StencylIan Bogost recently pointed me towards an upcoming project called Stencyl, which looks a wonderful tool for anyone like me more interested in game design than programming. It uses some technology from Scratch, but is focused on browser-based Flash games. They also promise to have plenty of free assets available for non-artists and musicians. It looks like a brilliant idea, and one I could use myself as well as with students. I applied for the public beta.

I can't seem to find any information about their pricing structure and what rights you'll have over games you submit to Stencyl, though I haven't dug deeply into the website yet.

I just saw this amazing video on Kotaku called "Making Metagun." It shows you exactly what went into making an entire game from scratch. Here's a link to the finished game, which is playable in a browser. As far as I can tell, it was built using Java and Eclipse.

Some fun news for Commodore 64 fans and enthusiasts--the latest beta for the Commodore 64 .prg generator, C64PrgGen, is now available for download! This nifty utility gives you a handy Commodore 64 program development utility for Windows. Put simply, you can type (or copy and paste) in your Commodore 64 BASIC or machine code into C64PrgGen and it will both assemble and run your code with a single click. C64PrgGen automatically generates a .prg file, which can run directly in your favorite Commodore 64 emulator or on the real hardware using the typical methods for transferring and running "ROM" files. Neat stuff and well worth checking out.

Check it out! Daniel Bienvenu contacted me to narrate a video for his latest COLECOVISION project. He is a homebrew programmer deeply involved in programming new titles for the classic Colecovision system. This title will be worked on throughout 2009 and hopefully debut sometime in 2010! Here is the resulting video, it is just one of a series of sneak peek teaser videos to get the word out on this exciting new project for Colecovision enthusiasts!

Exidy SorcererOne of the great things about writing a book is that you get to hear so many interesting stories. One of the best I've heard so far involves a very, very early game for the Exidy Sorcerer named The Wizard's Castle. Although programmed by Joe Power a few years earlier (in the mid 1970s), the game wasn't officially released until 1980, when it was printed as source code in Recreational Computing magazine. It's been ported to several other platforms (by Power and others). Eventually it was played by Derell L., who prefers to go by his nickname "Derelict." Derelict converted the game for Windows and added sprite-based graphics (you can download it here). Anyway, I had the chance to talk to both Joe and Derelict about their games, and have decided to print them here for your enjoyment! Note that I haven't edited these interviews--I didn't have to!

I'm impossibly busy this weeked with work (yes, days, nights and weekends at the new job!) and trying to get as much done with the book before Monday's deadline, but I just had to quickly release this press release for Adventure II: Limited Edition on the Atari 5200 SuperSystem from AtariAge. The homebrew was just released after a long, long wait, and from all reports it's been worth it. On top of that, this package also includes lots of goodies ("feelies" if you will), creating a tremendous value and opportunity for collectors and enthusiasts of the system, alike. There's only a few boxed copies left, so I suggest you hurry, hurry, hurry!

The press release:

THIS IS THE TEXT OF AN EMAIL I SENT TO MATT AND BILL. PERHAPS OTHER READERS WILL FIND IT INTERESTING.

Perhaps you gentlemen can help me. I saw Mr. Barton's article, "The Game of Dialog: Simulating Conversation in Games" from Sun, 09/03/2006 - 12:44 pm on your Armchair Arcade blog. I am a professor of linguistics and have developed patented NLP dialog software that has been largely ignored (though not richly advertised) by almost all game developers. I am presenting it at WorldComp 07 in Las Vegas at the end of June and wonder if you might no of game developers (serious researchers and decision makers) who may be attending that conference. I also think you might find the software to be a good article for your magazine as what the software can do is far beyond anything that was described in the review you wrote. If you have further interest I can give you more detailed accounts or previously prepared materials, but briefly stated the parser is developed from a theory of syntax created by myself and another linguist which we turned into software tools. As we use a very comprehensive technique, it makes knowledge bases by typing in sentences and then allows you to query that knowledge based with standard English questions. For example, if you type in

Search for the Stolen Crown Jewels 2: ColecoVision screenshotCheck out the following announcement from the ColecoVision Programming Yahoo Group... I already ordered my own copy of "Search for the Stolen Crown Jewels 2" for the ColecoVision:

The third annual 7DRL challenge is coming! What's a 7DRL? Why its the Roguelike communities answer to the annual IF Competition and the NaNoWriMo thats what!

The date for this years 7DRL is from March 10th to March 18th, you get 168 hours to write a Roguelike.

The rules are simple: