Seth Ladd's Blog

Sponsor:  Register today for  New Game, the conference for HTML5 game developers . Learn from Mozilla, Opera, Google, Spil, Bocoup, Mandreel, Subsonic, Gamesalad, EA, Zynga, and others at this intimate and technically rich conference. Join us for two days of content from developers building HTML5 games today. Nov 1-2, 2011 in San Francisco.  Register now ! Box2D is an open source 2D physics engine with a strong community , numerous ports, and has been tested and deployed in many games (such as Rolando and Angry Birds ). HTML5 games are an exciting new platform, and with modern JavaScript engines and hardware accelerated graphics, browsers are now capable of running more demanding gaming experiences complete with physics emulations. Upcoming Box2D presentations I will be presenting an overview of Box2D for HTML5 games at onGameStart , the first HTML5 game conference, in September, 2011. Shortly after that, I will present the same material at HTML5 Dev Con...

More HTML5 game developer blogs for us to follow!  In addition to the original three HTML5 game developer blogs I found, here are a few more: Illyriad Blog - HTML5 MMO game, available in the Chrome Web Store SONAR Blog - WebGL game, originally a finalist in IGC 2011 Bocoup Blog - JavaScript agency from Boston with a few good HTML5 game blog posts Both SONAR and Bocoup will be at New Game, the conference for HTML5 game developers . Do you know of other great HTML5 game developer blogs? Let me know in the comments and I'll link them up.

Summary A quick trick can tell Google you are the author of your Blogger posts, leading to your picture next to your posts inside search results. Background Google can now display authorship attribution inside search results. You might have seen profile pictures in search results, such as the below: This is all part of Google's efforts to bring identity and "real people" into their products and services, including Search. Configuring Blogger You might think that, because Blogger is a Google product, that everything will be automatically set up and Google will just know that you are the author of your pages. This is not necessarily true! You might have to perform just a few quick edits to link everything correctly. If you have an "About Me" box, and have a public Blogger profile, you are half way home. If you have something like the below, then you have a visible About Me box: You'll notice your name is a hyperlink, which links to your p...

I'm simplifying. After 715 days of continual operation, I've just turned off my Rackspace Cloud virtual machine. I've moved everything over to App Engine and Google Storage , which provides essentially free storage and hosting on a system I never have to monitor, patch, upgrade, or worry about. In the beginning I think Rackspace Cloud is great if you want to run a machine instance in the cloud. Rackspace Cloud came from Rackspace's acquisition of Slicehost, a very developer friendly hosting service. The Slicehost tech went right into Rackspace Cloud, and the bandwidth went "pay as you go". My sites used very little bandwidth, so years ago I happily went over to Rackspace Cloud. Modern day My little Linux virtual machine was supporting a few sites I kept running, including alohaonrails.com , sethladd.com , and higherorderfunction.com . I never kept the machine up to date, and was probably running a few security vulnerabilities. Keeping a Linux machine ...

I've been thinking a lot about what makes Angry Birds such a great game. Quick iterations. It's very fast to try and try again. Quick feedback. You know within 2 seconds if your bird was successful. Game play expands to time available. Got 5 seconds? Got 10 minutes? You can play Angry Birds. Randomness like a slot machine. Research shows that humans need to find the pattern in the signal. When a system fails to yield a pattern, humans try harder to find the pattern. Take slot machines for example. There's no pattern, and the reward when you win is greater. Angry Birds is the same way, as the game is not deterministic. Do the exact thing twice in a row and you will get different results. It's frustratingly delicious and keeps you coming back. Explosions. Seeing stuff break and poof is fun. Colorful. Theming is pleasant and fun. New in Angry Birds Social : Friendly Competition. Seeing your friends' scores is motivating. What else makes the game great?

New Game the conference for HTML5 game developers , has opened  registration . Speakers, sessions, and our first keynote from Rich Hilleman, EA's CCO, have been announced. We are proud to feature speakers from Google, Bocoup, Mozilla, Opera, Moblyng, Spil, Subsonic, and more. Early bird prices are now available, and won't last long. The conference is expected to sell out, I recommend registering today. New Game is picking up interest. The Google Code Blog , the Chromium Blog , and Gamasutra have blogged about the event. Conference directors Bocoup will be running an HTML5 game development workshop the day before the event. Some topics covered include: Canvas 2D, WebGL, audio APIs, Input and Events, and asset management. For more information, please check out the New Game site , read the Press Release , and follow @newgameconf on Twitter. I found the future of gaming, it's in my browser. See you at New Game!