TomMannino.com

This is the first real public mention of the project that I’m working on:

http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/06/neopets-creator.html

Some blurbs:

Let’s say one player is sitting inside the MMO. He’s at a table in his own fully 3-D virtual house and in front of him is a chessboard. He moves a pawn, waits, and the opposing side moves against him. Only instead of challenging another player within the MMO, he’s playing against someone who is playing chess via a simple Flash application embedded into the website. Each of their moves is relayed to one another in real-time, and both receive certain levels of virtual reward for the activity.

Remember Snake? That game where you maneuver a squiggly line around a board to collect pellets in the hopes of extending your line’s length? If you don’t recall, check your cell phone. I guarantee it’s on there. The new MMO’s website will have a Flash game similar to Snake built into it. Instead of simply hoping for a high score, players maneuver the snake around the board in a hunt for pellets with the ultimate goal of making the snake come to life.

This blurb in particular made me have a heart attack:

Normally I’d be very cynical about a game relying so heavily on this sort of technological confluence — particularly given the hyper-adorable, kid-centric current state of Neopets — but assuming that these creators can actually deliver on the ideas they have for this game, it could be huge.

Because it’s quite literally my job to make sure these ideas work.

Press releases to follow :3

Wall-E was soooo very good.  It’s honestly masterful storytelling.  No spoilers but just in case:

Read the rest of this entry »

I love this game with all of my heart, hearing some of this made me smile. I played the CRAP out of the demo and wish I could fabricate some way to play this exact game multiplayer.

This is best seen in the story of Tony, the model for Max Damage and a willing victim of Stainless Games’ research. He’s the subject of an anecdote that deserves reproduction in its entirety.

“Tony was a kind of general handyman around, but also a nutter,” begins Buckland, before Hughes helpfully adds: “Absolutely mental.” Buckland continues: “We needed a reference for what someone getting run over looked like, so of course he was the volunteer nutcase and I was driving a half-ton Chevy station wagon at the time. There was a car park outside the office, so we went out there and drove into him repeatedly: he had a piece of cardboard stuck up his shirt, as if that would help. At one stage, Neil was driving, and Tony asked if he could floor it and hit him harder so he could clear the roof. Neil hit him at about 35mph and he went clear through the windscreen! The police turned up because they’d had reports that someone was being run over in a car park, but when they saw the camera and stuff they headed off.”

THE MAKING OF… Carmageddon : Next Generation – Interactive Entertainment Today, Video Game and Industry News – Home of Edge Online

I want to draw this dude with rippling muscles beating the shit out of the Warcraft E-thugs. Seriously, check out his answer:

Are you planning on playing games like Age of Conan and Warhammer when they come out?

I’ve already played Warhammer. It was called World of Warcraft. Age of Conan – that’s PVP. Wow, gosh, PVP – it’s pretty hardcore, PVP, isn’t it? No. When you played [older MUDs] you got killed after three months of playing, your character was gone. Yeah, hardcore PVP – yeah, we’re hard, aren’t we? We’re evil. No. You don’t know anything. I might have a look at it from a point of view of seeing what things – the class balances are like, seeing how they’ve implemented the – I really ought to write up a book on how to read a virtual world so that I have a vocabulary in order to explain it to people. But there are a number of things you can do with player versus player, and I want to see the way they’ve done it not because whether it’s cool or not but because of you chose that way. Now, why did you choose that way?

http://www.massively.com/2008/06/20/richard-bartle-on-how-hed-make-world-of-warcraft-better/

Flash Player 10 is out. That means cool things. It’s got new features and things that I have to poke around with. However I don’t have time at the moment, so I’m saving these links here to play with soon. Here, hold this.

Adobe Labs – Flash Player 10 Feature Demos and Videos

DisplayObject – ActionScript 3.0 Language and Components Reference

ActionScript 3.0 Language and Components Reference

10 + ActionScript APIs Mashing up Web 2.0 the RIA Way

http://boreal-kiss.com/flash/ex/

So the website of my work was updated with some exciting new information:

http://www.meteorgames.com/index.php

One page of particular interest is the ‘culture’ page, where we show off our awesome working environment and adventures. You can see a horrible picture of me bowling:

http://www.meteorgames.com/mgculture.php

At the moment we have openings in the following jobs:

• Lead Developer
• PHP/MySQL Programmer
• Sound Designer
• 2D Artist – Environmental

For more information on these jobs, check out the site here:

http://www.meteorgames.com/jobs.php