Stephen Calender Programming Blog
Feb 21
Yeah that was pretty fast. I have known about the pending shut down for months now, it is still hard to believe. After acquiring the development team back in February of 2011, they not only decided to stop production on LEGO Universe in November of 2011, but to shut down the studio entirely [...] [...more]
Posted: under Uncategorized.
Yeah that was pretty fast. I have known about the pending shut down for months now, it is still hard to believe. After acquiring the development team back in February of 2011, they not only decided to stop production on LEGO Universe in November of 2011, but to shut down the studio entirely ending virtually all jobs in the Colorado satellite. LEGO universe servers were slated to be shut down at the end of January 2012. I think most of my opinions remain the same since I was laid off with roughly half the staff.
Lego Universe: History from EXILE PRODUCTIONS on Vimeo
MOAR!!!
Sep 11
I have been vexed for some time about closing a gap I have felt with, you, my audience (4th wall is hereby broken). I diligently pursue making my content, thoughts, and works accessible to those who do not have a computer science or math background. I do look for ways to encourage or [...] [...more]
Posted: under Opinion, Review.
I have been vexed for some time about closing a gap I have felt with, you, my audience (4th wall is hereby broken). I diligently pursue making my content, thoughts, and works accessible to those who do not have a computer science or math background. I do look for ways to encourage or inspire the hobbyist programmer and present Flash to those that might not even know a programming language – I do have code samples and downloadable source on this site. My mission for this blog was to be a journal of my projects, ideas, experiences, and share my discoveries along the way. I do not intend to create an instruction manual, teach programming, or provide game development materials – at least not in blog form (its chronological nature just doesn’t lend well to a course of study or reference guide). However, since I can now convince people to pay me to program in Flash, I can certainly put you on the path to master this platform.
MOAR!!!
Aug 14
I am still not sure if I am worthy of being interviewed, sure I am in the games industry but I haven’t exactly been a part of anything wildly successful yet (not that I haven’t been trying). However, I got to talking with the author of MMOFallout after he picked up my post about [...] [...more]
Posted: under Opinion.
I am still not sure if I am worthy of being interviewed, sure I am in the games industry but I haven’t exactly been a part of anything wildly successful yet (not that I haven’t been trying). However, I got to talking with the author of MMOFallout after he picked up my post about the calamitous end of the Net Devil Studio. Here is a link to the published interview.
MOAR!!!
Aug 01
One of my big goals when looking for a new job was to seek out someone that knew more about Flash than I did. In my interviews I encountered many bright and knowledgeable individuals; however, I believe I struck gold at Game Show Network’s Facebook development team. I am working side by side [...] [...more]
Posted: under ActionScript 3.0, Opinion.
One of my big goals when looking for a new job was to seek out someone that knew more about Flash than I did. In my interviews I encountered many bright and knowledgeable individuals; however, I believe I struck gold at Game Show Network’s Facebook development team. I am working side by side with a fellow named Rob Dixon, Rob was on the Adobe Flash team from 2003 – 2010 and additionally co-wrote several manuals and language references on Flash and ActionScript 3.0. MOAR!!!
Jul 24
Wow, I have many ‘favorite games’, but perhaps the most interesting and popular one to talk about is Resident Evil 4. If you are not familiar with this game, it is a 3rd person over the shoulder style shooter in the survival horror genera. Resident Evil 4 was as pivotal to shooting games [...] [...more]
Posted: under Opinion, Review.
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Wow, I have many ‘favorite games’, but perhaps the most interesting and popular one to talk about is Resident Evil 4. If you are not familiar with this game, it is a 3rd person over the shoulder style shooter in the survival horror genera. Resident Evil 4 was as pivotal to shooting games as Diablo 2 was to role playing games, and its reviews still place it as one of the top 20 games of all time. While I could talk endlessly about this title, I will narrow my focus to what specific game play elements made it fun.
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MOAR!!!
Jul 17
The verdict is in video games favor 7-2, personally I think the big win is that video games were not gerrymandered or segregated into its own entity needing unique rules. Video games and other digital interactive entertainment bear the same rights and responsibilities as music, plays, movies, and books.
“Like the protected books, plays, and [...] [...more]
Posted: under Opinion.
The verdict is in video games favor 7-2, personally I think the big win is that video games were not gerrymandered or segregated into its own entity needing unique rules. Video games and other digital interactive entertainment bear the same rights and responsibilities as music, plays, movies, and books.
“Like the protected books, plays, and movies that preceded them, video games communicate ideas — and even social messages — through many familiar literary devices (such as characters, dialogue, plot, and music) and through features distinctive to the medium (such as the player’s interaction with the virtual world). That suffices to confer First Amendment protection.” – Justice Scalia
MOAR!!!
Jul 10
Needless to say, it has been a busy and interesting year for me already. It has also taken some time for all of the events to unfold, and gain some clarity on them. If you are interested in a story about living through a studio going sour (maybe you want to know [...] [...more]
Posted: under Opinion.
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Needless to say, it has been a busy and interesting year for me already. It has also taken some time for all of the events to unfold, and gain some clarity on them. If you are interested in a story about living through a studio going sour (maybe you want to know the warning signs, or unfortunately compare it to your own experience); or if you are on your own personal quest for a games industry job I hope this is an informative article.
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MOAR!!!
Nov 15
“An underlying theme I have discovered with Flash is that you are often better off writing your own code than trusting Adobe’s classes and functions, data structures are no exception.” – taken from my flash particle system article
After the launch and first few patches of Lego Universe, work at NetDevil has calmed down [...] [...more]
Posted: under ActionScript 3.0, ActionScript 3.0 Benchmarks, Optimization.
“An underlying theme I have discovered with Flash is that you are often better off writing your own code than trusting Adobe’s classes and functions, data structures are no exception.” – taken from my flash particle system article
After the launch and first few patches of Lego Universe, work at NetDevil has calmed down enough that I have the time and energy to explore private projects again. The current project I am working on is large and it is still in the design, test, research phase since it needs to very optimized. I saw that I was going to be doing quite a few rectangle intersects and intersection operations (the function that determines whether two rectangles overlap and the function that returns the overlapping rectangle respectively) so I took a look at the speed of Flash’s native rectangle class. I clocked Flash’s intersects function speed at over 150 simple operations (adds, multiplies, and accessing class members all count as one simple operation from my benchmarking series). I thought to myself “I can do better than that” – I was right, and I managed to write a faster intersection function too (free code).
MOAR!!!
Jul 05
In May 2009, I joined NetDevil so I could work on LEGO Universe. After working there for over a year, and as our ship date nears, I thought I would share what the experience has been like.
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Posted: under Opinion.
In May 2009, I joined NetDevil so I could work on LEGO Universe. After working there for over a year, and as our ship date nears, I thought I would share what the experience has been like. MOAR!!!
Jun 01
I stumbled across this paper that I wrote in 2007 while earning my Master’s at Carnegie Mellon University. The society’s perception of video games seems to have become even more polarized. This was written just a few months after Rob Blagojevich’s ‘Safe Games Illinois Act’, which tried to restrict sales of amoral games, [...] [...more]
Posted: under Opinion.
I stumbled across this paper that I wrote in 2007 while earning my Master’s at Carnegie Mellon University. The society’s perception of video games seems to have become even more polarized. This was written just a few months after Rob Blagojevich’s ‘Safe Games Illinois Act’, which tried to restrict sales of amoral games, was ruled unconstitutional (I’m so glad we had an ethical guy like Rob in office). Enjoy. MOAR!!!
