software.dev

This links been going around a lot recently, but I wanted to throw it out there again: wiicade.com. Basically, the idea behind the site is that since the Nintendo Wii’s Opera Browser (which we’re STILL waiting for) can supposedly do Flash, it should be possible to make Flash-based games specifically for the Wii. How would these differ from other games? Considering the Wii’s controller, it would make sense to have ‘pointer’ style games, and not to use any keyboard inputs. Even though it won’t be possible to use the controller to its full capacity, I’m still very excited about the prospect of ‘Wii development’.

It’s made me wonder… why don’t any companies ever release even very basic tools that would allow developers to create content on the system? Can you imagine what creative developers might come up, given full access to the capabilities of the Wiimote? I suspect the reason it’s never been done is that if the free software is too good, no one will pay for the actual games; nevertheless, hopefully we’ll see a more open system in the future.

Meanwhile, I’ll be playing Twilight Princess while I wait for the Opera channel to come out and I can get to developing.

I forgot to post about the gadgets after the contest deadline was over!

I ended up submitting two gadgets — one I called ‘Hangman 2.0′, in two Web 2.0 spirit. The other I called ‘Flippr’; it’s a flash-card app that allows you to add / remove cards, and then test your knowledge. Saving is supported by exported XML.

Flippr

Hangman 2.0
You can give the Gadgets a try if you’d like with the links above.

Hangman 2.0: This was the first gadget I did. The idea was that I often find the online Hangman apps boring. Usually they use super intellectual words or categories I don’t care about. Wouldn’t it be cool, I thought, if *I* could pick the category, and get a random word from it? And what better way to accomplish this then Google. I tried a few techniques for generating the word list, but I eventually settled on using Google to find the appropriate Wikipedia entry for a category, and scraping the entry for words. I sorted the words based on their frequency, and after removing a bunch of common words like ‘the’, ‘and’, etc… I randomly pick one of the top 30 or so. The result is pretty good; occasionally you’ll get a poor word, but most of the time it’s pretty fun. I also did some original pixel art to add a little flavor to the game, instead of the traditional hangman’s noose.

Flippr: I worked on this gadget second. I’ve never really had a chance to use flash cards for any class because in most engineering classes, flash cards wouldn’t help. However, I’m taking an econ class this quarter for GE credit, so I decided flash cards might help out. Flippr is pretty simple: basically you create a new ‘deck’, and then you can add, view, and remove cards from your deck. Once you’re finished with that, there is a ‘test’ option, where you can go through your deck, read each card and then FLIP (hence the name) to see if you know what the term or idea means. All in all, I’m happy with this turned out, though I wasn’t able to get the XML loading working in IE.

On a sad note, I got the Google rejection letter five days after I applied without a phone screen; if I wasn’t going to make it, I was hoping to get cut at AT LEAST the phone screen; but so much for that Then today I got another rejection, this time from Microsoft (I got cut after an on-campus interview). My GPA (3.4ish) isn’t horrible, but if I end up flipping burgers, I’ll have a long time to think about what happened.

Life is good!

Second gadget has been underway, and Google’s deadline extention is exactly what I needed for this busy week. Between midterms and GRE’s, I have my hands full.

While my first app is addictive my second one is useful. I’m really excited about Gadget #2. Not only is it useful in general, but it’s specifically useful for the college student, which is kind of the ‘theme’ of this contest. That being said, I could see it being useful to others as well. Overall though, I’m just really pumped up about this contest. I think I’d just about explode if I won any of the categories