August 18, 2008
"Slamming" at FlashForward

My coworker and I will be representing Threespot Media up on stage for the two minute speaker-slams at FlashForward conference in San Francisco next week. We'll be throwing down our two minutes of glory with some discussion on what "team collaboration" means to a mid-sized company and how we maximize Flash product on a technical shoestring. Hope to run into some Lassie patrons at the conference!

Project Blog

Despite having created a Lassie Wordpress blog six months ago, I've never gotten around to activating it. So, along with the project website's recent stimulation, I've gotten the project blog up and running with my first post on AS3 development back story. I'll be making occasional posts with technical discussions as the project evolves.

July 30, 2008
More than just a proboscis lift...

Lassie is getting a whole round of cosmetic surgery. Return visitors may notice an evolution starting to occur in the appearance of the website. Behind closed doors, Shepherd icon production is in the works for creating an engaging and intuitive interface. Collaboration is welcome from anyone who would like to contribute graphics to the evolving appearance of Lassie.

May 19, 2008
Engine! Project! Street!

While I haven't posted news in a loooong time, that doesn't mean there hasn't been any. On the contrary, there's been a lot going on (I'm just really bad about updating this website). So, I'll get up to speed with a whole series of announcements...

Shepherd / SuperSheep

A new build of the Lassie engine has been put into production! This includes a full recode of both the Lassie editor and game player applications, both built from the ground up in Flash using ActionScript 3.

The new editor application is the long discussed Lassie Shepherd, which is finally coming to life with a new (and improved!) interface, greater flexibility, and built as a web application designed for collaborative team projects.

The new game player is Lassie SuperSheep (yes, I was a big fan of Worms Armageddon back in the day), and while it will look a lot like the original LassieAS game player, there will be some considerable visual enhancements and more flexibility for game modifications.

These applications (known as the "Sheep-series tools") are in production and still have a long way to go, so there is no anticipated release date. The most I'll say is that I wouldn't expect a major release before 2009.

Lassie Team Project

Those crazy folks on the Lassie forums have rallied together to form "Team Lassie". Their goal: to build a short kids game for charity using the emerging sheep-series engine tools. Spirits are high and the ideas are flying, but that's not to say that more aren't welcome. If two heads are better than one, then a 100 heads are better than 10, right? If you're a creative writer, illustrator, animator, or just share an interest in making games, join us! No role is too small and no input will go uncredited.

Join the Lassie Street Team, Summer '08!

Yep, that's right. The Lassie Street Team will be on the road again for a summer of seeing the world, visiting friends, and discussing games. This summer we're hitting three continents, including North America, Europe, and Africa! If we're going to be in your neighborhood, drop me a line and we'll grab a beer! Tour includes:

Spain / Morocco
with Greg (Lassie)

San Francisco, CA @ Flash Forward
with Greg and Tucker (Something Amiss)

Berlin and Prague
with Greg and Matt (What Makes You Tick?)

December 12, 2007
LassieAS Downloads: On Hiatus

LassieAS download packages got messed up during a versioning mix-up. Nige C. has been helping me restore order and stability to the currently available release. While things are looking better, there still seems to be some problems with the Mac release. I believe the currently available Mac launcher has been stripped down to a useless UNIX binary in the archive. If you download LassieAS but cannot launch it, download the Lassie Director editor copy over it's launcher. The launchers are identical, so should get you up and running. Sorry for the inconvenience and I'll get the LassieAS download sorted out as soon as I can.

UPDATE: This should be resolved.

October 29, 2007
WMYT Included in PC Gamer Magazine

Matt Kempke's beautiful game, What Makes You Tick?, got its first big publicity some months ago when it was covered by BBC News. It was a great moment. However, the game has gotten even more attention since being included in the November issue of PC Gamer Magazine. While the write up is short, it includes screenshots and character artwork... AND, the full game was included on the issue's demo disc. Congratulations Matt; this is big publicity!

October 12, 2007
The Lassie Street Team, Summer '07

It was great summer with Lassie folks world wide. Team Lassie hit the streets to eat pirate food, swill beer and Dr.Pepper, and climb big mountains. Somewhere in there, we had some productive Lassie discussions too... but mostly we just had fun! Read about our adventures in the new featured article.