Author: Matthew VanDevander

An award-winning graphic designer, an independent game developer, a self-published novelist, a movie and video game critic, and everyday artist. Matthew VanDevander lives in the great state of Tennessee and is on a never-ending quest for the deeper meaning of life.

Prince…

Posted on by Matthew VanDevander

Well, sorry I haven’t been updating much recently or anything. I haven’t had much time lately to do really anything of this sort. Also I don’t have internet at home, so it’s a bit hard to just get out and post things on here all the time. But for this post, I’ve got something fairly decent prepared. I just quit my job so I can start working on Fij full time, meaning I will hopefully get the game finished or at least in some working order. But I will go ahead and get on with the rest of this post, which is a review of the new Prince of Persia.

Prince of Persia

Prince of Persia is one of the oldest gaming franchises there is, with the entries spanning nearly two decades. The original Prince of Persia is somehow considered a classic, and appreciated for its astonishingly smooth animation for the time. Even despite its horrid laggy controls, which are caused mostly as part of the “smooth” animation. It’s somewhat surprising that such a flawed game has spawned so many sequels. I mean, there’s the first sequel, which was basically like the original, only different levels, then there’s a remake… At one point, someone decided that the franchise was worth bringing into the 3d era, and the god-awful “Prince of Persia 3D” was born. Not surprisingly, after such a flop, and with the Nintendo 64 and Playstation already in their waning years, the idea of a 3d Prince sat stagnant for a while.

But then, an idea was born. Continue reading “Prince…” →

Humdiddly Day…

Posted on by Matthew VanDevander

I don’t know what all the hating is about on the Saw movies. Well, I suppose I do, but I would like more people to like the movies, considering how much I like them. So this of course brings me to my next movie review…

Saw V

It’s pretty difficult to keep a horror movie franchise going for five installments without the whole story becoming stale and boring. Most notably because in the typical horror movie, the majority of the protagonists don’t make it to the end of the movie. Or at least, they don’t make it there alive and in one piece.

So, it’s easy to see why there would be fairly low expectations of the fifth film in the Saw series, a series of films centering on a not-quite-serial-killer named John, who has been nicknamed Jigsaw, and who has been dead for several films now. Of course, the expectations weren’t that high in the first place, considering the first Saw only scored a whopping 46 on Rotten Tomatoes. (My aggregate movie review site of choice) And the review scores have only gone downhill since then, with this latest installment only receiving a 15 percent positive rating. Continue reading “Humdiddly Day…” →

Once again, my dear Johnny my dear friend.

Posted on by Matthew VanDevander

So, yeah. It’s been a bit of a while since I’ve updated the blog. But that’s nothing unusual for me, I suppose. After I dropped out of college, I moved in with my fiancee, and we don’t have internet except for going downtown and sitting outside next to the courthouse and mooching off of the wifi there. So I don’t really get online that much, and when I do, I try to make it for something more important. But I guess I’ve been neglecting this blog, as well as my game design and programming habits. It’s all just sort of gone down the toilet, so to speak.

However, I have seen quite a few movies and played a few games since my last post, so I suppose I should give an update on them. Or at least on a few of the ones that I haven’t reviewed.

Continue reading “Once again, my dear Johnny my dear friend.” →

Braid’s out for PC

Posted on by Matthew VanDevander

For those people who haven’t gone out and bought a 360 just to play this game, (Which I’m guessing most of you haven’t) you can now play Braid on your PC!

I mean, seriously, it’s on Steam, if you haven’t played it now, just buy it already. It’s, in my opinion, one of the most impactful games that has been released in the past few years. And in addition to that, it’s just a really great game.

Don’t pass it up any longer.

Tired

Posted on by Matthew VanDevander

Not doing much right now, just putting this up from a public computer. About to go to my Old Testament class, which is the most sleep-inducing class of my school week. Unfortunately I’m already tired, so this is not going to be so good.

I’m currently mulling over some ideas for my next programming project. My goal is to keep myself working on making game projects so that I can actually be a developer. Rather than sitting around hoping that I’ll “be a game developer one day,” I figure I should just jump in and start completing projects. So far I’ve been making pretty good headway. I just don’t know what exactly I’m going to do next.

I’ve got some ideas for tools to make my big project (Fij, of course,) but I think it might be better of me to stick to actual game projects that are quite small and should only take about a week of work to implement. (barring any serious bugs, like the memory leak issue with my Pong clone) The main reason that I sort of feel this push as a necessary thing is that I want to learn game development, not just programming. And that means I need to learn as much as possible how to design and manage the programming and development of my projects until they are completed.

So, whilst doing other random things later today, I’ll hopefully try to mull for some ideas deep inside my brain.

Either that or I’ll just end up writing a space invaders clone.

Pong

Posted on by Matthew VanDevander

Another dumb game, but hey, it’s learning experience for me, and at least it’s better than tic-tac-toe:

PONG

As you can clearly see, the left paddle is going to lose.
As you can see, the left paddle is going to lose.

Download:

Pong (release).7z (7-zip format) – 1.15MB

How to Play:

Uhm, seriously… It’s just pong. Try not to miss the ball while also trying make the opponent miss the ball. First player to 10 points wins. There’s a single player mode with AI, and a two player mode as well. Have Fun!

Libraries used:

SDL ,  SDL_image , SDL_mixer , SDL_ttf

Tic Tac Toe

Posted on by Matthew VanDevander

Yeah, I made this yesterday, so I guess this is my first completed game made in C++:

TIC-TAC-TOE

Screenshot
As you can see, X is going to lose.

You can download it here:

Tic Tac Toe (release).7z (7-zip format) – 1.28MB

How to play:

It’s pretty straightforward, just click on the grid to place X’s and O’s. Sorry, there’s no single player mode, so you’ll have to come out of your cave and actually talk to someone.

In developing this, I used the following libraries:

SDL , SDL_image

Random post of dook.

Posted on by Matthew VanDevander

I figure it’s been too long since I posted something on here, and although this post will not be long, it makes me feel more at ease.

I’ve been eating some Warheads candies for the first time in many years. They seem much less sour than I remember, but they still burn my tongue when I eat a bunch of them at once. They are certainly delishus.

Sad to say, not much progress on any game projects, as usual. My weekend has been spent with my fiancee, and not on any programming/flash goodness. So, I apologize to anyone who cares. Which is probably no one, but it’s out there in the open anyways.

Also not much progress on me becoming less sleepy. I have no clue why I am so tired all the time. Seriously. I got up at like 2PM, so I’ve only been awake like 11 hours, and I’m so freaking tired I feel like just sleeping all day tomorrow. But I do have classes, so I will not be able to do any such sleeping all day.

Dookie braing.

And the weekend comes to a close, uneventfully.

Posted on by Matthew VanDevander

Sad to say I let the weekend pass by without doing anything very productive. However I do have some good news. I’m learning to program in C++

Maybe this could mean things for Fij, maybe not. I dunno. Just thought you might be interested. On second thought, you’re probably not.

*sigh* anyways….

Here’s something rather…interesting that I’ve found. It’s a little flash-based game about being trapped. I’ll just let you play it. Audience Award winner of the Nordic Game Jam 2009.

I’m so sleepy…