My Book

I'm back!  I took some time off because I was working on a book for Packt Publishing.  It took longer than I expected, so I am excited that it is finally done and in stores.  I have links on the left to the print and Kindle version although the print is a pre-order as the book has not been printed yet.  I hope you guys like the book--since it is my first book, I'm a bit nervous about how it will be received, but I think people that want a ShiVa3D introduction will find it useful.  It's a micro-book, so it weighs in at just over 160 pages, but the good news is that the list price is only $24.99.  Take a look and let me know what you think! 

Expect more content here and on my You-Tube channel as I finally finish up the project I started way back when.

Vid 37 - Blender level design

Finally have another video up.  I go into the basics of Blender and how we will use it to make levels.  It is pretty rudimentary at this point and I am definitely not a modeler, but it should get you started.

New video!

Just got done with another video and will be posting it tomorrow.  I got a very basic level layout done in Blender and imported it to Shiva.  I will tweak it with some twists and turns in the next video.  I also played with setting up another level in Shiva, so I will do a video for that soon as well.

New videos coming!

Everything is back up and running and I am getting a new headset/mic for Christmas, so expect some more videos.  I plan to jump into Blender and start designing levels.  Thanks for your patience!

Hooray!

I have uncovered a backup of my hard drive! I forgot that I had kept my backup in an eSata enclosure that I had removed from my backpack when heading on a business trip.  I left it on my workbench in the garage--shows you how often I use the workbench.  Anyway, it appears to be the most recent version of the game.  I should be starting videos again and will most likely start back up by jumping into Blender so that we can do some nice versions of some of our assets.

Recovering....

Ok, so yes, it has been an incredibly long time since I have posted.  My computer issues were more than I originally thought and I have lost all of my project files - including my backups (don't ask).  Luckily the code was backed up on github and I am reconstructing things from there.  Shouldn't be too bad really.  The code was the only serious work, the actual models were stock for the most part.  I also have been working on getting a Hackintosh up and running because I have had alot of people asking about iOS and I didn't have a good way to work on that since it requires a Mac.  Why a Hackintosh?  Simply because I can't afford to shell out the money for a Mac, but I do have access to PCs.  I purchased Snow Leopard for $30 from the Apple app store and now have it running on a Latitude e6410.  If anyone is interested in the process, I could probably do a run down of how I got it running and what my current issues are.  For the most part it just works.

Oh, and I went to Blackberry Devcon and have some exciting news about the direction that RIM is taking for their future platforms.  I was very excited to see ShiVa3D mentioned multiple times.  I will do a full write up soon!

Technical difficulties

I tried to make a video last night, but my game making efforts are being pushed into a virtual machine so that I can keep all of my personal stuff of my work laptop.  Hypercam2, which is what I use for recording videos, locks up my VM every time I try and run it.  I am going to try and find a replacement today.  The video I was ready to make was how no load Android apps on the Blackberry Playbook.  I know that this is not directly tied to the current project, but it is related because I need a device to test my game on and this is the only mobile device I have access to at the moment.