This is one of those articles to which I am pointed that raises a number of very mixed thoughts and emotions within me. I’m not sure whether to be excited or appalled. To be perfectly honest, my initial thought on the matter was something akin to, “Sweet! Finally, someone is paying homage to one of the classics in this over saturated video game/comic book character movie run!” However, since that initial thought, the pendulum of my thoughts swung to the other extreme before finally settling to a somewhat acceptable happy medium.

Let’s consider the pros and cons for a moment, shall we? The biggest con is that there is absolutely no plot or story line to the game AT ALL. I mean, how often is Hollywood actually left with a completely wide open slate, given a drawing board as empty as space (quite literally) and actually come up with a respectable story? True, it happens from time to time with incredible writers (Spielberg and Lucas come to mind), but of all the space movies out there, those are by far the exceptions.
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As many of you are probably aware (well, at least the gamers among you), video game news giant Kotaku launched a campaign last week to offer a solitary individual not currently involved in the gaming industry a chance to attend and cover the highly anticipated E3 Expo with them this year. Donning my fanboy facade, I registered for round one of their contest and received word Tuesday that I had been chosen as one of the dozen finalists to participate in the big challenge.
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I have been working on some ideas for a TD game that would be both entertaining and original, and I feel that – with the help of a couple friends’ input – I’m on the way to something worth developing. Since I have already put together much of the “guts” for a TD game, I am hoping that I will be able to quickly put together a prototype in my free time. Ideally, once I have a prototype together, I will be able to find a sponsor to pay for development, and I would then be able to focus some solid time on the project, but that is a bit optimistic at this point, since we are still in the baby conceptual stage.

Without giving too much away on my idea, I’m going to try to cover some concepts and specific ideas that I have had to resolve in order to visualize different portions of the interface and interactions. The first thing I realized was, to fully succeed with the idea I want to implement, I would have to be able to support fairly large maps (in some remote cases, massive may be a better term). Having been a long time RTS (Real Time Strategy) player, I decided to take some cues from them and implement a similar map-handling system. Surprisingly, once things started falling into place, it was quite easy to tweak and get working to a satisfactory level.
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Well, those of you who know me in the least are aware of my passion for video games. I have, quite literally, been a fan of console and PC gaming for as long as I can remember. My parents will vouch for the fact that, on my fifth birthday — before I could read — I was situated in front of our living room TV set with our TI-99/4A on my lap, an open code book next to me, pecking character by character until I had basic animations appearing on the screen. I vaguely remember those details, although I can remember playing games like Parsec and Hunt the Wumpus, but the passion for gaming is still there to this day.

My focus, however, has shifted from simply being a placid gamer to wanting to delve more into the inner workings of the game development process and the gaming industry in general. Choosing web development as a career path has given me more of an insight into the principles that make games work, and I greatly admire those with the knowledge and fortitude to stick with it during the grueling development process, but I still have that burning desire to be more actively involved in the industry in some way.
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Well, I suppose it is high time to write my next entry. I never intended to take a two month lapse in writing, but then again, when does anyone plan to leave their blog unmanned for that length of time? Holidays, children and work all combined over the new year to make for a rather hectic time. I’ll address each of these throughout this post, so if it gets to be a rather lengthy read, I apologize in advance.
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