The site is supported by a great back story of four zombie-obsessed characters who run the blog, and are on their way to Fortune City (a fictional Vegas-like city) for a party and to attend Terror is Reality, (a Gladiators-style zombie-slaying arena game).  With Tape it or Die and the Fortune City website we also launched the official Dead Rising 2 product site.

Blood and gore aside, Deadrising 2 is an interesting plot and character driven game, with more than a few layers of conspiracy theory and the emotive plot line (dad fights to save daughter) that maybe reflects what the creators reckon Deadrising gamers have been doing since the first release.

What has amazed me is the enthusiasm and appetite the gamer audience has for this. Many are actively participating in the role play of the backstory, many are prodding and prying at the site and its content for more clues about the game (to varying degrees of success). On launch the buzz generated around the site took the server down. Admittedly that was probably due to many thinking the buzz was for a game release announcement as opposed to the launch of a promotional website)

Tape it or  Die and the supporting site are all multi-language and contain multi-region content. Tape it or Die has a membership signup linked to Capcom communities and (a soon to be released) user upload area.  Capcom are periodically releasing exclusive pre-release game content (videos and screenshots) via the site blog.

For my part I was mostly involved in supporting our developers and designers while we faced a constantly changing set of requirements that emerged from each client meeting. We rewrote the specs for this site more than a few times.  I wasn’t involved in any direct coding or development until the few weeks before launch, when I picked up from our contract developer.

Tape it or Die uses a heavily customised instance of Drupal, while the others are running on a CodeIgniter base, using a custom helper I wrote to manage the age gate, multi language and multi region requirements

I borrowed a few tips from around the web. Notably the HTML5 doctor, where you can find some accessible articles and help for all your HTML5 questions, from conceptual to implementation.

Combined with the HTML5 reset CSS recommended by the HTML5 Doctor,  I am using a grid based on the CSS and grids builder at YUI.

Other than that it was the WordPress documentation, and the odd peak a how things are implemented in twentyten the default theme for WordPress 3.0.

It’s another new start.

Correction. It’s  actually Monday morning, and I really should get to bed and start the week on a good note. But I can’t. I’m enjoying myself too much…

I wish I could explain the energy I get from a night like tonight in front of my computer. I don’t care about the lack of sleep – or how the day will be tomorrow. I’m just enjoying the silence of the middle of the night while I problem solve and code and think and read.

Anyway, the upload’s done. Here’s what it is: One Thousand Songs. No great shakes, just a first attempt at some data mashup and visualisation, for the hell of it. It was an interesting process, and I hit many snags and contradictions, and I think I will do some more to improve it as I go.

Meanwhile, sleep.

I recently helped Trevor at Sploosh, an old friend and collaborator from Cape Town days, with the development on a new Flash website he designed for Pod, a “luxury boutique hotel” in Camps Bay, Cape Town. Took a few late nights to fit around my London remoteness, our respective dad duties and my day job, but the end result is a satisfyingly smooth mood Flash experience.

This is the first ActionScript project I’ve had the chance to work on for a while, and I can at last say I am fully converted to AS3.  The main features I am proud of in this production are:

• full screen scaling background imagery
• nice mask intro landing page
• external XML based navigation and content
• gallery slideshow that auto rotates if more than one image is present (see the Facilities page)
• deep linking (uses swfaddress)

I used a few open source libraries for this, including swfaddress,  Gtween and Bulk Loader.

Earlier this year at Clinic London we launched the new website for Turner Media Innovations, the advertising and media consultancy part of Turner Entertainment representing Cartoon Network, CN Too, Boomerang, Cartoonito, TCM and Adult Swim.

I developed the bespoke application that runs the site content and CMS.

The brand specialists and designers at Clinic London created the new identity and we in the digital department were charged with the task of creating something relating to, and inspired by a Rolodex.

Our response at first was a little lame – we got stuck on a very literal translation of the Rolodex concept. But the discussion over a logo and brand presentation to the client, along with some good examples opened up a more abstract line of thinking. I also developed a Flash-based admin system for the easy management of cards in the Rolodex, with some metadata capabilites for index cards and categorisation.

The end result, I think, is tactile and pleasing.