Ideas From Jorge

Restaurant Website

2009-01-16T15:32:00.003-06:00

I just built a Mexican Restaurant's website in town. It's Ninfa's. It was fun. It was also hard to not be hungry while I was working on it.

I took on the challenge of photographing the food. That was interesting. It actually went better than I thought it would.

When I started researching food photography, I kept seeing stuff like "If you can photograph food, you can photograph anything." That wasn't making me very confident.

And I remember from working at a Digital Photography Studio back in the 90s that it took all day, a food stylist, lots of light, etc.

Well, what I found out was that I needed to use natural light. I almost made the mistake of using my flash. I had them set me up at a table next to a window, I taped a large piece of white paper on the window to diffuse the light, and took along a stretched 2x2 foot canvas to reflect the light on the other side of the window. So the setup was: window, paper, food, camera, then the reflecting canvas.

I didn't figure out how to change the white balance on my camera, and didn't have time to research that, so there's a little blue cast on the shots.

I also photoshopped them a little (mostly just levels move and some dodging and burning). I added some steam to the fajitas by drawing white lines arbitrarily coming up from the food, then taking the smudge tool and massaging the lines, then playing with the opacity. I think they came out pretty good.

Oh, and the camera was on a tripod, and I messed with the shutter speed to get the lighting right.

You can see the photos I took on the website at www.ninfascollegestation.com.

There was actually another shot of some enchiladas with chile con carne on it, but it didn't look good...it was just brown and not much contrast. Truth is, as tasty as enchiladas are, they are very appetising to look at.

Anyway, it was a cool project. Maybe later this year I'll try to convince them to do some flash games on there.

Animated Gif Loading Thingies

2008-12-29T15:47:00.005-06:00

Check out this site:

www.ajaxload.info

It's where I got this:

And this:

Blogger may or may not be animating them, but go to the site and you'll see what they are supposed to look like.

I've used it twice already. One on this site: LifeChurchOnline.net and one on a site I am working on that's not up yet.

On the church site I used it during the onload:redirect. I built the page as a wordpress blog, but they needed to keep their domain name for server space. You'll see the little graphic while you wait for the redirect. (otherwise it looked like the site was just sitting there not doing anything while it redirected).

The other time I am using it is as a background image in a table cell, then on top of that table cell, I added another table, and that table has a script I found that changes the background image of the table cell.

The reason I did that was because I needed the image in the table cell to be wider than the width of the page so that as the page stretches for different resolutions, the image will still be there. If I added the image in the table cell, it forced the table to be the width of the image, but I wanted the whole site to be 100%...scalable.

But, the images were taking a little too long to load, and basically had a white area there while it loaded. Now it has a little loading graphic.

Here's a sneak peek of the home page of the site I'm building, but it won't be there forever. And none of the back end programming is working...it's still in the design stages.

Getting Spam through my PHP Contact Form

2008-12-23T14:14:00.006-06:00

OK, so I have a previous post that explains how to make a PHP contact form. Easy enough. It works great. Well, a few months ago I started getting spam emails from my contact form. This is lame. Basically, a bot has found my contact form, and it's been flooding my inbox with fake email addresses, and 5 or 6 url links in the message.

I thought I would append my initial post with what I've done to fix the problem.

1. Rename the form (add a "2" or something) Like this: before=contactForm.php; after=contactForm2.php. Which means you will need to make sure the path in the html form is pointing to the right place.

2. Add a "hidden" field in the contact form.

Like this:
<input type="text" name="email2" style="display:none" />
<input type="hidden" name="redirect_thanks_url" value="http://www.yourdomain.com/thankyou.htm" />

I put it between the last text field and above the submit button, but it doesn't matter where you put it...in fact, we might all help defeat spam bots if we put them in different places and even name the fields differently. In this example it's "email2"...see in the code above, and also in the php code below.

3. Add this php code to the for script (which you can download from the other post I talked about).

if(isset($_POST["email2"])) {
if(!empty($_POST["email2"])) {
# THIS IS PROBABLY SPAM
header("Location: ".$_POST["redirect_thanks_url"]);
exit();
}
}

You'll need to add it somewhere in the code inside the main opening and closing php code, make sure you don't put it inside another function. I put mine right after line 12 in the script mentioned on the other post.

What it's doing is basically telling the spam bot that there is a field to fill in. Bots are attracted to fields. So we attract it with a label like "email2" or "message" or something that's not already in use, but still attractive...not something like "honeypot" or "spamtrap".

It's hidden from humans, so if it's a human filling out the form, the script checks to see if the field is blank. If it's not blank, the script tosses the submission, but redirects to a thank you. I read that some bots wait to see if the redirect goes to an error page or not, then will try again.

Now, it's possible that spammers will teach their bots to look for "hidden" fields and not fill them in at some point, but then we can come up with something else.

For the time being, this helps.

Again, the contact form on the previous post still works just fine, but I'm afraid it's just a matter of time before a spam bot finds it and starts spamming you.

Hopefully you remembered where you got the script in the first place and checked back to see if there was a solution.

What a pain this spam thing is. It's like a battle of escalations and counter attacks. Kinda fun, just annoying and time wasting.

I looked into some CAPTCHA solutions but it was really difficult to implement, and most of them cost money. (CAPTCHA by the way means "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart"

Hope this helps.

jorge

New Christmas Game Called "Ball Hanger"

2008-12-16T15:20:00.002-06:00

Last year, some of you may have see my "Bobblehead Nativity" Flash toy thing.

Well, this year, I've gone and made another Christmas game. This time it has to do with hanging balls on a tree. Check it out.

And have a safe and wonderful time with your friends and family.

Stay tuned this year for more games on my website. I've got some puzzles, a couple of "shooters" and some other things I'm working on.

Oh, and do you have a cell phone? Check out my free ringtones. Free...like a Christmas present. Yay.

Jorge

iPhone Game Idea

2008-10-05T21:22:00.004-05:00

I don't have an iPhone, but I thought that with the accelerometer and GPS, that this idea or an idea like it would not be too far off. I don't think it's there yet, but I think it's close.

I saw that there is a compass app you can download, but the compass is not an actual compass. You actually have to know wha time it is and where the sun it, and I assume it calculates the date of the year and maybe even GPS location to figure out where north is. That's cool.

My idea goes a bit further.

My idea is a sort of "virtual" place you can go to.

You'd start playing the "game" by finding a large parking lot or open field or something like that and setting your center point (assuming you are in the approximate middle of the area you've chosen).

Maybe you can choose a 25 foot diameter or 50 or even 100.

So, you hold the phone up in front of you and it becomes a "window" into this virtual space. If you turn right, the image in the phone displays what is to the right, etc.

So, think about a hedge maze where you are stuck in the middle, and if you walk into the hedge, you lose points or it resets you to the center or something.

Or, what about a Counter Strike or Halo type game where you are hiding around buildings and shooting aliens or whatever...maybe you can use the camera button as the trigger.

Or what about a mansion where you have to find clues...maybe by taking pictures of objects in the rooms.

In reality, you could have a virtual 3D "Missle Command" or "Space Invaders" Type scenario where you hold the phone up toward space and defend your planet by shooting them out of the sky.

What about a "Search and Rescue" game, or a "Treasure hunt/Metal Detector" game, or a mine sweeper game. Maybe even where your friends can hide a text message or a picture or something somewhere and you have to find it.

It seems like once the technology is there, there would be many possibilities.

What about a "seeker" where maybe you are in a mall and you look for other players by looking through your phone...and you can see through walls all the way across the mall. Sort of like a laser tag or something.

Maybe I'm jumping too far ahead. But it sure sounds fun.

Anyway, just thought I'd put it out there.

Someone hurry up and make it.

I guess we'll know someone has invented it when we hear about people running into trees or parked cars or sides of buildings.

Jorge

Three Really Interesting Things

2008-08-27T14:30:00.002-05:00

I came across something today and it lead me to a few other things, you know how that ol' YouTube gets you that way...you can spend hours clicking "related" videos...what a great idea on their part.

Anyway, the first one is about a sculptor (Theo Jansen) who might be a modern day DaVinci. He makes these kinetic scultpures that "walk" using wind power. This is more than just art, I think:

The next one uses what seems to be an iron liquid or something called Ferrofluid, and when magnetic waves are applied to it, it reacts in a really interesting a beautiful way.

And the third one is a cute little dancing robot named Keepon that has quite a few moves programmed into him, and he reacts to the different sounds of the music, as well as things that excite him and things he doesn't like.

What an interesting time we are living in...

Mashing Multiple Feeds into One Feed Using Yahoo Pipes and FeedBurner

2008-08-25T16:38:00.004-05:00

OK, so, why I found this was because I was looking for a way to make a feed from a Facebook Group on Praying for our pastor, and then figuring out how to post it to a Wordpress Blog (see the sidebar). (update: I took it off...had second thoughts about this because anyone can post whatever they want on the Facebook Wall...that might not be approrpiate to have on the website. I'll have to rethink this.)

Well, I figured it out...and, something else in the process.

I found a way to make one feed from multiple feeds, and it was a cool process. I used Yahoo Pipes, and I really liked the interface. You drag boxes around and connect the boxes with little "wires". It's really cool. I'm posting this YouTube video because it explains everything you need to know to do a basic mash-up (it's from techbays.com).

You can see the mash-up I did of my 4 blogs on the sidebar of this blog.

So, let's say you are running a blog about underwater basket weaving, and you daily read blogs about pool maintenance, basket weaving material supply warehouses, SCUBA gear gadgets, and eCommerce shopping cart building for crafty websites, and you think your viewers want to view this wonderful information themselves, well, you can mash-up all your favorite blogs, create a pipe, burn your new pipe using feedburner, and add the new feed into your blogs sidebar.

There you go...a reason to use this information.

Have fun.

jorge

Making a YouTube Video with iMovie

2008-08-12T10:20:00.003-05:00

I've just recently jumped on the YouTube Train uploading a few videos here and there. I'm on a Mac, and I have iMovie. I like iMovie, it's fairly similar to FinalCut, Premier and even the AVID software (well, without all the cool stuff you can do with those other apps). But it's linear editing, and once you get the hang of it, it's fine for simple editing. I'm just dropping clips in and using transition effects, titles and adding music...simple stuff.

Anyway, I found a site here that explains how to make a YouTube video that works really well, it's basically what I'll explain below.

A couple things to know about YouTube is that there's a 10 minute time limit, and a 100Mb size limit, and the ratio for the movie is 320 x 240 pixels.

Knowing that, here's what you need to do )oh, I'm using iMovie 5 (HD):

1. Main Menu, file, go to "share"
2. Compress movie for: select Expert Settings, click "share"
3. Name your movie, select where you are going to save it to
4. At the bottom, Export: Movie to MPEG-4, then click "Options"
(NOTE: the next time you do this, if nothing needs to change, there will be an option to chose "Most Recent Settings" underneath the "export" drop down where it says "Use:")
5. New dialog box:
File format: MP4
6. Click the "Video" tab
Video Format: H.264
Data Rte: 2000 kbits/sec
Optimized for: Download
Image Size: 320 x 240 QVGA
Preserve aspect ratio: checked
Select: "Fit Within Size"
Frame Rate: 30
Key Frame: Automatic
7. Click "Video Options" button
Restrict Profile(s) to: Main
Encoding Mode: Best Quality
Click OK
8. Click "Audio" tab
Audio Format: AAC-LC (Music)
Data Rate: 64 kbps
Channels: Mono
Output Sample Rate: Recommended
Encoding Quality: Best
9. Click OK
10: Click Save
11. Wait
12. Upload to YouTube

That's it. That will get you a pretty good quality video. Here are a couple I did for my wife's Pet Portrait Painting. Here's a painting of a dog, and here's a painting of a cat.

I thought this would be a great way to market her website. I took pictures of the painting while she was painting it (trying not to get in her way too much), and then made it into an animation.

Basically, I grabbed the folder with all the pictures in it, and dragged the folder into the place where the clips go...at the bottom. I selected them all, (the duration of pictures was already set to 1 second) and clicked the transition to crossfade and clicked apply. That added a cross fade to all the pictures. The I added titles, dropped that in at the beginning and the end, and made the last picture last longer by dragging the end of it to the right. Then I added music, faded the sound out at the end, and that was it. Pretty simple.

I think YouTube is a great way to promote her website. I've been wanting to do this for a while now, and I think I'll do it whenever she paints something.

My 4 year old stuck her head into one of the pictures while Leigh was painting the cat. She's so funny.

My wife's website is dogonawall.com. She paints pet portraits using acrylic and canvas. You send her a picture of your pet (and some money) and she'll do what she does. Check out the gallery on her site...she's really good.

Jorge

Derren Brown and How Advertising Works

2008-08-07T14:15:00.002-05:00

My dad sent me this. Wow, I am utterly impressed. Derren Brown apparently knows how to "suggest" things to people, and get them to believe stuff that's not true. He's using several techniques, but what it looks like is that he breaks unconscious patterns, presents commands, uses hidden words as suggestions and distracts.

This video I'm presenting has to do with a couple of advertisers that Derren "hires" to come up with something for him in a short amount of time.

What I think is really cool here is that one of my teachers a long time ago told me that art is stealing. What he meant was that everything we create comes from our memories, and our memories are a collection of things we've seen, heard, read, whatever.

Now, I believe (contrary to what most people try to convince me of) that there is in fact original creations, original ideas, and never-before-seen inventions or works. Sure, maybe they are built using memories of things that have been seen, but I believe individuals can take an idea farther than it has ever been taken.

Now, this video shows that we are highly suggestible, and as visual artists, even more so. I am most definitely always on the lookout for interesting things. Like variations in repetitive things, graffiti, logos, websites, flowers...anything.

It all goes in, then flops around in there for a while, then comes out sooner or later.

I'm going to be watching some more of his videos here.

My MTV Engine Room Audition

2008-06-27T10:34:00.004-05:00

I posted my MTV Engine Room Audition video on YouTube here!

The deadline for submissions is June 30th, and filming starts somewhere around the 14th of July...apparently they will notify who will be on the show by the 10th of July.

jorge

Yahoo.com $34.95 Domain Renewal is Not a Hoax

2008-06-20T09:39:00.004-05:00

It's not a Hoax. I called and they told me that yes, domain renewals after July 1st, 2008 will be $34.95. That's too bad. I am transferring my domains to godaddy.com.

---

This is part of the email I received on June 19th.

Important note: Beginning on July 1, 2008, Yahoo!'s annual domain renewal price increases to $34.95 per year.

Here's why I was thinking it sounded like a hoax:

1. There is no mention of it on the Yahoo website. I'm on hold with them right now and I'm going to ask them (1 hour and 40 minutes later). I will post what they tell me here. (no one's blog or news article is saying anything official from yahoo.com, everyone is just bashing yahoo.com).

2. (from the yahoo.com site): As long as your service is active and not past due, Yahoo! will automatically renew your domain registration (and pay the associated renewal fees) at the end of each term.

3. This part of the email is fishy: We're writing to remind you that it's time for the annual autorenewal of your service. I say that it's fishy because "autorenewal" means "automatic". That's what it's been this whole time. I don't ever get an autorenewal notice.

4. When I go to manage my domains on yahoo.com, they all say my renewal cost is $12.95. And although the email says that the price goes into effect on July 1st and won't be seen until after July 1st, it just doesn't make sense.

5. Why would yahoo.com do this? It doesn't make sense. Unless godaddy.com and all the other registrars are going to have to do it too, but I can't find anything that says that. Verisign increased prices at the end of last year, but not this high. ICANN is steadily going up too, but again, not this high.

6. I searched the yahoo.com small business help site using "domain renewal $34.95" and nothing came up. Nothing about the specific price. I even searched "Yahoo!'s annual domain renewal price increases to $34.95 per year." and nothing came up.

7. Yahoo.com is still selling domains for $1.99 for new first time users. OK, that's a loss leader...so if GoDaddy.com, but this is a direct quote from their site (on June 20th) $ 1 .99 /1st year for Yahoo! Domains ($12.95 / year after).

I'm just saying that this sounds like it could very well be a hoax by some yahoo.com hater, who wants to hurt yahoo.com.

I know that "sender" addresses can be "forged" and made to look like it's a legitimate company. I get fake ebay and paypal emails all the time.

I only have a few domains on yahoo.com, and have transfered a domain from them before and it was a total pain to do it, hopefully they have changed some things to make it easier (I noticed it's quite a bit easier to find the authorization code...that's nice).

jorge

I Might be on MTVs Engine Room

2008-06-18T15:29:00.005-05:00

Wow, well, I did something kind of on a whim. I entered an MTV reality show casting call. It looks like it has to do with designing and being on a team of international artists and designers, and then competing against other teams. I'm now going to do some research on their websites (MTV Engine Room, SuPak's Blog) because I received this today:

Jorge, Thank you for entering the Engine Room casting call. We checked out your work, and we're strongly considering you for the show! As a top contender, we'd like to encourage you to upload some more samples of your work on our casting site. Not only is it better for us to evaluate all the narrowed down entries in one place, but in addition, by uploading your work, your portfolio will automatically be eligible for a chance to be selected as a weekly audience winner in accordance with the Official Rules should you not make the show. If you choose not to upload any additional works, this won't be held against you as we narrow down the contenders.

The casting call deadline is June 30th, so please respond as soon as you can.

Thanks!
- Engine Room Casting Team

I can't tell if this is a form letter or not, but wow. I'm kinda trippin'. Maybe everyone gets this email. Maybe so that more people start talking about it. Maybe I'm just skeptical. I'm still excited.

I sent in some examples of website designs, some of my wallpapers, some music, just anything I had that I thought would catch their eye. I guess I did just that.

The deadline is June 30th, and I'll know by July 10th if I've been chosen. If I'm chosen, I will be off to New York for a Month. That's a long time. I'll have to invest in a webcam or something so I can hang out with my family. Skype's the way to go, right?

Crazy.

Redneck Trailer Flash Game Nears Half a Million Plays

2008-06-04T16:09:00.006-05:00

You remember that flash game I submitted into the JayIsGames.com flash competition. Although I did not win, It was picked up on a "non-exclusing" basis by AddictingGames.com and in about 2 weeks, has gotten almost 500,000 plays.

This is amazing to me. See my Redneck Trailer Flash Game here!

Sure, the game is silly and it's no action arcade game, but it's getting plays. I was told that the average play time for the game was around 10 minutes. That's pretty good. In fact, the website likes that stat better than the amount of plays.

The game is rated and reviewed by members of the website and it hasn't moved much from about 60% like it and 40% don't like it.

It's really great to see the comments. Some have reviewed it as "best game ever". That's pretty funny.

More of my Original Flash Games here!

jorge

How to Make URL Hyperlinks in InDesign for PDFs

2008-05-30T10:23:00.002-05:00

OK, so there may not be too many opportunities to do this, but I have a client that publishes a newsletter through PDF, and they need their email addresses and urls to be live links.

I found two ways to do it. One way is through using InDesign's "Interactive" options. Here is an in depth, step-by-step tutorial on how to make URL Hyperlinks using InDesign (it's pretty easy) but here's the run down:

1. Highlight the text you want to be the hyperlink (you will need to color it and underline it or do something to it or it will just look the way it looks and no one will know it's a hyperlink)
2. From the Menu, go to Window, then Interactive, then Hyperlink
3. Click the little New icon at the bottom of the pallette
4. Select URL in the type field and type in the URL (http://www.domain.com -or- mailto:emailaddress@domain.com)
5. Select Invisible rectangle and none for the highlight field
6. Export to PDF, make sure to check the Include Hyperlink button on that first screen

That's it.

Now, here's another way.

That first way is handy if you want to have the link read something other than the actual URL or email address. (you know, like link as opposed to http://www.goycodesign.com)

If you want to display the email address or URL and let that be the link:

1. Highlight the text
2. Underline it
3. Color it (blue or whatever)
4. Export to PDF

That's it. You don't have to add a "mailto:" or an "http://" or anything. Nice. Either Adobe Acrobat is smart and sees the link with the underline or InDesign does something.

Either way, it works.

jorge

My Original Flash Game Did Not Win

2008-04-07T11:12:00.005-05:00

Well, I feel like I'm not good enough, my skills aren't up to par, everyone is better than me, etc. whatever.

Not really. I'm fine. I'm happy for the winners of the JayIsGames.com Competition. Sure, a win would have been nice. I was really just hoping for hits to my Graphic Design Website...and I got them. (I really wanted the CS3 software license).

I had put MochiAds on there, so in three weeks I have gained about $20. That's fun. Tricked Out Trailer ended up getting 25,000 plays in three weeks. UpBug got around 8,000. That's pretty good. The winner of the "most played award" had like 1 million. Wow.

Both games are now in the MochiMedia competition...although Tricked Out Trailer is having some problems with the external movies...lesson learned. (they received over 200 games, so I'm not expecting to win this one either).

I learned quite a bit through this competition. For one, it's a lot of work to promote a flash game, not just building a complicated flash game.

I thought I had a chance with my game being funny, but I guess that doesn't carry as much weight as I had hoped.

The winner of the competition was a space shooter which was actually quite good. Similar to many games in that genre, but had it's own coolness.

So, I guess I really have to consider what I'm getting into next time there's a competition. It took way more time than I thought it would, but I'm not sure I would have been motivated to make a game like Tricked Out Trailer if there wasn't a competition.

So, to all of you that played the game, thanks.

Here's another one I've been waiting to release...it's just a simple Tic Tac Toe game, but it's cute. My 6 year old likes playing it.

Have a great day.

jorge

Flash Game Competition Update

2008-04-03T11:32:00.004-05:00

There's less than a week left in the JayIsGames.com competition #5. My two entries have been doing pretty well.

Tricked Out Trailer has been played over 20,000 times in just over two weeks. I expect it will get a couple more thousand hits before the end of the competition. The game was picked up by a couple of game portals (DigYourOwnGrave.com and Kongregate brought a bunch of hits). I'm pretty excited about the views it got.

UpBug has gotten over 7,000 plays...which is pretty good considering the game is pretty simple, and not potentially controvercial like Tricked Out Trailer. I'm planning on submitting this game to Mindjolt.com and see if it gets another round of plays...see what that does.

Tricked Out Trailer is a multi file game, which means it calls external movies during game play (the two mini games - skeet shooting beers and playing Monster Truck Poker). This causes problems with some portals. I could not get this game up on Newgrounds because of this, and I know that it would have gotten a bunch of hits there.

I tried to modify the code to make it so that I could host the external games on my server, but I couldn't figure it out. It kept messing up the score. bummer. I'm certain that would have bought me another 1,000 hits at least.

Newgrounds has been really interesting. There are so many people on that site every day, that within the first hour or so, each game I submitted would get like 200 views. That's pretty intense. The views drop sharply after a day, and then almost disappear after that, but it's a big deal to get so many hits all at once. Check out my submissions...there's probably a game or two of mine you haven't seen. I'll probably be posting more of my games there when I get some time.

Last week, the competition sponsors opened up a way to vote on the games in the competition. Here's the page where you can cast your vote by donating $1 to your favorite game. The donated money goes to the developer, and the game with the most votes also gets a $500 cash prize. That's nice.

I voted for BFD (Bovine Flatulent Defense). It's a good game.

So, if you haven't played my games, go play them. If you have, thanks (you can always play them again...if you played them early, I've updated both of them after the first week).

The nex t competition is the MochiAds/Gaia Online competition which is coming up on the 7th of April.

jorge

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Pilot a Robotic Bug Flash Game

2008-03-15T15:07:00.005-05:00

I've entered two games into JayIsGames.com casual Game design competition #5. My other game is a redneck trailer sim game where you trick it out with upgrades like Wheel spinners, spoilers and undercarriage neons.

The theme for this competition is "UPGRADE".

My Robotic Bug Game entry is a simple idea that got very complicated very quickly. In fact, I think I might have made the game a bit too hard, but maybe not.

It started as an "avoid the other bugs" game that got gradually harder by adding more bugs. It starts with a couple of ants, then some spiders, then some really annoying mosquitoes.

The enemies are not intelligent...they do not chase you, but there are a lot of them, and they seem to be random, but they are actually not. There are probably some players that will find the "safe spot" where no bugs will hit you.

So it started with the bug you drive around avoiding the bugs, and eating the "food" bugs. That's it. It was kinda boring. So I added a health system, where if you eat a food bug, the heath goes up, and if you get hit by a bad bug, the health goes down. I mae it start at like Health:20%, and then when it got to 100%, it triggered the "win" and it would go to the next level.

So then I decided that once the level was finished, the reward should be a newer faster bug, that was harder to kill and needed more food. So I built those, added more enemy bugs, and it still wasn't holding my attention.

Oh, and this whole time, there are also obstacles that make the whole thing like a maze, so I played with putting those in strategic places to make the levels harder.

Then, I wanted to add weapons. Not weapons that are attached to the robot bug, but that are on the field.

I made a nuke that you drive over and it blows all the bugs away for a second or two...giving you a little much needed breathing room on the 3rd and 4th level.

Then I felt like coming up with another one, but instead of a weapon, I made a little "incubator" I called it "Horde". Basically, you drive over that and 4 food bugs speed out of it. This can help when your health is low.

The third and last powerup is the plant remover. I called it "Hydro". Basically, when you roll over it, it takes away the plants on the field so they won't be obstacles.

Then I decided to make some of the plants where you can go under them...just to confuse things a bit.

I thought I was done. I made 4 levels, so the game could take about 10 minutes to finish. Oh, and I added a high score board (mochi Leaderboard) that tallies how many Robot Bug Vehicles you used to finish the game. The best possible score is 4 (which I still have not achieved...I think my best is 6 or 8 or something).

So then I though about a "Survival Mode". This is like that video game "driver" where like 6 cop cars are chasing you and you try to stay in front of them.

Well, I used the same idea, where you get a modified version of the "Stinkbug". I chose the stinkbug because it is fairly small (not like the cockroach) and not too slow. So I switched out the engine and added traction and navigation from the cockroach, and drop him in the middle of a mass of bugs. More bugs come out at 40 seconds, 80 seconds, and 100 seconds. There are a couple of nukes thrown in there for a moment of calm, but it doesn't last long.

Well, then I think now I have a pretty good game.

So the idea is you successfully pilot one ship, and your reward is to get upgraded to a higher performance vehicle.

Oh, and you have to do a flight check before you launch. This was a nod to the JayIsGames.com comunity, that seems to really be fascinated with "escape" games (search JayIsGames for "escape the Kitchen"...it's my favorite. It's not a complicated flight check, but you have to do it before you can deploy. (just click on buttons and switches to see what they do. Some are time toggle switches, some are press button and some are motion sensor buttons...you'll see. Don't get frustrated...it's easier than you think.

Oh, the "survival" mode has it's own high score system, capturing how long you stayed in.

Maybe in the future I will add levels, but only to add powerups and more enemy bugs. I didn't want to make the game too long because it's kind of the same thing throughout, and that gets dull sometimes if it's not a puzzle or something.

So, something I've done with this game is new for me, sort of new. I have created a game I can not beat. Well, I may have beat it once, but I have to build in cheats while I'm testing it, and then take them out for the launch. I've only created a couple of games like that, and it's funny, I always wonder what people do in those cases...maybe just get testers to test the heck out of it or something.

As far as coding goes, I think almost all of it is "HitTests". Pretty simple.

The owner of JayIsGames said that during the month that the games are being judged, the site gets over 1 million hits a week.

Here is basically what he said:

The site gets 750,000 unique visitors each month, and each competition
collection (they've had 4 so far) gets 1-5K views each day. The competitions
each got around 1,000,000 hits during the competition judging period (about
3 weeks), and this time (competition 5) is expected to "eclipse" the number
of previous visits because of some "viral" directions they are taking (ie. letting other game portals host the games simultaneously).

I hope my games get played...I hope people visit my website as a result of that, and I hope I get work from a few of those visitors.

Go play games...not just mine, play the other submissions too...these are brand new games by developers who worked very hard to get these games submitted in a very short amount of time.

Here's a direct link to the game on my website, and a link to the JayIsGames Competition page.

Oh, and that's my voice going through the flight check. I found an actual 777 flight check (the actual flight check sequence is really really long and complicated) and got some ideas from it.

jorge

Redneck Trailer Game

2008-03-15T14:35:00.005-05:00

I have entered a flash game competition over at JayIsGames.com. I entered 2 games. One is a redneck trailer game and the other is a robot bug game.

I'll write about the 2nd game later this week.

The theme of this competition is "UPGRADE".

The redneck trailer game is called "Tricked Out Trailer" and the gameplay is like a sim game. You need to make money doing several things so you can buy upgrades to your trailer.

Upgrades you can add to the trailer are: wheel spinners, a spoiler, a new paint job, decals (like a flame job or a racing stripe), some undercarriage neons, etc.

You can make money by pawning something, going to work at the beer factory, skeet shooting some shaken up beers, playing poker, or buying scratch-and-win game cards.

There are a few fun little things you can play with, like: you can adjust the antenna, you can knock out the christmas lights, and a couple of other fun things.

I really have a good feeling about this game. I think that it could win, although it probably won't.

This is where you come in. There are several ways to win. Most of the big prizes are judged, but one of the prizes will be determined by counting up how many plays a game gets.

The reason why I started making games was to get people to my business site. This is still my ultimate goal...to get some customers, be it for web design or game development. Either way, that's great.

So, if you go and play my game, click the "send to a friend" button and send it to a few of your friends.

Play some of the other games too...I am sure there will be some great games submitted.

As always, I learned so much making this game. I have a BUNCH or "Movie Clips" that are "watching" the score. For example, the scratch and win icon on the left has a watcher script on it that says: If the cash equals less than $5, then hide the icon, but if the cash equals $5 or more, the show the icon.

More compliated was the pawn shop items. Once one is sold, the code tells a "watcher" to equal "1", so if when the items Movie Clip enters the frame, it looks to see if the watcher says "1" or "0", and then shows it or hides it.

There are watchers watching if you have purchased an upgrade, if you have gained a "Golden Beer", If you have purchased the gun, and even if it's day or night.

The other huge thing in this game is that it calls external swfs. The skeet shoot and the poker game are stand alone games (sort of) that get called when the frame gets to a point once you've clicked the icon.

I also added MochiAds and Mochi Leaderboards (a high score system). The high score I chose to focus on was how much money was left over after you get your 6th "Golden Beer".

It's a pretty fun game, I think so far, everyone that's seen it hasn't been offended, and has actually laughed at least once. I think one of my friends actually shot some of his drink out of his nose while playing it.

It's not action packed...it's a sim game, but it's still pretty fun.

Please go and play the game at jayIsGames. I am also hosting my game on my server, and it counts toward the "Viral" score I talked about earlier.

Please let me know if you played the game. Do you think it might win?

jorge

How Much Can You Make on a Flash Game

2008-02-11T16:37:00.000-06:00

It's the big question: How much can I make on a Flash game? I've recently started actively trying to get my games to make me some money, and it's actually been working.

I've started adding MochiAds to some of my games (which gets me pennies at a time).

I've also posted a couple of games on FlashGameLicense, and that's actually brought in a bunch of offers for several of my games.

I've been researching what is "a good offer" and how much can I really make on a game. Considering if it's a game that gets "dugg" and on the front page of several big online gaming sites, it looks like it's possible to make several thousand dollars...just for building a flash game. That's pretty good.

MochiMedia posted this great article about Will Hankinson and his game "filler". It's a great article, explaining quite a bit about how much is possible to make on a flash game. This is exciting.

Here are my games, just in case you are curious.

Maybe one day I'll make a game that blows up.

jorge

New Flash Game - Ladybug's Robot

2008-02-01T13:03:00.001-06:00

OK, so I had been wanting to make a flash platform game, side scroller type, and I also was liking the "escape" games. Escape games are a game where you have to click around the screen and either gather stuff or set things in motion. Here's an example of a good one called "Escape the Kitchen", and one that I made for the Meineke Auto Repair Shop in San Antonio called "Escape from the Garage".

So, I kinda mixed the two genres together and came up with this one. As the game progressed, I started thinking about why the ladybug would be building a robot, and ultimately what would happen once the robot was finished.

I was inspired by this book called "Robot Dreams" by Sara Varon that I got at the library (really great book), and a story I wrote for my Children's Stories Blog called "Robotic Ladybug".

Well, so you are a ladybug and you go around exploring the environment. You've got some bugs to eat, other bugs that you have to get rid of, a pond to jump over, some clouds to bounce on, a snake to watch out for and of course, a robot to build. The story is revealed once the robot is activated, so don't give up.

Play Ladybug's Robot

My research found that ladybugs have no enemies. In fact, the give off a bitter tasting and foul smelling substance by rubbing their legs, so that's what you "shoot", but you have to get the "bullet" first...you'll see.

I used a platform engine by Nathan Stockton, but then modified it to suit my needs.

One of the new things (for me) in this game was adding a volume slider for the music (you'll have to look around for it).

I also wanted to make it more dramatic, and I found some great soundtrack music from a guy named "Edgen" on Flashkit.com. A credit to him is at the end scene.

Another fun thing was the animation of the end story movie. Notice the part where there is something coming down (don't want to spoil it). That's an animation effect I learned fro watching Anime cartoons. Mostly just the background is moving, but it makes it look like it's moving fast. That was fun.

The robot area has a hit test with this code:

onClipEvent (enterFrame) {
if (this.hitTest(_root.char.hit)) {
_root.robot.nextFrame();
_root.char.hit.gotoAndPlay("off");
_root.char.gear.gotoAndPlay("gearWait");
}
}

Basically if the ladybug is in the "hit" mode and it hits the robot hit area, then it does three things 1) the robot's movie advances one frame (revealing the next part of the body), 2) the ladybug's "hit" mode turns off, 3) the "gear" goes to wait mode.

Each object that the ladybug hits, calls a _root.char.box.gotoAndPlay("gearFall"); which tells the gear to come down so that it's ready to trigger the robot movie again.

Anyway, enjoy.

Oh, I also started putting MochiAds on my games (the little ad that displays while the game is loading) so that I can start making some money. I'll write about that later.

jorge

You should be very conscious whilst selecting domain names. Moreover, website hosting can also have a strong impact on your advertising model and therefore, for getting good web development services always look for a skilled webmaster.

Einstein Law Meets with SEO Experts - Watch this Video

2008-01-22T10:34:00.001-06:00

This video series is fairly heavy on the promotion of Einstein Law, but it's not difficult to see beyond that and take home quite a bit of "meat".

This series was filmed at the Webmaster World 2006 in Las Vegas.

Einstein speaks with Danny Sullivan on subjects like White Hat vs Black Hat practices, the future of internet video, search engine results, content, linking strategies, Link Farms, being sandboxed and Website size.

Einstein then speaks with Jake Baillie about local searches (as opposed to phone books), relevancy, quality of results, TrueLocal, website spam, link trading, content resource, call tracking and vertical searching.

Then with Greg Niland about the difference between a good SEO company and a bad one, link popularity, the sandbox, search engine updates and how it affects websites, long term vs short term results, quality content and video.

Watch the video series here.

Really informative stuff. It's fairly long, so play it in the background while you work.

Enjoy.

jorge

The best networking certificate is the ccna certificate and Microsoft certified systems administrator or mcsa certification is also growing in scope. So, if you are planning to appear in any Cisco exam like ccnp or ccie you have to practice online sample papers.

Free Tech Event, Bryan Texas, January 26-27, 2008

2008-01-10T10:10:00.000-06:00

I just got this, and I'll be attending.

BarCampTX

Check out the proposed topics:

Proposed Sessions

* User Centered Design/Development
* Rich Internet Applications (RIAs); pros and cons of using; technoligies: XHR, Flex/Flash, etc.
* "Design is ____" (v2) a presentation on the definition of design, its importance, and how to use it to its fullest potential - Roby Fitzhenry w/ 372
* "What is branding anyway?" - Roby Fitzhenry w/ 372
* "Do's and Don'ts in starting your own business" - Travis Ward & Roby Fitzhenry w/ 372
* 'Tips on communicating with customers for designers and web developers' - Brad Dressler w/ bcd design
* CSSBurner.com 's Toolkit (Markup and CSS)
o Getting Started (planning)
o Recyclable starting points
o The Techniques We Use the Most
+ Rounded Corners
+ Sticky Footers
+ Corner Pinning
+ Holy Grails
o Coding Practices ( or Our Clients Love Us for This)
* Optimal lawn mowing paths w/code! - Jeremy Kelley
* Meta-resources: Whats next for RESTful web services? - Ben Burkert
* Software testing practices - Ben Burkert
* 'What We Can Learn About Marketing "The Conversation" From The Online Adult Entertainment Industry' - Johnny Citizen
* Memorial Service for the term 'Web 2.0': let's put the term 'Web 2.0' to rest, have it live on in the term "Web", and keep cranking out cool new sites with better interfaces, user contribution, and open APIs.
* "MVC and PHP" or "Hey, those Rails kids had a great idea!" - Daniel Cousineau
o ...or any other PHP or Server-Side design topics, I would prefer to have a nice session on MVC even though most people (everybody except for Rails coders, and even some Rails coders) don't know the MVC design pattern at all.
* PEAR has done the work for you: Quick Forms is my hero - Daniel Cousineau
o While I would pick the above presentation over this one, a good 15-30 minute presentation on the wonders of Quick Forms (PHP only, however anyone else can get ideas and write their own libraries for Rails, etc.) and how much it speeds up dev time.
* Financing your startup 101 - Josh Tabin
* Any tech startup related issues (equity, financing, business model, etc.) - James Lancaster
* Managing the "Omni-Me" - James Lancaster
* Mobile journalist (MoJo) setup using (mostly) open source tools with podcast-type tips from a former radio anchor - Jonny Dover
* Code, values and culture: A discussion of what's important and what it means for the Web's architectural path. - Ethan Moore,

Awesome! Maybe I can present something...I don't know...what do I know.

jorge

New Flash Game Competition (#5)

2008-01-03T14:34:00.001-06:00

JayIsGames.com is having another competition, and the prizes are getting better.

Prizes:

1st place:
o $3,500
o (1) Adobe Flash CS3 Professional license
2nd place:
o $1,750
o (1) Adobe Flash CS3 Professional license
3rd place:
o $1,000
o (1) Adobe Flash CS3 Professional license
Best use of competition theme:
o $1,000
Viral award:
o $1,000 - most game views as determined by Mochi Media's MochiBot statistics for the 3-week competition judging period.
Audience award:
o $500 - determined by JIG community popular vote.

Deadline:
Sunday, March 3rd, 2008 at 11:59PM (GMT-5:00).

Theme:
Upgrade

Here are the winners from the previous competitions. I was checking them out to see if there's a "type" of game that keeps winning, but there's not. Maybe a "quality" of game.

Competition #1 Theme: Click Drag Type
Competition #2 Theme: Grow
Competition #3 Theme: Replay
Competition #4 Theme: Ball Physics

I'll be entering with something. Not sure what. I'll keep you posted.

jorge

Excellent web hosting can promise you to give an excellent web design, however, for increasing your search engine ranking you are required to apply good search engine optimization tools.

Plan B - When Your Clients Don't Pay

2007-12-28T16:08:00.000-06:00

So, last month I reported my new plan to get my delinquent clients to pay, well, it didn't work. I didn't even get a response from them.

So I send them phase 2, and the email was a bit more dramatic:

All you owe me is $375.00. (I've attached the invoices)

And if you pay me now, my kids will have food on the table and maybe some presents for Christmas.

You can pay with a credit card online by going here: http://www.goycodesign.com and clicking on the paypal pay now button.

Have a wonderful day. And remember, just $375.00. That's nothing for you, but it's my electric, phone and water bill for this month.

jorge

This picture is the picture I attached to the email. This actually got a response. They thought it was cute, and the boss would talk to the accountant. And why wouldn't it get a response...she's so cute. I actually couldn't get her to make a sad face...even her sad face looked like a smile.

Well, it's been a couple of weeks, and still no check in the mail. So I've sent Phase 3. I'll report on that soon. Still haven't figured out what Phase 4 will look like...maybe a flash game. Hmm.

Hope your clients are paying.

jorge

Crazy Animals Flash Game

2007-12-27T15:26:00.000-06:00

I've just finished a little Flash game and posted it on my website. It's an easy game...well, it starts out easy, then gets more difficult.

You choose an animal from either a pig, a chicken or a bee, and you keep your cursor away from them. Ever 5 seconds, another animal is added to the field. Like I said, it gets harder pretty quick.

The pig is the slowest, and the bee is fast.

I've had the idea for a game like this one for a while now, but finally found the solution I needed. I needed to be able to have the animals appear in a random place on the field so that they would not all follow the same path. Otherwise, they just bounce off the walls and floor.

There is one problem in that I don't know how to check for where the mouse is and them offset the placement of the next animal. If you play this enough, you'll see that every once in a while the next animal will appear right on top of your cursor and it will end the game...sorry.

I had some trouble with the animals not going away once the game finished, but I got that figured out with a simple:

removeMovieClip(ball);

The original animal instance name on each level is called "ball".

I always learn new things with every game. This one was no exception. At the end, notice where the final "timer" number is displayed, well, I wanted to display how many animals (score) were on the field when you "lost".

So I took the "timer" variable (_root.timer), and I needed to divide that by 5 (remember that every five seconds a new animal appears). Well, I got that working with this:

score = Math.floor(_root.timer/5+1);

Oh, the "Math.floor" thing is ActionScript for "Round Down". The score was displaying with a decimal (like 8.3 or 2.7) and I needed it to display a round number. (thanks to flashkit forums for help with that!)

Also, you'll notice that I needed to add "1". I had to do this because when you start the game, one animal is on the field, which means that there is not animal accounted for in the 1st 4 seconds.

The animal noises on the title screen were made by my 2 year old boy.

I drew these cute little animals in Flash, and you'll be seeing them again soon.

The title font is "Loki Cola"

Enjoy the game: [Play Crazy Animals]

jorge