Trainwreckin’
OpenMoko is a flavor of Linux for cell phones. It's also a UI nightmare for end users. Witness these videos:
OpenMoko Train Wreck from Dave Fayram on Vimeo.
More OpenMoko Train Wrecking (Now with Qt!) from Dave Fayram on Vimeo.
There's a ton of literature describing best development practices out there. But I think case studies of failure, or good intentions gone horribly awry, are just as important. It's essential to recognize what not to do. I still regard The Daily WTF as a learning resource, full of cautionary (and hilarious) case studies.
Also, there are no "________-killers," but that's a subject for a different day.
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Tile engine is go!
- Move: Arrow keys, or WASD
- Shoot: Mouse button, or IJKL
Make sure you grab a weapon in room #2, so you can shoot the orcs. Currently, there are 9 rooms for romping.
Not one pixel of the art should be considered "final". Most sprites & tiles have a ColorMatrixFilter that "skins" them with four particular colors (see my post detailing this technique). In some respects, this is wonderful, as the colors can be randomized, and it's easy to change the palette of an entire room. Unfortunately, to maintain retro look & feel, I chose the Atari 2600 palette. The dark colors are over-saturated, the pastels are unexciting, and the hue distribution is completely wrong (nearly half the colors could be considered "green"). This will be dealt with.
An earlier screenshot shows some vector art. Unfortunately, the vectors currently require Flash 10. I've disabled this feature... for now.
Fixin’ for a Pixen
Pixen is poised to become the reigning champ of OS X pixel editors. It supports layers, tablet pressure, and animation. But Pixen has a bug that interrupts my creative flow -- if I tap a palette color using my Wacom tablet, it always highlights the color, but usually fails to apply the color. What the...?!
Fortunately, the developers made the source code available. I had almost zero Cocoa experience before opening the source, yet the code was well-organized, and I was able to fix the bug!