I was talking with a friend who is still trying to convince me that playing World Of Warcraft is a good lifestyle choice (as opposed to, say "dedicated husband, father, software developer, blogger"). Kidding aside, spare time is really my only stumbling block here, it's not as if I have something against heavy gaming in general (though I do recoil from the idea of having to pay a periodic subscription fee, I'd rather spend some time on a single-purchase game like Bethesda's Oblivion that's all about "me"). Read the rest of this entry ...

§282 · September 14, 2006 · Entertainment, Games, Life · Comments Off on Games vs. Life ·


Via Arve, the Opera Web Applications blog talks of how the Opera 9 Browser has made extensions to the canvas element specifically for authoring games for the browser. Read the rest of this entry ...

§242 · March 29, 2006 · Games, GDC, Opera, RIA, Software, SVG, Technology, Web · Comments Off on Opera Extends Canvas ·


We attended the third and final Web-Based Games Round Table session hosted by Brian Robbins at the GDC this morning. It was focused on the production/design aspects as opposed to the commerce and community issues of the previous two sessions. Read the rest of this entry ...

§241 · March 24, 2006 · Firefox, Games, GDC, JavaScript, Software, SVG, Technology, Web · Comments Off on GDC Trip 2006: Part Four ·


I decided to take my SVG Solitaire game and make it into FreeCell, the game that comes with Microsoft Windows. Click here to play. Requires IE+ASV, Firefox 1.5 or Opera 9 TP2

It took roughly 30 minutes to change Solitaire into FreeCell, then over 1 hour to debug stupid/silly errors. I was pretty tired last night, but that's probably a pretty good breakdown of the software development process (X minutes to design/code, at least 2X to test). Of course it still probably has some minor bugs here and there (please let me know) and I know the layout could use some work. Very playable in IE+ASV, but dragging cards is still pretty slow in Firefox 1.5 and Opera 9 TP2.

CLICK HERE TO PLAY FREECELL

§232 · February 24, 2006 · Games, RIA, Software, SVG, Technology, Web · Comments Off on SVG Time Waster Game: FreeCell ·


I came across Jamie's blog after he left a comment on my SVG Solitaire post. Apparently he's been a little busy with SVG too. If you've got 10 minutes and the Firefox 1.5 browser, why not go try a game of Worm SVG.

Great work! Feature Requests:

  1. Make it work in IE+ASV. Keyboard input didn't work for me.
  2. Make 'P' pause the game - useful if someone interrupts you at work, ahem...
  3. Make the worm and dots a little less blocky, more sexy, this is vector graphics after all. At least make the worm a "polyline" and use stroke-linecap="round". Or maybe a "path" so that you only have to change one "d" attribute every time you move the worm...
  4. Make it work faster in Opera 9 TP1 (if possible), see polyline/path idea above
  5. Make a server-side high score tracker (I've been trying to figure out how to do this in a hack-proof way myself)

My record (after 3 tries) was 200 points.


§212 · January 23, 2006 · Games, QuickLinks, Software, SVG, Technology, Web · Comments Off on SVG Time Waster: Worms ·