My name is James Gary.
Sometimes I do things.
Constellations (September 2021)
A game about untangling the stars. Joyfully built with Elm. Still a work in progress!
lifeGL (Jan 2013)
Super smooth Game of Life demo powered by WebGL.
My goals
- Simulate Conway's Game of Life in high detail
- 1 pixel per cell
- 60 FPS at full screen
- Get my hands dirty with WebGL
- Adjust GoL rules in real time
- Keep codebase simple and maintainable
- Use Guard, Coffeescript, Sass, and Haml
Lessons learned
- WebGL is complicated. Definitely use a library next time.
- WebGL still is not ready for primetime.
- Not everyone has a MacBook Pro or a $300+ video card.
- Mobile is still far from supporting WebGL.
- My Ubuntu machine does not play well with Radeons :(
The Lone Clone (Dec 2012)
Make your way through 20 puzzlicious levels using only your power of cloning.
My goals
- Make a 'decent' game (i.e. one with music, beginning/middle/end, smooth gameplay)
- Participate in the Github Game Off
- Leverage a physics engine box2dweb
- Present simple rules with elaborate possibilities
- Keep codebase simple and maintainable
- Use Guard, Coffeescript, Sass, and Haml
Lessons learned
- RequireJS is awesome and can do just about anything you want.
- Configuration can be frustrating, but payoff is worth it.
- Learn quickly the limitations of vendored libraries.
- box2dweb freezes the browser when objects exceed their space.
- Should have researched & stress-tested more libraries
- Deadlines are very good motivators.
NutBuggered (Feb 2012)
Tower defense game featuring squirrels defending their homeland against swarms of bugs. No music, minimal graphics, but hey, it was my first game.
My goals
- Make my first fully HTML5 game
- Participate in the Pokki Challenge
- Keep codebase simple and maintainable
- Use Guard, Coffeescript, Sass, and Haml
- TDD with Jasmine
Lessons learned
- Don't leave difficulty configuration to the last minute.
- I'm both a better and worse artist than I thought.
- RequireJS can unintentionally serve as a decent namespace pattern
- Accept the fact that "sucking is the first step to being sorta good at something" - Jake the Dog, Adventure Time