My apologies for the delay between this and my last post - I’ve been at jury duty for the last two days, was sick for about a week before that, and have begun the long, arduous process of moving all my material possessions from old apartment to new.

I’ve also been working my way through Fable 2 for a second time, having a blast playing co-op / horde mode in Gears of War 2, and slowly leveling Totino up to 80 in Wrath of the Lich King.

So yeah, I’ve been a little busy.

As I’ve made my way through all the new games though, I’ve been feeling more and more like getting back to some of my older projects and making them into something new, and better than before.  Chiefly, Hover Tank 3D 2 (as Yourself urges me to make a multiplayer mode where you steal resources from enemies to build up a base) and Falcon Squad, which I feel like I am almost ready to return to with a complete engine rebuild and graphics injection.  I’d also like to get that robot battle engine finished, so we can finally have a new competition over at Reflect Games.

I know I keep returning to these projects over and over, but one of these days…  well, you know.

Anyway, I’m going to get going so I can start moving more of my junk.  Just wanted to check in  and let everyone know that I’m not dead, just wasding through the mire of many planned, random, and seasonal events.  Thansk for reading, and I hope you are having a healthier November than I am!

So anyway, BlizzCon!  It was awesome.  My brother and I arrived in Orange County bright and early on Friday morning, picked up our passes, dropped off our luggage at the hotel, and made our way into the Anaheim Convention Center to see what Blizzard had in store for us.

The entire convention center was dark, illuminated only by multicolored lights and spotlights shining the Blizzard logo on the ground.  Various islands of booths, displays, and photo areas were placed around the floor, and much larger areas were sectioned off to house many rows of computers set up for people to try out all of Blizzard’s latest and greatest (Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, and Wrath of the Lich King).

In the convention center’s largest room, a massive hall of chairs had been set up for the opening and closing ceremonies, and for other announcements and forums where the audience size was expected to be large.  At the opposite end of the center, a smaller stage had been set up, as a special place for awards to be handed out to tournament players, as well as an alternate viewing area to the live events happening in the main hall.

Various other areas included a small elevated platform with a desk on the top, at which a few commentators would sit and deliver their take on the event as it rolled on (for pay-per-view viewers), two merchandise stores, a retrospective on past Blizzard games, a collection of concept art, a TCG / adventure game store and play area, information booths, and small bars, where drinks of all sorts could be obtained.  An upstairs room was also reserved for other segments of the conference, and huge screens were set up all over the convention center so that no matter what one was doing, the important stuff would not be missed.

You can view a map of the event here.

After a quick breakfast at the Rainforest Cafe (the only restaurant that was open at the time) in Down Town Disney, we arrived at BlizzCon.  My brother (Spencer) and I wandered around for a while just taking in the various sights and sounds.  We leaned over the low barrier to watch fans trying out Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 for the first time.  We gaped at the seemingly endless lines to get into the Blizzard stores.  And we checked out the display set up for Blizzard’s past endeavors in gaming, which included the Lost Vikings games, an isometric racing game, and of course, Warcraft.

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Soon my brother and I will be packing up and getting ready for what will hopefully be a fun two days down in Anaheim, as we attend BlizzCon 2008!

I’ve been so busy with work and other things over the last few days, I haven’t really had time to even think about it, but now that we’re a day before the event I’m getting very excited about going.  After only a short flight and a quick ride, we’ll be heading over to the Anaheim Convention Center and getting an early start on the long days Blizzard has planned.

I don’t have much more to say for now, other than I’m getting more excited as the event draws closer.  If you’re interested in seeing BlizzCon but weren’t able to get tickets, Blizzard’s apparently struck a deal with DirectTV for a live PPV broadcast, so you might be interested in that.  Either way, with upcoming games like StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3, it should be a great show, and I will be back to say more about everything when I can!

Monday mornings are usually a pretty groggy affair for me.  After spending all weekend doing what I want, staying up late, and sleeping in for long hours, getting up suddenly at the crack of dawn leaves me a tried wreck for the rest of the day.

Not so for this most recent Monday, however.  I woke up at 6:15 AM, bounced right out of bed, and making a break from my normal routine, landed straight in front of my computer.  BlizzCon tickets went on sale on Monday, and I had promised my brother I’d get us tickets for his birthday.  Neither of us have ever been, but we are both fans of many Blizzard games, so it seemed like a good idea.  I found my way onto the BlizzCon website, and from there clicked through into the Blizzard Store.

I logged into the Blizzard Store, navigated to the tickets, got a few errors on the way, but eventually made my way to the final checkout page.  I clicked ‘Purchase’ and watched the little Firefox wheel of dots start spinning -  I was mere seconds away from my tickets.

Or so I thought.

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Sad times are here again as the weekend draws to a close and the usual grind picks up again with a week full of work looming ahead.  I didn’t get a whole heck of a lot done this weekend, but as always, I managed to have some fun, so here I am to share my adventures.

Game Maker Robot AI Programming Competition

Though I haven’t had as much time to work on this program as I’d like so far, I have made some decent progress on getting the engine ready for a new contest.  First proposed a few days ago on the Reflect Games forums, I’m hoping the new robot AI programming comp proves to be a more fun replacement for the old, more involved contests.

The idea is that I will create a base application which everyone can download and play with - essentially just a room from top-down view, and a simple “robot” object - and anyone wanting to participate in the contest will write an AI for the robot that will compete against others’ creations.  Movement and attack variables / objects will be the same across all entries (I’ll be coding those in scripts), and once everyone’s AI script is finished, we’ll draw up a tournament tree, I’ll have the bots compete, and then record the results and broadcast them, via either YouTube or some kind of live Podcast.

One of the goals of the new competition format is to encourage creative coding without forcing entrants to commit to an entire game, which can be both difficult and frustrating at times.  I think that with an AI programming tournament, people will have more opportunity to show off good coding without being bogged down by the need for other assets, they’ll have a more interesting method of feedback (watching their bot compete with another, as opposed to a “secret” judging), and expansion of the competition can evolve more naturally - if the contest proves to be fun and engaging, we can add more weapons to the bots’ arsenal, more customization, etc.

Though it’s taking me a long time to get things rolling, I’m very excited about this project.  We’ve already got lots of feedback about how this competition should work - be sure to visit the Reflect Games forums to voice your opinion too!

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