RingWars

Another internship down, another term done. Contracting for GarageGames bit into my schoolwork a little, but made it much more engaging. For more up to date info on my doings than this site can provide, check out my GGE page here and my profile on GarageGames.com

My internship at Garage Games is going great! The people are awesome, I'm getting to do a lot more than just get coffee, and the Community Weekend was a blast! One month has blown by!

Recently, an article I wrote was published here: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=11201

Finals are next week! My CS23 team project is going along very nicely - the image analysis on the chessboard needs work and the GUI is going to be put through its paces, but its nearly feature-complete. The small news, however, is that I wrote a research paper discussing the usefulness of narratology when applied to Halo 1. You can check that out <here>. It's not too in-depth, but it was fun nevertheless. The research was surprisingly interesting and gave me lots of ideas for games and mechanics.

Let me know what you think at:

Middle of Spring Term and news to announce! I was rejected from the Garage Games internship for the summer because of my summer schedule, but I was offered the Fall internship! So, I'll be off campus for 7 months, probably doing two internships, each for 3 months. The GG one is unpaid and in Oregon, so hopefully the other will make up the difference.

My 360 gets almost continuous playtime here. Oblivion is a huge draw for the guys on the floor, though Halo 2 still gets plenty of action. The Marketplace and Arcade are a tremendous addition to XBL and here's to more content! Looking forward to Too Human and Halo 3 information at E3!

Be sure to contact me:

Spring Break is wrapping up - only two more days away from my brand new Xbox 360. Had to settle for a core edition, but so far it's been worth it, and I haven't even gotten to play Oblivion yet. Applying for internships has been absolutely thrilling! [Ummm... -Ed][Ummm...I am the Ed - Ed] And, the personality disorder is clearing up too! Anyway, Spring term is looking like last term, but with more crazy. And by crazy, I mean the 360 and a 6-week CS 23 team project are conspiring already.

Good luck to everyone with their summer plans!

Back at college - much more work this term. Writing classes are at least helpful for the first time, CS 18 is painful, and Latin is a time sink. But hey, college is the best thing ever! I'm slowly getting around to forming a Game Development team here, printing posters and so on.

I should be getting an Xbox 360 soon, once I find some time to go to West Leb. So, life is good!

Happy Holidays everyone! To my friends: Thank You.

To the forums with you!

Well, I'm back home, after surviving my first term of college. That was great, being home isn't. The same routine as high school, the same boring things to do. However, in three weeks I'll be back. Dorm life is quite possibly the best way to live - at least during one's teenage years - and especially so if you have amazing floormates. I did very well, better than I expected coming in. It apparently helps a ton if you go to class every time. Who knew?

The other big change is the addition of forums. Who knows if they'll take off. For now, I want to use them for developer feedback (and as a base for the game design team I want to form at Dartmouth) and as a way to stay in touch with my friends from Dartmouth.

I'm also considering getting Google Adsense ads for this site to help defray the costs. Opinions are, like always, welcome.

The site is in dire need of a redesign, but that'll have to wait a few more days. Edit: It's in progress! Let me know what you think on the forums. Should be working correctly in Internet Explorer now. (Why isn't everyone using Firefox? Gosh.)

College, shockingly, is a lot of work. I seem to be doing great. I suppose my high school was actually pretty good and the teachers who worked us so hard were really beating us for our benefit.

Recently, one of my case fans on my Inspiron 9300 laptop was making noise as though one of the bearings was off. So, I emailed Dell explaining that the fans were making noise. Within one business day, I got a call telling me that an agent would call the next day and that they had already shipped new fans to him. I got the call the next day, we arranged for him to come to my dorm and fix it. The next day, he came (from three hours away, no less) and replaced the entire heating system in 20 minutes. As annoying as it was to buy from Dell, it was really great to see how easily this went.

The new change to the site is the gamercard on the right, which is one of the features of the new Xbox Live for the Xbox 360. It's such a cool feature that I linked it here. Hopefully I'll get some friend requests from some of you. It does make my site's layout problems more apparent, however. That will be in for a reconstruction sometime.

So much for getting the RingWars  paid downloads working soon. PayPal seems to think that my bank account doesn't exist. My bank is merging with another, so perhaps I'll be able to get that working soon. Now that I'm at school, things are busy, though the CS class I'm in has been basic Java so far. So, I've been working on a visualizer. It's still under construction, but I think it's cool enough to be shown off. It plays a music CD in your drive. Comments and criticism, like always, are welcome.

Hopefully, my Computer Science class will get to applets soon and I can make some web based apps for you guys.

Some new changes! Larry Niven (author of Ringworld) said that he doesn't want me to use the name "Ringworld Arena," so the name of the game has been changed to RingWars!

There are a few changes to the site you should know about! I'm adding Paypal support to the Ringworld Arena page so that you can buy an Activation Code! Soon, you will be able to click a "Buy Now" button, pay a small amount through Paypal, and get an Activation Code instantly by email. All you do is type that in on the main menu of Ringworld Arena and everything is permanently unlocked! Shape E-vaders will continue to be free (because it's such low-quality, being my first game). I'm adding the payment structure because I need money for college. As always, email me!

About EasTech Games:

EasTech Games is run by Tom Eastman. All the games were written in C++ with OpenGL. 3d Studio Max was used for the occasional 3d model and MS Paint and Adobe Photoshop were used for the textures. The games currently only run on PC's and should require at least a 32MB video card to run. If you purchased you computer within the last 3 years, the games should work fine.

I made Shape E-vaders my freshman year of high school. The idea was blatantly stolen from the Flash game Jet Slalom. Although fun to play, the code was a mess and I soon wanted to try my hand at a new project.

During finals my freshman year, I started work on what would become Ringworld Arena. Originally designed to be a top-down multiplayer game, it was simple and ugly. However, as I learned OpenGL, I slowly added features. Eventually, it was a full-featured 3D game. Networking was a goal until DirectPlay decided it didn't actually want to play. Ringworld Arena is a blast to play with friends on split-screen, especially when you're not supposed to be playing games. The quick start and exit facilitate that. :)

For a while, I polished the games and worked on tools for new ones. I made a 3D animation exporter, a new bitmap loading system, and a few other tools. In addition, I worked for an educational video company and made an educational computer game to teach middle schoolers about the Mayan base 20 math system. If I get authorization, I'll put it on this site.

In 2004-2005, I started work with a friend to make Hover Aliens and Grass Attack. They're fun although they're still pretty rudimentary. Hover Aliens is extremely enjoyable to play over a LAN with friends, though that's only because the terrible networking code makes glitches so common that they seem to be part of the gameplay. Grass Attack is waiting for the robotic raptor model to be added.

I hope to continue this work in college next year.

I'd love to get some feedback. Contact me at  Thanks!

-Tom Eastman