I come before you today to ask a giant favor. For many years, it has been a great desire of mine to attend Game Developer’s Conference (GDC).

Game Developer’s Conference is a huge gathering of game developer’s from around the world. Every year they meet and exchange top secret industry… stuff. More importantly for me, GDC has the Game Educator’s Summit. This is a part of GDC where educators gather around and share best practices for creating and sharing materials with students. This is incredibly important for people like me who teach video game development, and who needs to stay on top of the ever evolving technology.

For GDC 2012, I was approved by my place of employment to go as professional development. That has since fallen through, and I am now not able to secure funding to go. So now I am turning to you. It was never my intention to ask for money directly, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Here is the breakdown:

I need to secure $2,500 AT MOST to go. I currently get 1,500 people visiting my site per day. If I can get 250 people to donate $10 (or more) in 14 days, I will be able to attend GDC this year. This would mean the world to me. Now, I understand that this is asking a lot from people I have never met, but here is what I am willing (able) to give in return

• Continued work and support of my 2D Game Development and OOP Game Development courses (will do that anyway)
• The continued effort on my next 3D Game Development Course (will do that anyway, as a matter of fact, work has started on it)
• *if it is legal* I will audio record the sessions I go to and make them available here for you to listen to (write ups as well as time permits)
• A forum (if it is desired) for everyone to share ideas and help each other with the various materials in game development
• Willingness to help with any side projects you all are working on (I do that already, many of you have experienced first-hand)
• My eternal gratitude.

I cannot overstate how awesome this would be for me. I am even willing to negotiate services for larger donations (nothing illegal or immoral, I know you all too well). All you need to do is click on the provided donate button. I will keep a daily update so that you all can see the progress. Also, if I end up not raising enough and not going as a result, I will refund any money that was donated (unless you specify not to at the time of donation).

You all are my only hope; please help make this a reality for me. Either way, stay tuned for some updates.  I have quite a bit of material to get posted here.

To Donate, go to my Donation site Here!

Global Game Jam was awesome. I am just posting here to let everyone know that I will be responding to comments and emails, but I have to get caught up at work first. Soon I will be posting the spectrum source code and talking a bit more about it.

Hello Everyone, I am at Global Game Jam 2012. So far, pretty crazy. Apparently there are 10,000+ people and 45 nations participating in this (making it the largest game dev event in history).

My team’s project is coming along nicely, and I figured I would drop a little teaser title here:

Well, back to work. Enjoy!

Edit: Right after I posted this, SOPA got shut down. Man, didn’t know I had this much influence Anyway, one more to go. Stop PIPA!

Hello Everyone, I just wanted to post this here for everyone’s education. There is something moving through the government right now called SOPA. As someone who is into technology and the internet (as are you I am sure), this seems like a crazy irresponsible example of private money influencing the minds of the people who have the power to royally screw us all. Of course, it takes the voices of a lot of people to shake the dollar signs from the eyes of politicians.

I am generally a person who stays out of all things political. Usually, I just don’t care. This is different though. This feels so incredibly stupid, that I am amazed that it has lasted long enough for me to even want to write a post about it. Some people have summed up this SOPA (and the sister bill PIPA) much better than I ever could. You can learn more here.

In the words of Aragorn, true king of Gondor, “Bring him down, Legolas kill him!”

Only, by “Legolas” I mean all of us, and by “him” I mean SOPA, and by “Bring him down… kill him” I mean shed a light of reason and freedom on this obvious attack on human rights. Do you want to be the one to go against a direct order from Aragorn? I don’t think so. He decapitates people. I have seen it.

But seriously, SOPA is stupid. Let’s end it. Go here: http://americancensorship.org/

-Mike

So, as it turns out I am getting very close to finishing my series on 2D game development. I am in the process of writing my last 4 now. When I finish these, I may go back and fine tune some things are add some sections as appendices, but for the most part I am satisfied. I ma beginning to think about what I want to do next. I thought about the Arc Game Engine as my next project, but I think I m going to hold off a while longer and try to use that as my Master’s Thesis. Some other thoughts have been on doing a segment on game AI, or maybe mobile phone game development. I could also do a series on 3D game dev using some modern game engines. At this point, nothing is off of the table.

The only thing I do know for sure is that I am going to take a bit of a break from making anything for a little while. This upcoming semester I will be teaching 6 courses and going to school 4 nights a week for my own education. With grading and a family on top of that, I’m not going to have too much time to dedicate here (which is a shame). On thing is for certain though, I am going to do my best to add updates and answer questions while I’m not directly making tutorials.

Anyway, this was just to serve as a bit of an update. I am curious to know what you guys think I should do next. There really isn’t anything I wouldn’t consider (assuming it is video game or programming related). Maybe I will create a poll and put it up.

That sounds like a good idea.