Older blog entries for ShredWheat (starting at number 12)

My brother is throwing a "Mario Party Party" tomorrow, as it comes out for the GameCube. Should be a fun time for all. I think these types of games could be astoundingly fun if playable over the internet. Lag could be a problem with some style games, but i think if you implemented the right sorts of games people wouldn't even notice.

Entered into the next 48-hour game programming competition from LudumDare. That sure makes for an exciting stressful weekend. This time I feel pretty confident in putting in a winnable entry. I won't quite say I will win though, there are some talented contestants.

What is up with extreme programming newbies? On the mailing lists for my pygame project, we get all manner of visiting newbies. I really like the chance to help these guys out. Usually they will just "figure it out" at a reasonable speed and leave their newbie state, or they will run out of patience. Either way newbie problem is solved.

Lately we've had the most persistent of clueless newbies on the list. I'm not sure what the problem is here. First time I've seen someone who really doesn't seem to understand or capable of learning? I have a feeling we're a couple days from the "make or break" for this guy. Either he will learn or leave. Curious to see how it goes.

Finished the LudumDare 48-hour competition over the weekend. Managed to get something complete and playable together, which is great. Everything was pretty cool up until the last hour, and i nearly lost it to nerves. It's amazing how many loose ends there are to tie up.

Work, Sleep, and Life cost me way too hours from the actual competition time. Can't wait for the next one, hopefully i'll be back with a vengeance.

Voting the entries will begin any day now, I'm astonished at how many final entries there really were. It will take a bit of time to sort through them all.

After a busy and restful Father's Day I suppose I'm ready for another busy week of work. Been pretty full workdays these past few weeks, and I certainly haven't been close to my pygame. Seems the "regulars" are also busy doing their own things, as I don't see much of anyone in the #pygame channel these days.

Visitied a B.Dalton bookstore last night, expecting to see the latest Linux Journal. It turns out they didn't have much of anything and I left empty handed. A woefully limited offering.

I spent some time on my windows partition and played about 4 hours of the SimGolf demo. I was expecting a little more from it. A clever little game, fun too, but it seemed a bit abrasive around the edges. I might have even played a little longer but it locked up. Now it's uninstalled.

I've just learned that the latest issue of Linux Journal has a small reference to pygame. The article is about an effects compositing package, completely unrelated. Nonetheless, there is still solid mention of my project, along with a small sample program to animate boxes. Tonight some lucky bookstore shall receive my funds.

June 2 had over 1,000 visitors to the pygame.org website. Very exciting for a humble project manager. So far things are smooth for the latest 1.5 release, and now OSX packages are on their way.

I spent all of yesterday creating SolarWolf 1.1. I haven't had as much fun programming in quite awhile. I can't say enough good things about Python. Even after using it for these years, I am still surprised at how productive I am when using. Marvelous language!

So far no bug reports on Pygame 1.5. Excellect.

smooth sailing for my release. Gentoo already has 1.5 packages included. Debian and FreeBSD should be following suit by this weekend. Sadly no word yet on anything for OSX.

At this point I'm pretty excited to get back to my own game projects. I'll probably release a small update for solarwolf, then get back to work on my bigger plans.

Oh, and I've nearly finished up my article for py. I'm very pleased with it, but I've been scouring it for problems many times. Last night I finished up what must be my 6th draft.