A little more teaser of my progress on JsLive. Honestly, this video probably seems like less progress than the screen shots I put up previously, but it does demonstrate some things that static pictures cannot: "motion" and audio.

As can be seen by that video, the graphics have quite some major problems and will be my next area of concern. However, I did get jumping between scenario files working and, in theory, the entire game is playable. After getting the graphics to a place I can live with, I plan on rolling out the public beta for people to tinker with.

After Friday's more technical post, today I strive to show actual progress on what I've deemed to call JsLive.

Today I got a basic graphics stack implemented and working, though it's riddled with its fair share of bugs and is certainly nowhere near being feature complete (environmental objects, animation, etc). However, I'm having no problem running through entire scenario files having completed the first day in Kanon with no problems. But, on to the screenshots (note - the following where all taken in Chrome 12.0.712.0 dev)!

Because my ultimate goal is to have this working for mobile platforms, I've been testing against my iPhone (at least until I've got an iPad). Here's some screens:

I haven't yet implemented scaling to the device's screen size (the screen above was pinch-zoomed to the correct size).

I'm okay with the graphics stack for the time being, so I'm going to begin work on one of the last major hurdles with jumping between different scenario files. I'm hoping to have an open beta up soon and hopefully get some feedback from people with various devices.

Stay tuned!

Somewhere around the time I began working at Wal-Mart, I thought it would be a nice challenge to write an NES emulator. One of these days I'll release my mess of source code for that, but it was probably one of the most awesome programming challenges I've ever undertaken. So, why am I waxing nostalgic about this project from nearly six years ago? (warning - there's technical programmy talk inside)

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I'm pretty sure we can all agree that children's television nowadays pretty much sucks across the board, doubly so for anything that even tries to enter the realm of things educational. Why is it that if you're going to try to teach a kid something it has to be packaged in a brightly colored, make-the-kids-talk-to-the-TV-like-they're-actually-doing-something-and-then-proceed-to-talk-down-to-them package (Say MAP! What? I can't hear you? You gotta speak SPANISH, dipshit!). Well, I tell you what. Back in my day, we had AWESOME educational TV! Allow me a meander down memory lane...

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Snail mail spam is a pet peeve of mine, especially those damned credit card offers. My mom tipped me off some years ago that one can curb these offers by using their own self-addressed stamped envelopes against them to have oneself removed from their mailing list.

Using the power of a form letter, I've done this with great success over the years. However, I've been getting a little more personal and creative lately, putting my box of Rejection Crayons to good use. These are the latest in my wave of "stop the spam" mail campaign.

Incidentally, Squid Girl is an awesome show and you can expect to see my review come year's end.