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Justin Johnson: CodeMonkey
PHP Template Parsing
05 months ago
by jjohnson
in Programming
I built, designed and try to maintain grimwar.com. It started in 2009 as a project for some buddies that play Magic the Gathering. It was never “planned” per se. Instead, I just started writing code to provide the features my friends wanted. Then other people started using it and now the site has close to 900 users.
I wrote Grimwar before I really understood object-oriented PHP and before I had any level of grasp on the MVC pattern. That being said, the code for Grimwar is pretty stable despite my PHP ineptitude More >
FlatRedBall Camera Z Position WP7
05 months ago
by jjohnson
in Game Theory
If you are using a 3D camera in FlatRedBall on WP7, and want your sprites to be pixel-perfect at Z = 0, you might get a little confused. The default camera Z is 40 in FlatRedBall. If you set your sprite scale to be pixel perfect (scale = 0.5f), then a small sprite will take up the entire screen. This is because the screen dimensions in pixels when the camera Z = 40 is roughly 33 x 20. The desired resolution is probably 800×400. So, what should the Camera’s Z position be for pixel-perfect screen dimensions (one screen unit = More >
NetWeekly: Edition 2
0So, I realize the “Weekly” part of NetWeekly kinda fell off. I blame having a baby. My blogging kinda fell off in general. Let’s get back to it! Here are some things I discovered this week that are worth checking out:
- Google Acquired Motorola. Huge?
- S&P Dumped the target value of GOOG stock after the announcement by $200
- Danny Macaskill’s riding is so inspiring, as is the beautiful film work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShbC5yVqOdI&sns=em
- College Humor really wins with the Man Vs Wild RPG: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRBD26CS4wU
Mono for Android and Family Expansion
05 months ago
by jjohnson
in Programming
Who has two thumbs and has had a big couple of weeks? THIS GUY.
I have two amazing children and my wife has been pregnant with our third (and probably last). Our newest little guy was born Thursday, August 4th shortly after 11am. He was a whopping 9lb 7oz and has been a happy, healthy, good little baby. We named him Nico Jack. He has been a really good little guy. I would go on more but you’re probably here to see code so…onward!
At work I have been working with More >
Multitouch Dpads in Whirlygig
0I didn’t post last week because my wife is supposed to be having a baby and things have been hectic. Unfortunately, she is lazy and won’t make the little guy come out so I can meet him. This post is going to be a quick one.
I’ve been working on three things lately:
- My PHP CMS built on CodeIgniter
- Whirlygig WP7
- Android App on MonoDroid for my day job
This is a quick post so I’m only going to talk about Whirlygig right now. Last night I finished almost all of the little details that needed to be More >
Improving the WP7 Setup UX
5Scott Hanselman spoke at TechEd about how developers, often given to griping, can improve what comes out of Microsoft by giving honest, constructive feedback. Here’s my shot at that.
My desktop recently burned up and I got some sweet new components and rebuilt the machine on Wednesday. I realized as I was combing through paragraphs of text, looking for the right software to install, that the user experience was frustrating at best. Let’s be honest, this is development software for developers. Maybe the thought is that developers are smart enough to figure it out but finding and installing the right More >
NetWeekly: Edition 1
0This is a new category I want to do every Friday. As a programmer, I spend a lot of time on the internet and I have a large network of people I interact, collaborate or otherwise communicate with. A side-effect of this is I get a lot of news, videos and other media sent my way. This will be a distillation of things that have landed on my virtual desk throughout the week. It may be one or two things…it may be a lot of things. Depends on the week. Here are things that I found interesting this week:
Whirly, PHP, Netbeans, CodeIgniter and Lidgren Gen 3
06 months ago
by jjohnson
in Programming
Whirlygig WP7
This week Vic Chelaru (the guy that built FlatRedBall) and a friend of mine named Joel solved the tombstoning problems that both Whirlygig and Udder Chaos, a game Vic just released on WP7 (try it now!) were having. With that solved, the only thing I have left to do is get the options screen working and resubmit it. Here’s the mockup of the options menu (some work left to do):
PHP and CodeIgniter
PHP was my first-ish programming language (I actually toyed with programming in BASIC as a youngster, More >
Collision Detection in FlatRedBall
1Reader Matt Sarnak asked for details on how I do collision detection on the complex landscapes in Whirlygig 360. I decided to respond with a post about it since this could be useful to other people.
First of all, I use FlatRedBall, which provides a variety of game-design tools such as the Sprite Editor, Polygon Editor, Particle Editor and more. I created a long and kinda boring video last year that shows how the tools work together: FlatRedBall Toolkit Demo.
Collision detection can be More >
Rett Syndrome, More Whirlygig and The Intarwebs
0This week I didn’t do nearly as much as I wanted to do on Whirlygig. Since I decided to commit to making a game last November, I’ve worked countless nights until somewhere between 12 and 2am. Eventually, that starts to burn me out a little. There have been a few people responding to my twitter updates, saying that they were excited to play it. That sort of stuff is really encouraging and always gets me excited to get back to work. The other thing that can be motivating is to actually play the game a bit. Mostly because I’m like…hey, More >