Welcome New Members!

Hey Everyone! I’m a freelance/contract software developer, focused on VR and Video Game development. I started my game studio Abstract Puzzle about 6.5 years ago, when I switched to contract development, and before that I was doing iOS development by day and generally making my own games on nights and weekends. Lately most of my contract work has been in Unity, (lots of VR & 360 video stuff, but I did work on a game released in October for Nintendo Switch, called Joggernauts). I also have a board game that’s been picked up by a publisher, and should come out next year sometime.

A couple of years ago, I made a few games for the L3D, which wasn’t really a game platform, but that’s about the extent of my arduino experience. I have A LOT of game ideas… I try to write in my game idea journal at least once a day. So I already know what I want to make first for blinks. I spent this morning getting the latest sdk installed, and ready to start coding. You can find out more about me and games I’ve worked on at my blog: chesstris.com/about/

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@martin Welcome! Excited to see what is first on the list, looking forward to this community play testing each others games :metal:

also, now I want to get my hands on a Switch to play some Joggernauts, I like how “switch” is the mechanism for the game… I’m waiting for a Blinks game that involves eyes being closed for brief periods of time :slight_smile:

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Hi!

I’m Jason. I’m a software engineer in Boston. I’ve done all kinds of development, but recently it has been mostly full stack and back end web development. And I have worked for 5 game companies in my career.

I’ve had my dev kit for a while now, but have not had the bandwidth to even get up to speed yet. I would love tips to get up and running. I’ll be looking at the QuickStart and tutorials.

I’m not entirely sure what I want to get out of this experience, but I would like to introduce Blinks to my nieces and nephews to both play games with them, but maybe to introduce them to programming too.

Nice to meet you all
~Jason

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Welcome Jason!!

Be sure to ping if you have any questions along the way :grinning:

Hi There.

I’m Francois a dad of 3 and software engineer in San Francisco.

Working on c#/.NET WinForms application but I have some experience with java from a previous job.
About 20 years ago i was working on writing the java library in assembly language for a virtual processor. I also have some experience with arduino (i made an mp3 player that played songs based on which rfid card was placed on it (card has an id, match the id to the filename to play) using an rfid reader and an mp3/sd reader shield.

I just got news that the blinks would ship soon, and am wondering whether i should get the dev kit or just get an AVR from BangGood or ebay.
I have not had time to check how the blinks are connected; is there a cad file somewhere i can 3d print a docking port ?

Looking forward to try the blinks and find some ideas for games.

-Francois

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Welcome @francois!

You have quite the technical history, looking forward to having you join the dev community. You inspired a new topic, surely others can add to it as well, but thought I would reference it here:

Hi!
I’m really late to the party, but I just discovered Blinks and I’m super into it.

I see that I can still pre-order Blinks from backerkit.
Looking at the kickstarter, I saw the previously sent dev kits were 3D printed prototypes?
If I order the dev kit now, would it ship with the final production hardware or prototype hardware?

Thanks,
Ray

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My name is Justin and I just discovered Blinks while roaming around PAX Unplugged. It was definitely the most exciting thing at the convention to me, and I had a blast playing the games and meeting members of move38. I’ll wait with extreme anticipation for my set+devkit to come in the mail when you start shipping again. After I figure out the system, my goal is to make a larger game that works well with 18 blinks!

I live outside of Philadelphia with my wife and we love playing games and rock climbing together and with our friends.

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Hi @rayman22201,

Welcome to the community! Dev Kits ordered now and going forward are the same hardware as the final production. The Bare Bones Dev Kit ships with a single Blank (Blink without a game or game art on it) and the 6 Blinks Dev Kit comes with 6 Blanks. Note that all Blinks are reprogrammable with the Dev Tools, Blanks are just nice because they allow you to label them as you wish :slight_smile:

(btw, this question makes me want to post a picture of all of the iterations of Blinks… sometimes I forget just how many prototypes we built :nerd_face:

best,
Jonathan

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Hi @ExpoExe !

So glad you stopped by at PAXU, I had such a wonderful time, and we were overwhelmed by the incredible response we received. Looking forward to getting you’re dev kit in your hands as soon as possible, and in the mean time don’t hesitate to ask any questions about our documentation or post game ideas for feedback :smiley:

p.s. when I moved to NYC, I picked up rock climbing and it quickly became my favorite hobby (perhaps it was the stark contrast to the city itself) either way, still love that kind of physical problem solving and when the weather permits, a good excuse to be in nature :evergreen_tree:

best,
Jonathan

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Hi!

My KS Blinks just arrived and I spent the evening playing all the stock games included with the base set and the expansion set. The build quality and consistent behavior of the individual Blinks is frankly astounding. I’m so glad the dev team took their time to refine the product and didn’t cut corners rushing it to market. The time and attention paid is obvious, and I’m thrilled with the end result.

So, now I’m here and excited to see how the open source community evolves Blinks going forward! To that end, I’m a seasoned IT generalist and a tinkerer by nature. That said, I have very little aptitude (or passion) for programming beyond basic bash scripting. But I am a game designer and have done quite a bit of QA, UI/UX design over the years. So if anyone’s interested in a collaboration, hit me up. I’d love to see my Blinks game design ideas come to life, and I’d happily help you iterate and refine yours in trade. :slight_smile:

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Hey all! I’m Carol Mertz—a multidisciplinary game designer based in St. Louis, MO. I’m a full-time indie game designer who’s been making games in various capacities for about a decade. I’ve worked on tabletop games (Kroma coming next year, Pass the Buck: A Game of Corporate Responsibility Management released 2016), video games (SmuggleCraft released 2017 for Steam/PS4/Switch, We should talk coming to PC/PS4/Switch/Xbox this year), and experimental hardware games (Hellcouch: a couch co-op game, which is a playable sofa game that toured a bunch across the USA last year). I’ve also done a big ol’ handful of small personal games, many available to play on http://carolmertz.itch.io

I’m working with @marymck to work on our Blinks design concepts as Move38 collaborators. I’m super excited to be a part of the community, and I can’t wait to dive deeper into the development process! :sparkles:

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Hi there! My name is Mary McKenzie I’m a game developer based out of St. Louis and run a small studio called Volcano Bean. My background is in costume design but I have slowly fallen down the rabbit hole of alt control/experimental hardware since joining the games industry. I have been collaborating with @Carol on a few games and I’m really excited to keep exploring visual design with the Blinks hardware!

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Hi @Carol & @marymck :wave: :smiley:

Psych’d to have you join the forum. I’m now obsessed w/ Sasquatch, say cheese! and Sleepy Kraken, and I’m sure I’ll dig into the others in your porfolios as well :stars: :night_with_stars::telescope:

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Just discovered Blinks through a friend last week. I’m a Scala software engineer, aspiring jewelry designer, and aspiring game designer. I hope to make it to the NYC GGJ for a couple of hours. Fun fact, I live literally a block away from Move38 headquarters. How am I only just now finding out about Blinks?

https://aethyrx.itch.io/
https://www.shapeways.com/shops/aethyr

Another fun fact, shapeways is just another two blocks from Move38.

Can’t wait for my devkit to arrive.

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Welcome @AEthyr!

Looking forward to having you join the community and you’re welcome at the HQ anytime (advanced notice preferred :slight_smile: We took lots of advantage of being neighbors with Shapeways in the early days, imagine we will continue to as well.

See you at GGJ!

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Hi, friends! I’m Brett Taylor! I made the indie puzzle game Linelight and I’m currently a puzzle designer at Playdead.

I’m now collaborating with Move38 to design some Blinks games! I jammed with the team at GGJ 2020, and resultantly have a dev kit as well as a heap of Blinks game ideas. :smiley: It’s a fun design challenge, as well as a refreshing change of pace from what I’m used to.

I have a dog named Zorro! He is a black lab, and my treasure. :paw_prints: :heart: We currently live in NYC and will be moving to Denmark in April!

Zorro and I are looking forward to making some cool stuff. :call_me_hand:

EDIT: You can find all my games/code here: github.com/BATzerk/Arduino-BlinksGames!

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:yum: :fork_and_knife:

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Hi my name is Lee I am in the UK, I am 38 and into Board games, Electronics, Model Railways those are my main hobbies. I am here to learn to make my own games but also see what others are making too.

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Hi Lee!

Glad you’re joining us here on the forum. Excited to see what kind of games you’re interested in making. Let me know if you need any help getting started!