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July 16, 2018 — How to avoid repeating the mistakes of Aliens: Colonial Marines.
Hi, I'm Tyler Coles. I'm a game developer.
I founded Ornithopter Games, work as a contractor in game programming and web development, publish open-source software, and write about various technical topics.
You'll also see me on these platforms:
Featured Articles
LibGDX: dynamic texures with Pixmap
January 27, 2015 — Using LibGDX's Pixmap and shaders to create a simple scribble game.
Let the type system do the work
April 20, 2014 — How to use your language's most-overlooked feature to its utmost.
Intro
January 5, 2014 — Wherein I explain the purpose of the blog.
Jam Games
Clown
As clown detective Tad Cavallo, explore a bitterly divided Coalport City to help the people of West Jester, the clown suburb you call home. Interactive fiction in classic film noir style developed for Resist Jam 2017.
Wavebreakers
Jam game made with a team for Global Game Jam 2017; a misfit band of telepathic Mer-folk work together to escape a labyrinthine prison.
Troll Bridge
An adorably illustrated text adventure made in 14 days for Adventure Jam 2015. Use all your cunning to survive or thrive as a young troll: become wealthy, infamous, or just feed on the bones of passers-by!
Republik Power & Light
Jam game for Ludum Dare 31; manage an unstable nuclear power plant in the vaguely-Soviet Republik.
Interstellar, Inc.
Jam game for Ludum Dare 30; establish an interplanetary trade empire and declare yourself the leader of the Trade Council before your AI opponent.
It Came from Beneath the Surface of the Sea!
Jam game for Ludum Dare 29; who doesn't love a good "giant lizard destroys the city while fighting helicopters" game? Note: this game is currently unavailable, but I'm working on that!
Robogenesis
Jam game for Ludum Dare 28; with the theme "you only get one", I explored ideas around singular creation and emotional attachment with cute robots. Note: this game is currently unavailable, but I'm working on that!
Open-Source Projects
SimpleLatLng
A lightweight Java library for common latitude and longitude calculations. Includes distance calcuation, bounds testing, and Geohashing.
Game Credits
Buff Mountain
The lumberjack endless runner and beard simulator! Published by Ornithopter Games for iOS and Android. I designed and developed this game.
The Endless Mission
An ambitious creation sandbox game about making, hacking, and sharing games. Published by E-Line Media. I developed its server backend and web Content Portal, as well as doing dev-ops support for the game client itself.
Beyond Blue
A lovely single-player adventure that puts you in the dive-suit of an ocean scientist studying marine life and habitat in the near future. Published by E-Line Media. I provided dev-ops support and some gameplay testing.
Avadon 2: The Corruption
Spiderweb Software's second installment in their Avadon RPG setting. I volunteered to beta test, which was a lot of fun and a great honor because I've been a fan ever since I bumped into Exile 2: Crystal Souls as shareware way-back-when. (I still have the legit full version on a 3 1/2" floppy disk which I sent for and received in the mail.)