Global Game Jam 2012

Global game Jam was held at Napier University for Edinburgh this year. I took part with one of my friends, Tom Joyce. We had previously taken part in a game jam before. The theme for the 48h game development event was a picture of a snake eating its tail laid out in a circle.

Our interpretation for the theme was the circle of life, but we also took more literal elements in the form of snake poison. Our game celled Apoptosis (official term for the cellular mechanism of programmed cell suicide) follows the journey of a poison acting on a body, at the cellular level (level 1), the arterial level (level 2) and organs (level 3). Hacklab is kindly hosting it here (Chrome recommended).

[…]

Learn to program – Code Year

Computers are the most flexible tool in the engineers toolbox. When I grew up I think I was lucky to be born into the start of the home computer boom of the 80s. Computers like the BBC micro and spectrum were very easy to program, and because computers were so novel, our expectations of what could be achieved were easily within the reach of single programmer. Now were in the millennium, and PCs do so much more, the methods we use to program them are much more complicated. Learning to program has become very difficult on standard computing kit found in the home. So how should the next generation learn how to program?

[…]