Unity 3D is now free!

It really pays to read tech news. Today, I stumbled upon an article that claimed that Unity 3D, the powerful 3D game engine, was free at last. I thought it was too good to be true, so I investigated further.

For those of you who don't know, Unity 3D is a really powerful enviornment that allows developers to create interactive 3D content. It can be embedded in a web page like Flash, or made as a download for Mac or PC.

Unity 3D originally has been $199 for the Indie (independent developer, kind of like Lite), and the pro version has been $1499. There's also an iPhone and Wii tool available for an elevated cost. Now there's a few reasons why I did not buy this earlier:

1) cost

2) I already own Flash CS4

3) I'm really bad at art, so I'd need a 3D artist, preferably someone I could get away with paying really little (least I'm honest)

However, now that it's free, I might as well download it.



I haven't had more than a few minutes to play with it, but so far it seems pretty awesome. It seems like it has a pretty big learning curve, and I'm inept with 3D art by nature. I'll also need to be careful about investing my time in Unity, as I need to keep up with all my other favorite programming languages and projects.


I really do feel bad for the guy who downloaded this the day before it became free.

Download Unity 3D

The Picaxe 08- my favorite little chip

A few months ago I bought a 08 pin picaxe protoboard from Sparkfun. I soldered all the components in place and hooked it up to my PC to program. And of course, I got an error, because it would just be too easy if things worked the first time, wouldn't it? I spent a good long while resoldering all the leads and switching the chip out with other microcontrollers I had on hand to make sure it wasn't the chip's fault.

I recently bought a second protoboard to retry what I had previously failed. I soldered up the components for the new board, and 1/2 way through I realized what I had done wring the first time. I had soldered everything in correctly, but I had placed the chip in backwards! I find it annoyingly funny how I spent so much time redoing my solder joints (at least 2 or 3 times per lead) when the whole time I had just inserted the chip wrong.

Well, I learned from my mistake, and now I have not one, but two working prototyping boards. These chips are coded in BASIC, an infamously (in a bad way) old language, something like forty or fifty years I think, which translates to about 550 programming years. Be that as it may, coding in BASIC is really easy, as its just a bunch of barebones commands. I got a LED blinking demo working in about 2 minutes to test the chip.

The code looks like this:

do
high 2
low 1
pause 500
low 2
high 1
pause 500
loop


Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?


All I'm doing in this is directing current to the LED, making it turn on, pausing 1/2 of a second, turning off the LED, pauseing it for 1/2 of a second, and continue doing this until I unplug it, it runs out of batteries, or the universe implodes.

There's something oddly rewarding about programming hardware. Sure, writing security utilities in Python is fun, making games in ActionScript 3.0 is profitable (or at least for other programmers), and coding lord-knows-what in JAVA is interesting, but actually having a physical object that can do something cool in the real world is pretty unique. Now if you'll excuse me, I have an LED to watch blink...

Dual Power UV LED kit Ready for Sale!

Many LEDs and resistors selflessly gave their lives in the development of the BW Science Labs Store's newest kit, the Dual Power UV LED Flashlight kit. Their sacrifice has not been in vain...



While developing this kit I uncovered my true love for Ultra-violet LEDs. There just plain awesome! You can use them to detect counterfeit money, kill germs (now that's pretty impressive for a LED), authenticate drivers licenses (and passports?), and stun an assailant (*cough* *cough* shine it in their eyes). Not to mention Ultra-violet light produces a really neat effect on its environment, like making white objects eerily glow (there you go, another idea for Halloween).

I have some kits already neatly put together in packages, ready for sale. However, it may take a day or two for me to put it on the Store site as most of my time is wasted away studying for an endless barrage of Spanish tests, also known as "¡examines!". Interestingly enough, the exclamation points don't make me feel any better.

I'm really happy with how I balanced cost with awesomeness, as this little guy in relatively inexpensive (I intend to price the kit for around $11.99), and as you can see, it packs a pretty powerful punch.

Sunday Status: Flash 10.1's Mobile Debut and Some BWSL News

Global

At MAX 2009 Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch shows Flash 10.1 on a bunch of mobile devices.



Micro

I've spent the weekend working on the next BW Science Labs Store kits, including prototyping a mini UV LED kit and designing a line following robot.

I've also been able to work a bit more on my AS3 game, though not much. Apparently, the phrase, "4 day weekend" loosely translates into teacher as "4 times more homework".

UV LED kit- coming soon to the Store

I spent most of my day packaging Vivus the Robot kits, which involves unpacking lots of boxes, taking out the microcontroller, plugging them into my PC, and programming them one at a time. However, I did manage to find the time to continue working on BW Science Labs's next kit, a mini UV LED kit that can be used to sterilize your hands (and your prized action figure collection in the basement of your mom's house), detect counterfeit money (now hey, that's pretty darn cool), make your teeth glow white (the most useful of all) and a bunch of other really cool stuff.

I have a working prototype and I've got the right PCBs, resistors (that one took awhile, darn resistance calculator lies!), etc. However, I'm working on finding a better power source. The prototype currently uses a 9v via battery clip, which really stinks seeing that I'm trying to make things as small as possible. However, once that problem is solved the mini UV LED kit will be ready for purchase on the BW Science Labs Store.

SFXR- Free sound effects for Flash games!

Here's the thing, I love programming. I love the whole process of writing code and building a functional program by speaking a language the computer will understand. However, I really do not like painstakingly drawing art one little image at a time. On top of that, I have no idea how to generate sound effects for any of my programs. While I still have to brave out the whole art thing, at least I've solved the sound effects issue. A software engineer named Thomas Pettersson created a program called SFXR, which generates sound effects really easily.

The program lets you fiddle around with the dials to create the sound you want, or better yet you can keep hitting the "random" button until you hear something you like.



As you can see, I resort to clicking the "explosion" button a million times until I'm satisfied. While it would be nice to know what "Phaser offset" (Star Trek reference of some sort?!) means, I'm completely content with my "random" button.

Click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click

Palm Pre Development? Meh.

I am a proud owner of the Palm Pre. It's slick, fast, and pretty cool. There are only 136 apps in the Pre's app store, compared to the iPhone app store's several thousand (or more), that's not much at all. So, naturally I was inclined to want to write some apps and sell them, hopefully making a nice return. If you don't already know, the iPhone Developer program has you pay a one time fee of $99 and you're free to post up your apps to the iTunes App store, and make a fantastic 70% of profit. I was hoping for something similar with the Palm dev program.

I went on their site to download the Mojo Software Development Kit, and found this:

Recognizing the value of the on-device catalog as a distribution channel and as a friction point to control the flow of apps into it, we’re going to charge $50 for each app you submit to this channel.

Really? To add friction? Seriously? A lot of the complaints that the Pre App store has gotten have been based around a lack of good apps, and Palm wants to add "friction" to this?


The SDK is just as annoying as the cartoon character.


I hate to say it, but I'm kind of disappointed with Palm, guess I'll stick with iPhone development.