tomatoes

1/2 Tbsp garlic salt

1/2 Tbsp Italian seasoning

1/3 Cup Spinach

1/4 Cup chopped red bell pepper

Calories: 48 per 1/2 cup serving

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Ingredients:

1/4 Cup Spinnach

1/4 Plain Yogurt

1 Tbsp Dale’s Roasted Tomato Dressing (gives it a bit more kick)
OR
2 Tsp red wine vinnegar (gives it a slight tanginess)

3/4 Cup Dry-curd cottage cheese

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/* Edit

I realize I type-ramble in this article and some of the concepts are probably way over people’s heads who haven’t tried doing multiplayer games yet, so here’s the basic point of this post. We are making a kick-ass multiplayer server and will be providing affordable hosting services for people who want to do some cool multiplayer games. Because we want to make something developers will enjoy using, I’m hoping to get some discussion going. Ask questions about what we are doing… let us know what features you want… etc….

End Edit */

Any followers of my work, probably already know I have been working with my partner, Brendon, on developing a developer-driven multiuser communication system.

Our proof of concept server has been done for a while now, and has addressed several issues that are lacking in commercial servers like SmartFox, ranging from good multi-room support, and efficient packet management.

While version 1 of the server has had a good run, it’s also a bit of a frankenstein. It started nearly 3 years ago with simple features, and as we flushed out what we expected from a good communication server, we kept adding more and more until a monster was born.

With any monster, you get awesome power, and a lot of unpredictable results. Version 1 was no different. Random bugs, memory leaks and poor management tools have made it a bit of a hassle to work with, in spite the superior feature set.

With the version 1 features designed and tested, we realized we still had a lot more room for improvement, and some of our concepts still needed to be fleshed out better, and so we have started work on Version 2.

Sanguine Server is being designed with 2 goals. The server itself is being designed to be superior to any other socket server currently available, and the platform as a whole is being designed as an affordable solution for independent developers who may not have the resources to verge into the realm of multi-user applications and games otherwise.

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While surfing around I noticed a few people had been asking about ways to move the camera around in their flash movies without using tweens.

I’m fully aware that there are some great solutions to this problem, but they may be a bit more than what people need, so I decided to whip off a very simple solution that can be used by entry-level programmers, or people with no programming background at all.

In order for this to work you will need to contain your actual animations in a movieclip. This is typically preferable to scenes anyway, so most animators probably do this anyway.

In this movie clip, create a new layer for the camera control. Now all you need to do is download simple_camera.fla and grab the MovieclipCameraControl object from the library and paste it into the new layer of your movie.

Now, whenever you make a new keyframe and re-position the camera reticle, your movie will automatically pan itself until the camera is centered, or the edge of your scene reaches the edge of the stage.

If you are interested in how it works, read on.

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I’ve been asking people what they want to read about on this blog, and most people who are interested at all have asked me to write about my games and how I developed them. I only have one current game that is far enough along to discuss without fear of having the idea stolen, and it’s a game that has actually had a pretty large impact on my focus. As you’ll see, what started out as a simple game design ended up changing my entire site, and birthing a few other games.

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This article isn’t going to teach you how to make a game.
It won’t hold any super-duper scripting tricks.
What I want to cover is the basic thought and planning process I use to design a game.

Now in all honesty, I am FAR from traditional in my work habits. I juggle more designs then I am actually capable of building, I drink while I work and I cut a lot of corners. But I do have some traditional habits that I think are always good to abide by.

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So I got wordpress installed late last night, posted a first blog this morning and assumed I had found the easy-as-pie solution to get this new site up without having to do any work.

So much for that.

Firstly I didn’t want to take too much time familiarizing myself with the template system, so I looked around for a theme that was close to what I wanted, and found a few potential layouts. But I just didn’t see anything I REALLY liked.

After 30 minutes or so I said ‘fuck it’ and decided to start dissecting a theme that at least had a sepration in menus for pages and blogs.

SIX hours later I have some fancy stuff in the top menu and my header and footer templates are pretty much completely rewritten. And I haven’t even gotten into the individual pages yet.

I guess the moral is, there is no such thing as an easy way out when it comes to designing a site yourself.

Why the hell am I blogging?

Isn’t that something that only emo kids who need attention do?
That’s what I used to think. Then I was referred to Steve Pavlina’s blog.

Steve’s site is pretty much focused on self help and productivity, two subjects I never really had any interest in. I have a pretty popular website already called Psycho Goldfish Creative Media, and it makes enough money to pay the bills (barely), so up until now I have been pretty focused on that and never really realized I could be doing a lot more than I am.

Steve’s blog got me to realize two key things. Initially I realized I really need to build multiple sources of income rather than keep my eggs in one basket. Secondly I realized I needed to provide some kind of value to my users.

Now don’t get me wrong, I think PG provides a lot of value for people who want to play free games, and I’m working on adding some multiplayer and community stuff that will really amp the value up. I just needed something else to base a second source of income on.

My first thought was to fulfill an old dream of mine and start up an online magazine of sorts, possibly focusing on the promotion of web gaming. It would have the value of a game index, the insight of a magazine, and the potential to earn a little money in the process. But aside from some extra cash, I didn’t feel like there was any value in it for myself or the web game industry.

Then it struck me.

I can not even count how many ideas I have for game development. I have a ton of tricks I have learned over the years, and not enough time to apply them all. I feel like I have this library of concepts and information that is just rotting away and will be outdated by the time I ever get around to them.

What if, rather than making all these ideas and using all these concepts, I started my own blog and provided some information and inspiration for other people?

Over the years I’ve had my fair share of people seeking me out for help and advice with Flash games. I’ve always enjoyed helping the smarter people who know what to do with the advice, and I always feel bad that I can’t take the time to teach the less experienced people who ask for my help.

This blog would allow me to help a lot of people and hopefully provide some value to a lot of people. It’s not going to be a real money maker, but maybe I can inspire more people to make some innovative games and I can feature them in my web magazine.

Suddenly I find myself wielding a double edged sword, where I can build myself that second source of income, while at the same time, help the industry that I love so much.

So within minutes of these epiphanies, I registered a few domains, got a copy of wordpress and here we are.

If you are looking for flash help or advice, this is the place. If you are looking for games and gaming news, head on over to the all-new Web Game Magazine site.