Guy Royse

Guy Royse

A Belated Corporate Raiders Update

So I haven’t provided an update for y’all in quite some time but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy working to build games and stories for your consumption. It also doesn’t mean that I have been busy working on games and stories for your consumption. But I have.

So, it’s a Corporate Raiders update today. I went on a bit of a code binge for a while and made a lot of changes to get the application to be mash-up friendly. I also added lots of JavaScript stuff to it as well. These sort of went hand in hand. The significant update that you can actually see—an API.

I’ve added APIs to lot you access the actual data of the game so that you can code against it and extend it in ways that I don’t foresee. Of course I also plan to use this API to support other clients for the game. In fact, I am already using it on the main page of Corporate Raiders.

If you want to check out the API for yourself you can access it using the following URLs:

Just replace {symbol} with the stock symbol you care about. For {format} enter either xml or json. If you don’t specify {format}, it will default to json. For example…

…will show you the info for Chthonic Chemicals Corporation in XML. Either of these urls…

…would show you that same info in JSON.

This API is ripe for consumption by fat client and portal device applications. Got an Android Phone or an iPhone and some spare time? How about an Adobe Air client? This would be a good place for you to play. And if you do something cool, tell me about it either via email or by leaving a comment.

Also, and perhaps more significantly, the market now moves. Right now the algorithm is completely random day by day and the incrementals are very predictable over the course of a given day. Nonetheless, it move. Next, the plan is to swap out the core engine with something a little more random so we can start letting people actually buy and sell stocks. Then, we’ll add a more event-based model so that we can have news items, rumors, and the like to affect the stock price. Insider trading here we come!

In the short term I plan to add users to the model as well as put some tasty JavaScript stuff on the screen. Tabs and accordions are probably where I’ll start.

So stay tuned. I’ll post updates as I go so that you can watch the sausage being made.

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The Price of Admission

Part of the point of my efforts to make games and stories online is to prove what one can do with very little. And by very little I mean a computer, the Internet, and time.

The stuff I am doing on this site is done with free software. I am using GIMP to create the board for Zombie Stomp! I will use Open Office to write the rules and generate the PDF for Zombie Stomp! Corporate Raiders is being developed using Eclipse and Java—both of which are free. The writing I am doing for Big Time is with Open Office—again free. When I get around to podcasting I plan to record with Audacity which is also free.

While I have a domain name and a hosting account, these items are not strictly necessary. I could be at guyroyse.blogspot.com instead of guyroyse.com and I could host my images and PDFs on free sites if I looked around. I choose to have a domain name and hosting because I have the resources to do so. I have a day job that pays for it. It is a luxury.

The application hosting for Corporate Raiders and the other games that I will create, either through Hard Boiled Geek with Benjamin or on my own, are hosted with Google App Engine which is also free up until a certain point. A point which we will be well below for some time.

This hardest part of doing this is the time. Many folks have lots of that. Many don’t. I fall into the latter category so I have chosen to sacrifice television so that I can make these cool things and provide them to you. That frees up more time than anything else I could possibly do.

Folks, the point here is this—the price of admission is free. There are no barriers to entry. Poor college students can do this. Retired folks on fixed incomes can do this. My mom can do this. Anybody can do this. And I would know because I am anybody.

You should do it too.

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Zombie Stomp! Work in Progress (Part 3)

Just a little update on the progress of the Zombie Stomp! gameboard.

Zombie Stomp! WIP 3

As you can see, the ship is pretty much done now. All that’s left to do is damage the ship up to match the sketch, add thrusters, and then add details in the interior of the ship. After that, I can work on a nice, spacey background and all the labels, lettering, and logos.

Then, of course I still have to make it into a PDF complete with rules and all that. But now that I think about it, the rules might be simple enough to just put right on the gameboard. Or not, a summary of them at least.

Enjoy!

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Zombie Stomp! Work in Progress (Part 2)

I thought that it might be a good idea to update you on the progress that has been made on Zombie Stomp!. So, here it is.

The board is progressing nicely but I have been running into barriers with my general graphic design skill level—or lack thereof—and that is slowing me down. Here’s what we have so far.

Zombie Stomp! WIP 2

I’m actually rather proud of what I’ve made so far—although perhaps only in the way a father can be. I know that it probably looks amateurish to the professionals out there (you know who you are) but I’m impressed with what GIMP is capable of doing for free and I’m having fun.

The playtest that I planned to do this weekend has run into life-schedule-conflict-stuff and I have to postpone. I’m thinking a couple more weeks out so probably mid-September. In the meantime, I’ll keep working on the graphic and posting the results here for you to see.

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Status Updated and Other Projects

So I’ve been a little lax in reporting in of late. My family and I went on vacation and the last few weeks have been really hectic. But, I haven’t been sitting on my laurels the entire time, I have been working.

While on vacation I worked on my short story which has the working title of “Big Time”. Big Time is the story of a small time reporter, Theodore Chang, who has big dreams and an attitude to match. It takes place in a far future world where man has long since colonized the stars and has built a massive network of portals to connect all the planets into one metaworld that they call Pangaea. Theo gets a chance to do an exclusive interview of Gigacity’s most famous serial killer—the Portal Killer. The Portal Killer had hacked his way into the portal network and was using it to invade the homes of the rich and famous through their private portals, killing them in their sleep. That is, until he was caught. But then, why do people keep dying? Big Time should be a lot of fun and hopefully a bit surprising.

Zombie Stomp! is also moving forward. I plan to playtest the game at the end of the month and hope to have the rules written before then so I can hand them out at the playtest. I’ll post them here first, of course. And the results of the playtest afterwards too.

And I’ve also been working with my friend Benjamin on a joint venture to produce web-based computer games for your enjoyment under the brand Hard Boiled Geek. There’s isn’t much at our site yet—actually there’s nothing—but Benjamin is working on that.

Our first game is a stock trading game called Corporate Raiders. If you want to check out what the game has so far you can visit it at corporateraiders.hardboiledgeek.com. The game is still pretty young right now. We just have the mechanism to display the status of the market. Our next step is to actually make the market move. Then we can start adding features to buy and sell and start adding players.

Benajmin has a real knack for creating interesting companies for the fictitious Atlantic Stock Exchange and reading the names and descriptions of these companies can be a lot of fun. I encourage you to check it out and give us some feedback on how it looks and the content. If we like you’re feedback we might even name a company after you! Once we get some more functionality up and running we’ll also want to start inviting some beta-test users. So if you’re interested drop me a line at guy@guyroyse.com.

So, while I haven’t been posting much of what I’ve been working on, you can probably see that I’ve been a busy little beaver. And, I’m have a lot of fun making all this content, even if there isn’t much for you to see at the moment. But when it comes, all these irons I have in the fire will be done at once. And won’t that be fun!

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