Spin the Reel for Hollywood Player Spin the Reel at Hollywood Player

Spin the Reel is a daily game developed for HollywoodPlayer.com, (the guys who brought you the popular DVD based Hollywood trivia game SceneIt!).

Working directly with designers and developers at Hollywood Player, the Spin the Reel game utilizes the following features:

• advanced trigonometry for realistic spin behaviors and accurate auditing of the reel position for award identification.
• Easing and co-efficient formulas to mimic weight and friction of the reel.
• Advanced strategies for optimizing the wheel for download speed and processor overhead.
• Motion blurs and other effects

Phoenix Suns Gorilla Jam Play Gorilla Jam

Lavidge and Company, a long time customer of mine, asked what we could do in the Phoenix Suns Gorilla Zone to create interest and viral traffic to the Suns section of the NBA.com web site.

The solution was a game where fans can set the mini tramp location, and how far back the Gorilla starts his run to hit the dunk just right. In the air, fans can set the Gorilla into custom acrobatic positions, and spin in different speeds and directions.

The Scoreboard presented images from the Gorilla Jam sponsor and other Suns imagery, paying for the game and creating interest in “game night” to promote ticket sales.

Finally, fans could save and replay any Jam they created, and share it via email with others, creating viral traffic back to the site.
The Game was created as a flexible platform, with an XML back-end for controlling the scoreboard, and all assets skinned for future mascot positions. Gorilla Jam won an Addy in 2003, and is still available on the Phoenix Suns section of the NBA.com; in its fifth year!

Cashflow for Kids CD-ROM and Web Site Go To Rich Kid Smart Kid Games

Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter, authors of the break-out book “Rich Dad Poor Dad” asked us to Create a fun and educational electronic version of the popular board game “CashFlow for Kids” in a tight turnaround to make it available for the upcoming school year.

We offered new cartoon characters that represent different types of investors and investment strategies and applied them to the already proven board game layout to offer deep information and real-time feedback for kids as they make investment decisions. An automated online updater keeps the software up to date. An additional game was created for K-2 players that teaches money concepts with Bunnies and Carrots.

CashFlow for Kids at School is still available free to registered school teachers (over 1 million downloads!) and the CD-ROM version, which includes a K-2 section, is avaiable on Rich Dad’s website. A patent was awarded to the team for the novel teaching concepts.

 

Stay Safe Online with Shaquille O’Neal and Tara Lipinsky

The Stay Safe Online project was a large effort that involved pulling together diverse talents such as professional voice talents, animators to draw the major talent, and also many bits of secondary animation. My involvement as programmer was to take the components, originally complied as a Director movie, and translate each individual event into a Flash file with the same capabilities. This was accomplished with the use of a custom conversion tool written expressly to accomplish this task within the tight timeline required by the project. Additional time was saved by optimizing the stream to present effectively on both the CD-ROM and Website from the same Flash file.

After viewers successfully complete the Stay Safe Online Quiz, a personalized certificate is presented on screen, which can easily be printed out as an award or reminder for the participant.

Stay Safe Online with Shaquille O’Neal was distributed as a web site, and as a CD-ROM.