Kindle and Comixology Kind of Suck

From: My A Group Post on Facebook...
Gary Cohen, thanks for the add, I'll save my formal introduction my next webcomic update...

For now, my name is Zon Petilla and I believe in developing a better internet eco system for creators and readers. One of my friends, as a pure reader, wants to support independents but there are no real DRM alternatives that give readers or creators control over the future of digital reading, trades, etc. She actually has been debating on Comixology or Kindle. The debate steams from: she is a Nook user, and Nook is in the middle of a corperate sell out. So her comics on nook are not accessible and there's no one she knows of working to fix the problem. She bought these comics, but has no control over her digital library. 

In short, Comixology and Amazon's Kindle kind of suck.

It's a strong opinion but please hear me out. For the reader, they don't let us keep backups of the comics we buy. Moreover, they have the ability to remove comics from their servers, and thus remove our access to them. Why do they call it a "Buy" button, it should be called a "rent" button. 

According to my friend Bob Noble: For the creator, you are subject to their software and their policies, which affect pricing and their cut, as larger companies get bigger brakes and deals that we are not privy to. Bob's example is having to sell his music at 9.99 from the UK versus being able to drop the price any lower. This affects him developing a social media campaign to advertise a sale, or give incentives to his fans as a reward for supporting his work. 

We all know, digital is so much more convenient, and simply going back to physical books is going back in tech. A webcomics project by Brian King's inkoutbreak may be the start of a much better comics service based on it's track record. It was started for readers to find creators, and it listen to feedback unlike Amazon.com were everything is super automated. 

Still, inkoutbreak needs a little bit of funding to get a chance to come out of the basement and unto the main street. If you love comics please take a look at this project. 

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/inkoutbreak-gets-real

If you agree like %70-80 with what I am saying, please share and share away. Also, I'm down for a disscuion here as well as about the things I just posted.

BICOF 2013 Small I-Phone Videos

Kind of feel behind the video game day blogs, sorry, but I need to publish these for a class.

My First Game Making Class Day 3

Reader Note: Sigh, so much for daily updates... I went to finish the game last week on my own after the "summer camp" was out and it pretty much took everything out of me. I do plan to post all six days. So now for the recap...

What happened on...

My First Game Making Class Day 3.

Comparing to the first day, we further developed our game document, and added more gameplay elements. We started talking about power ups. At this point, I made them create mini-presentations as part of the "English" part of my camp.

**Pacman (Beginner)  https://www.scirra.com/tutorials/308/cloning-the-classics-pacman

Teachers (Ghosts)

Pacman (Student)

Pellets (test pages)

First I did a demo of what I wanted them to do. (*Sigh my power up didn't make the final cut). 

Spicy Ramen: What does it do? Cuases Giman to have bad breath that makes a teacher retreat to their desk. How long does it last? 5 Seconds 2 Points

The first volunteer student was the one with the power downs, so he went first. Adult Videos_ What do they do? Make students can’t move How long does it last? 2 seconds -5 Points Cigarettes What do they do? Slow down students _ Normal speed is 5, Smokers Speed is 2 How long does it last 5 seconds... -10 Points

Power Up: Red Monster/ What does it do? Makes Giman Faster. Normal Speed is 5. Red-monster speed is 10 How long does it last? 3 seconds It is worth 5 Points

Power Up: Coffee What does it do? Makes Giman Faster... Normal Speed is 5 and his coffee speed is 7 How long does it last? 5 seconds Coffee is worth 3 Points

The Super-Power Up_ Finished Test Causes teacher run back to their desk and grade for 5 Seconds. Finally, we had to rethink our single level design. Unlike day 2, we realized creating a classroom maze would make more sense becuase it was just easier to recreate then the entire floor of the school. And now an embarassing video of what remained of the students and I playing a game of tag to figure out movement in the game world.

This was a rough I made in class with the student's input. I used my Ipad 3 and an app called Idraw.

Next time: How to teach students to make noise in class... well make "music" and "noise" for a game. 

My First Game Making Class Day 2

Sorry, I am playing catch up... I'll try and post the next five days of what happened during last week, this week.

So we reviewed the basic stuff of how the Internet works and then moved on to talking about "events" in Javascript and video games. I used this episode of Bravest Warriors to explain events... as you watch the episode you will realize that the three planets are interlinked, and each planet needs something to happen before the other planets can do the next thing on the list. I felt the show was a great example of events.

So know we looked at Pac-man again and tried to figure out what the events were, and what we needed to happen.

Admittedly. this got to be a bit boring after awhile because we listed stuff for about 40 minutes... Keep in mind, English is not their first language, so this I had to wait for them to form a thought from Korean to English. Watching this video over and over again while listing events. Of course, I said sound was an event, but not to worry about that until we covered sound events.

So we figured...

Pac man eats small pellets. Ghosts can eat pac man. Pac man dies. Unless, Pacman eats large pellet, then he can eat ghosts. If ghost is eaten, they become eyes. Eyes go to center, and become ghosts. Blue ghosts taste good, other colors taste bad. 

Note: Looking back, and as you can tell, we were missing key events related to things like path finding, game scoring, lives, etc. Later, I would come to realize that the **Pacman (Beginner Tutorial) was a little incomplete towards the end.    https://www.scirra.com/tutorials/308/cloning-the-classics-pacman.

In any case, we always wanted to make something new and not just copy from what we saw, so our level wasn't' a maze. It was the idea of making the first floor of the school as the game map.  

And that was about it for the second day. We of course, didn't finish and had to move things to the next day.

My First Game Making Class Day 1

The first day was pretty good eventhough everything I pretty much planned fell apart; this is kind of a theme in South Korea as far as teaching goes: from technical issues, to some damage on my desktop due to transportation, to schedluing issues... the list just keeps going on. However, we went over the basics of the internet and answered all of the questions I wanted them to answer, and used the movie the "Social Network" as an example of how HTML CSS and Javascript work.

After looking at three clone tutorials (astriods, pac-man, and breakout) students decided to make a pacman clone.  So I created the character above based on their feed back. 

Game doucment so far...

**Pacman (Beginner)  https://www.scirra.com/tutorials/308/cloning-the-classics-pacman

Teachers (Ghosts)

Pacman (Student)

Food (Finished Test)

Avoid Bad Things -points and slow you down

Cigarettes/Adult Videos

Power Ups

Red Monster Coffee_ Ramen

I'm going to continue to develop the art from the list above since we have no real artists. Also, with the scheduling concerns, I hope my class is not cancled today; if it is, I'll have to email the the C2 file, and countinue working on the game with the students online. This of course will be a pain becuase they are teenage boys with other things to do this summer.

Today we will be talking about gameplay and game art...

This will be the vocabaulary in foucus for next class:

Events in relation to Java Script and game development.
Sprite Sheets_
Level Design_
Back Ground Image_
gif, png, jpeg.

New Format, Open Soruce, Javascript

My thoughts on what I'm learning about the internet, etc.

Notes:
1) Consrtuct 2  has been pretty on the level, and the community and company have been very supportive in answering questions and concerns of mine.

2) Infinitemonkeys may be limited, but again I have't used it yet, I just have been reading about it.