It is no secret that it is easier and more cost effective to keep an existing customer than it is to create a new one. Well this old adage translates into the world of video games quite easily. As video games have become a bigger and bigger business the companies making them have become titans in their industry with a mix of horrible and amazing results. What does this mean for the common gamer you may ask… come find out.
Author Archives: Derek
20Hz to 20kHz – How Music Makes the Game
One of the things I think that can really enhance a game’s experience is a quality soundtrack. As I mentioned in last week’s post my favorite game was Final Fantasy VI (US III). The genius behind this and other Final Fantasy games was Nobuo Uematsu. For those of you who don’t know Uematsu was the composer for the vast majority of the Final Fantasy series up until Final Fantasy XII where he worked on only a single song for that soundtrack, but is rumored to be working on the sound track for the upcoming MMO Final Fantasy XIV. Why so much attention to music or for that matter sound effects? Let me take you on a journey…
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My Favorite Game
I figure since this is a gaming company I should take a week off to talk about my preference in video games starting with my favorite, Final Fantasy VI or as it was known at the time Final Fantasy III for the Super Nintendo.
Back in 1994 I was a young lad of 9 years who loved video games. It wasn’t that I just was lazy and didn’t want to go outside or anything along those lines; The simple fact of the matter is that I was really good at video games and got engrossed in the challenge. At the time we owned a Nintendo and I desperately had been wanting a Super Nintendo but my parents thought it was too expensive and why should I even bother wasting my money on another game system. Since it’s release I had tried everything to get my parents to buy me one but ended up settling for those special weekends where I earned the precious time with a rental SNES from the local Safeway for being good or whatever metric my parents were using to judge me at the time.
Git Web Development with gitosis
Looks like I am the one with the late article this week. Hopefully it is worth the wait for some of you.
As mentioned in my article last week I’m going to go through how to setup a similar workflow to what I use here at Gaslamp Games. Before I get ahead of myself I should probably start at the beginning for those who might stumble on this post with very little previous experience with git. This article assumes you know your way around a Linux command line and can install packages on your system with no problem.
So what is git?
Git is a “free & open source, distributed version control system” and while that may be a quick blurb about what git is, it is exactly what it says. Every time you clone a git repository (more on that later) you not only get the entire repository but you get every commit, a full history, and my favorite part; once cloned there is no need to have a central server or even network access. This allows me to pull the latest changes, pack up my laptop and head somewhere excluded when I need to really get some work done. There is quite a bit to know about exactly how git works but that is well beyond the scope of this article. If you are curious how exactly how it all works I would suggest you get a cup of coffee and see the excellent video over at gitcasts I referenced last week.
Getting Going with Git, or How I Learn Not Directly Edit Webpages
First of all I have a problem I need to admit to you all. My name is Derek Bonner and I am a command line junkie. What is a command line junkie? Well it is someone who needs the sweet kiss of a terminal to get the day going. Nothing like firing up PuTTy and logging into a server with no X window system and getting things done.
As mentioned in David’s previous post, there is git usage in our current web development process. It all started when Dan pointed me to a video post detailing some of the finer points about how git actually works. The nerd in me loved the way it functioned and its decentralize nature. To finish it off there were a slew of command line arguments I could learn. I was sold.
My previous web development was the very bad practice of directly editing the file I was working on and then checking it live in the browser. Fast and it worked well because I didn’t really have any traffic but Gaslamp is a bit different; It needed to be always working, not sometimes or after I finally fixed a feature. Always.
After crawling the web I found a setup I liked. The workflow over at joemaller.com that resonated with the way I would like to do things. Sadly we have no second server that is constantly up to be our hub. Instead we use gitosis to create our hub. Gitosis provides the back-end and permissions to host multiple git repositories on a single shell account. From a shell user which runs the webpage can be our prime repository that will pull changes. The joemaller workflow has some details that I had to tweak to be used with the virtual repository setup. Overall I am very satisfied with the process and in my next article I will detail the steps I too to set this up including some tasty bits about SSH with my best practices using PuTTy.
Dynamic Content Areas
Well since I’m the web guy I figured I would share my pitfalls that I have come across when coding the site. One of the most important things I have come across is having my webpage size to the content that is in it. My example will cover the main content area of Gaslamp Games with the use of three images; top, tile, and bottom.
It Came From the Tubes!
Greetings!
My name is Derek Bonner and I am the Gaslamp server administrator, website guru, and all around nerd. If there is a problem that isn’t game related it is probably my fault/responsibility.
As it turns out 1000 monkeys at a 1000 keyboards can actually turn out content that is ready for the world to see. Coupled together with David’s art what you get is this website. I would highly suggest that you make frequent visits to this website as you will see many changes and improvements as our rag tag group puts together content and polishes it to a high gloss shine.
While you might not see any fancy graphics like David or any interesting coding practices from Dan or Nick, you will find a few helpful hints for the independent, self taught, wannabe web developer/server admin.
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