Dog food

alejandro — Hi, my name is Alberto and I am a sophomore in high school. 7 Generation Games has been my first actual job experience and so far I have been enjoying it. The people here have been really helpful in helping me learn new skills. As an intern my job is […]

Being a video game tester

August 19, 2021 in 7GenGames / blogposts / Dog food / Educational Games / Game Progress / Intern Diaries / Newsletter tagged 7 Generation Games / 7GenGames / devdiary / intern diaries / Video Game Testing by 7 Generation Games Intern

In Spanish: When are we? Where are we ? — Life is sweet. After months of revisions, translations and testing, Aztech: Meet the Maya will be submitted to the app store by the time I get done drinking this martini. Champagne would be more appropriate but it was after midnight when we made the last mandatory change and all the […]

Eating my own dog food: Learning Spanish from a game

December 21, 2017 in AnnMaria / Dog food / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

brinley — To refresh your memory – this particular activity gives the player a new item – cat, duck, goat, etc. , for their farm – for every math problem answered correctly. Obviously, this code can be re-used for any type of problem and any type of game where you collect objects, […]

Game Design: Re-usable code, part 3

May 11, 2016 in 7GenGames / AnnMaria / Code Talk / Dog food by AnnMaria De Mars

We’d like you to be part of our development. We really would. Even when it doesn’t seem like it at the moment. There’s a reason that we started putting our game developers’ meetings on line . We started a “tourist visa program” for people to be able to drop in as […]

Be Part of the Tech Story

December 18, 2015 in AnnMaria / Dog food / Educational Games / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

2 dogs and a play more button — It’s well-known around here at 7 Generation Games that the first 10-20% of a project is going to take you 40% of the time. Progress is slow while you figure out how to do some task, but once you have that code written, you can reuse it many places. Here […]

Step by Step Guide to Making a Mini-Game: Step 1 ...

May 15, 2015 in AnnMaria / Dog food / Game Progress by AnnMaria De Mars

bad jockey on slow horse — One of the questions that came up during our Kickstarter campaign was whether it was wise to release “sneak peeks” of our game under development, whether that would, in fact, discourage people from backing us because it was less than perfect. My answer was that I believe there are several […]

Why You Shouldn’t Wait for Perfect

April 16, 2015 in AnnMaria / Dog food by AnnMaria De Mars

girl picking flowers in meadow — They say a picture is worth 1,000 words. So, I thought today I would show you how Fish Lake is progressing from the alpha version to a soon-to-be-released beta version. This is what our Fish Lake start page was. And this is what it will be after I finish […]

Two pictures are worth 2,000 words: Progress on Fish ...

November 29, 2014 in AnnMaria / Dog food / Game Progress by AnnMaria De Mars

I believe that every software project has to comply with a law best shown in the chart below. If you get something done right away, it will be very far from perfect. On the other hand, the perfect software never gets done. Every software project that I have ever worked […]

Done is better than perfect

August 11, 2014 in 7GenGames / Dog food / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

Last post was what we accomplished. We also learned a lot, I think. First of all, when we do this again, we will be clearer up front about how much time we expect to spend on the project. I think most of us did not realize how much this week was […]

Lessons learned from anti-hackathon

June 15, 2014 in 7GenGames / Dog food / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

Not everything we do makes it into the games. Sometimes we start out with an idea that we think will capture students’ interest and teach a concept, but it just doesn’t work out. For example, I thought I could demonstrate the ideas of probability, certainty, impossibility using the office guinea […]

Guinea pigs make poor co-stars

April 18, 2014 in 7GenGames / Dog food / Game Progress / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

Here at 7 Generation Games, our jobs can change from week to week. As a small company, our work is decided not by title but by what most needs to be done. For the last few weeks, Dennis has been working on the 3-D game, making an application that does […]

Adding the juice

March 28, 2014 in 7GenGames / Dog food / Educational Games / Game Progress / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

Hey, you! Yes, I’m talking to you! You couldn’t be like everyone else, could you? You just had to be an individual. Yes, you, with your shiny brand new laptop running the latest version of Chrome on Windows 8. You, too, Mr. Our-School-Must-Upgrade-Computer-Security. And, I’m talking to you, person running […]

Why It’s Amazing Anything Ever Works At All

March 22, 2014 in 7GenGames / Dog food / Game Progress by AnnMaria De Mars

Games That Make You Smarter