World of Goo sale!

14/10/2009

World of Goo is a physics based puzzle game from game developers 2D Boy. The game revolves around a large number of slimes and their journey up-up-up! Throughout dozens of levels you have to help the slimes overcome all their obstacles by building towers, bridges and swings - out of goo.

World of Goo

The game is available for Windows, Linux and Mac, and currently there is a birthday super sale over at 2D Boy, where you get to set your own price. While you can most certainly buy the game for $0.01, do keep in mind that the developers are not including any kind of DRM, and have gone through the effort of creating a Linux version of their game. So do pick a price that you think is fair.

The sale will end on October 19th, so hurry up and get one of the best games available for Linux!

Click on the image below to go to the World of Goo homepage.

World of Goo order button

Tagged: , in Gaming No Comments

Game development with Löve

21/09/2009

If you’re no stranger to Löve, then you already know that Löve is a battlefield. But that’s not all it is! It’s also perhaps the most awesome free (as in beer and freedom) 2D game engine for rapid game development on and for Windows, Linux and Mac OS - in Lua!

If you don’t yet know what Lua is, let me try to explain it to you. Imagine a programming language where the syntax is more of a gentle breeze guiding your way, rather than a restrictive metal harness shielding you from the wrath of GCC. Its tongue is much like that of Chewbacca, in that it doesn’t really make sense, but it works, everybody understands it, and speaking it seems as simple as leaning your head back and growl. It’s much like Python in that sense.

Löve splash screen

Regardless, this post is about Löve, not Lua! Keep reading to find out what makes Löve special, see examples of games created, and if you want, you can even download my own game - Söccer!

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Tagged: , , in Code, Gaming 2 Comments

Pack your bags

31/08/2009

… Because we’re moving!

As soon as I get the time, I am going to try to move this blog over to the root domain, www.blastfromthepast.se. I’ve tried doing this in the past, but all I’ve ended up with is a broken mess.

This time, I’m going to completely reinstall wordpress and all my plugins, and then migrate all the posts, comments, images, etc. to that blog. So essentially, it’ll be like starting over. However, I will have to do some magic to redirect all the people who go to /blabbermouth/ to the new domain, while still keeping their URL intact.

For example; let’s say you want to go to my about page. Usually that is at www.blastfromthepast.se/blabbermouth/about-me/. What I want to do is to make it so that a person who goes to that adress automatically gets sent to www.blastfromthepast.se/about-me/ instead. So essentially, I will just be removing the /blabbermouth part.

I’m not quite sure how to do this yet, as I’m no .htaccess ninja. When I find out, I’ll be sure to let you know. Right now, I just wanted to give you a heads up.

Tagged: , in News 2 Comments

Caffeine 0.3 is out!

27/08/2009

This is old news! Caffeine 1.0 has been released. Go check it out!

I know you have all been waiting impatiently for this ever since we released Caffeine 0.2, but now it is finally here - Caffeine 0.3!

For those of you with short memory, Caffeine is a coffee cup that sits in your system tray, waiting for you to click it. Once you do, it fills up with coffee and keeps your computer from going to sleep or activating the screensaver. This could be really useful for when you’re playing fullscreen games that don’t inhibit the screensaver, or when you’re watching a long flash video.

This has been in the making ever since we released 0.2. The biggest change for me is that we now have another - extremely productive and skilled - developer working with us. His name is Isaiah Heyer, and he has really been the driving force behind this release. Many, if not most, of the new features are written by him.

Caffeine 0.3 screenshot

What’s new in Caffeine 0.3?

Our main goal with this release was to completely rewrite the code in a neater fashion - to make future development easier. Because of Isaiah’s work, this was completed rather quickly, and thus we decided to include some more features that we were originally planning to release in version 0.4.

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Tagged: , , in Software 11 Comments

Simple jQuery sliding visibility toggle

20/08/2009

I know this post is probably a couple of years late by now, but when I reworked my “Made on Linux”-page, I needed a way to display some information only when the user wanted it - without having to have multiple pages to send the user to. In other words, I needed to be able to hide a chunk of text, and then show it when the user clicked on something.

Slide

As I am no JavaScript wizard, I originally found this technique somewhere else, and got help from people over at StackOverflow to make it fit my needs. Sadly, I’ve now lost the original source, and Googling has led me nowhere. If the original author reads this, please email me and I will of course attribute you.

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Tagged: , , , in Uncategorized, Web No Comments