Today I spent most of my time working with Blender. The first order of the day was to learn all about lighting. Blender has a dizzying amount of options for this, but I'm not even sure I'll need any of it so I didn't spend a lot of time here. UNITY has its own lighting system, and I'm not sure to what extent I'll be able to use lights I make in Blender anyway, but I figured the knowledge would be transferable in a general sense. In any case, it is fascinating (and addictive) to just experiment with all the lighting options and see how they affect shading and such. You can really get some nice shading effects with different kinds of lighting. Here's just an example:
Cube with Lights
The next chapter was on Character Animation, and the author pointed out two different people-making tools you can use. Both were free in terms of cost: Make Human and Daz Studio. While you can try to make humans from scratch, these tools essentially give you an interface similar to those seen in games like Skyrim where you can adjust and tweak your face, nose, etc. The exciting part is that you can export your creations into Blender. I may know next to nothing about modeling and animation, but even I can use these interfaces and my combat mode looks a helluva lot more feasible.

Invertion: Is that GLADOS?I love Portal, and I love a good platformer. What do you get when you combine the two? Invertion! Go check out this awesome free game by my friends at HighUp Studio, game developers from Bogota, Colombia! My good friend David Arcila did the great artwork. The music is also excellent. I love it! Go play it now.

Dungeons & Dragons: Order of the Griffon for the NEC TurboGrafx-16 (via Retro Uprising)I'd like to provide the latest update to my list of working emulator and simulator sites for various platforms and games. All of these enable play directly within your browser, so there's no sticky business of downloading software and finding the necessary game files to get it all going. These are all great sites and we should all show our support. This is the "December 2011" edition of the list and, naturally, I'd love to keep adding to it, so suggest away. Here goes:

• 2600online.com - Play various Atari 2600 Video Computer Systems games
• Another World (aka, Out of this World; 1991)
• Armchair Arcade - Our own hosted simulations
• Atari.com - Play select Atari 2600 and Atari arcade favorites
• BBC Micro News - Parrot - News stories and a speech synthesizer directly from a cluster of BBC Micros
• c64s.com - Play various Commodore 64 games
• Classic Atari games on IGN
• Spacewar! (1962) emulation
• First-Person Tetris (NES version)
• Freearcade.com (Scott Adams section) - Play various Scott Adams/Adventure International text adventures
• Google Pac-Man - The popular browser-based re-imagining of the classic arcade game
• Play Halo 2600 - Atari 2600 interpretation of the popular FPS
• Virtual GameBoy - Play a huge selection of GameBoy and GameBoy Color games
• JEMU - Emulate and play on the Acorn BBC Model B, Amstrad CPC464, Dick Smith VZ-300, Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K, Sinclair ZX80, and Sinclair ZX81
• JPC x86 PC emulator - Play classic DOS games like DOOM and Linux demos
• JSGB - GameBoy emulator
• JSVecX - Play GCE/Milton Bradley Vectrex games in your browser
• Mocha - The Java Color Computer Emulator - Emulation of the Radio Shack Color Computer
• nintendo8.com - Play Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)/Famicom games
• Pica Pic - Play amazing simulations of classic LCD and related handhelds
• Play Infocom Adventures Online
• Retro Uprising - Play a wide range of videogame and computer systems (arcade, Atari, Coleco, Nintendo, Sega, etc.) in your browser and through a custom software interface
• Sandy White's Ant Attack
• Sarien.net - Play Sierra adventure games
• SC-3000 Survivors - Play Sega SC-3000/SG-1000 games
• Timex/Sinclair 1000 Emulator
• Virtual Apple 2 - Play Apple II and IIGS games
• Virtual Atari - Play Atari 2600 games
• vNES - Play Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)/Famicom games
• World's Biggest PAC-MAN - The World's Biggest PAC-MAN (really)

Mayhem: Play it now in your browser!Here's my game "Mayhem by Matt" now fully playable in your browser! Blast those planes, crush those blocks, destroy the mighty PLANE GOD OF ROBOT DEATH that waits for you at the end...!

Mayhem by Matt
The music in this version is by Kevin MacLeod. My old music wouldn't work because they were in MIDI format. I also made some gameplay and coding tweaks, particularly to the collision code. Enjoy!

Overall, the conversion process wasn't bad for this one...Mostly just cleaning up bad code from the original. I learned a lot of stuff making Jeepney Jeepers that I was able to apply here, though I still left some of the spaghetti--hey, if it works, don't fix it, right? Have fun! Just click "read more" to play the game. NOTE: For whatever reason, if you're on Firefox you may not be able to click on the "START" button below. Just hit your ENTER key instead!

Jeepney Jeepers: Multiball FTW!Armchair Arcade is pleased to present Jeepney Jeepers, the all-new game from Myth Core Productions, designed and programmed by Matt Barton with comics and graphics by Elizabeth Barton.

Aliens have landed in southeast Asia, and the only thing standing between THEM and humanity is...one man and his jeepney. Are you brave, fast, and just plain dumb enough to snap on that space-age laser prototype and defend the earth? Of course you are! So get your butt in that jeepney, yup!

• An homage to classics block-busting games like Arkanoid and Breakout but with a crazy twist!
• Blow up blocks, roast the invaders, rescue your fellow humans and--above all else--get to the last level and take on the awesome might of THE GORFINATOR
• Collect upgrades and unleash the unbelievable block-busting power of the five-pronged MULTIBALL
• Bust that crit bubble for the amazing SUPERBALL
• Bounce up them balls as much as YOU want, no more, no less
• Feelin' lonely? Bust out those poor little refugees for fun, fame, and profits
• Get the energy boost powerups and ram right through the blocks with your jeepney
• Surrounded? Don't panic, make THEM panic with your amped up car horn
• Twelve colorful levels with an awesome retro-arcade inspired boss fight
• Compete with friends and family for the honor of the High Score table
• Why ain't you playing this already?

Download this sweet mama right now!
JEEPNEY JEEPERS (version: 1.04b)

And if you enjoy playing this game, please leave us a comment below. It's man and womandatory.

Does Compute!I'm back this week to talk about the Five Games Every Designer Should Know. Read the blog post if you missed it. There's also quite a bit of listener feedback that covers such topics as why Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights aren't as good as Baldur's Gate, and why Portal isn't as unique as some people like to think. Enjoy, and feel free to comment below. Who knows, perhaps your comment will form the basis of my next episode!

Grab the episode here: Matt Podcast #3.mp3.
Post a review on iTunes.

Be sure to listen to Chris's episode first.