Blog for Rick Overman at GarageGames.com

A Good Problem to Have

Rick Overman — 2006-09-26T22:23:43+00:00

So you have probably been wondering where the h*** have the web guys gone? Let me assure you we are still here working harder than ever. In fact, we recently added another person to the team, Jacob Fike, the evil mastermind of the PHP Overlord project manager (which we are using for our web projects).

Sean and Jacob are working on an entirely new indie site to be revealed soon. It rocks -- almost as much as they do! Sorry I cannot say anything else about it right now, soon I promise!

I have been tackling an interesting problem lately -- dealing with all the new traffic generated from our announcement of TorqueX and Torque Game Builder. What a great problem to have! I remember the first time we got Slashdotted 6 years ago, OUCH! These days Slashdot is barely a noticeable bump in the road compared to what we are dealing with on a day to day basis. The interesting problem has been figuring out how to build out our infrastructure to deal with these massive new tidal waves of traffic and not pay an arm and a leg for it and need 3 new IT guys just to manage it. We evaluated a number of options but decided to partner with Akamai. So as of today GarageGames is leveraging 20,000 globally distributed servers in over 1,000 Network Operations Command Centers (NOCCs) in 71 countries to accelerate the delivery of this website and downloads to you!

Nice!
I would really like to hear from all you GarageGamer's overseas -- how does the website "feel" and how fast are the demo downloads for you?

That's it for now, lots more good stuff to come in the days ahead!

--Rick

Goodbye Old Office :(

Rick Overman — 2006-06-02T04:31:52+00:00

The last post from our old office... It just seems like yesterday when Jeff, Mark, Tim, Jay, Brian, Alex and I moved into this space and now we are bursting at the seams! Of course none of this would be possible without your support, our community ROCKS! Thank You!

I'll be turning off the network here in a few minutes... tomorrow afternoon I'll light it back up in the new location. Hope to have everyone back in full production by Monday night.

--Rick

What's up at GG? New MySQL servers and more...

Rick Overman — 2006-04-30T22:08:04+00:00

I took advantage of a scheduled downtime at our ISP (Friday night) to install a new database server. So if you were trying to read the forums Friday night and could not attach to any GarageGames services you now know why.

The new server is a Dell PowerEdge 1850 with dual Xeon processors and a lot of RAM. The site seems noticeably faster to me, what do you think? Also upgraded from MySQL 4.1 to MySQL 5.0 in the process.

I have been doing work on a new site for indies that we plan to spin up in the not too distant future that will take full advantage of MySQL 5.0. Will go back through GarageGames.com over the summer and optimize some key components to take advantage of MySQL 5.0 as well.

It's a great time to be part of GarageGames, if you missed my last post about web developer openings here at GarageGames, you should go read it now and apply. We are about to move to new offices in June and the summers here in Oregon are spectacular!

Make Games and Have fun!
--Rick

Want a Web Development Job at GarageGames?

Rick Overman — 2006-04-03T21:25:08+00:00

GarageGames is seeking a new member of our web development team to help build and maintain the worlds largest independent game development portal! If you are a self-starter that possesses that extra get-up-and-go attitude that will do what it takes to get the job done, then read on.

Serious, qualified applicants only. Please include portfolio of work (code samples, links, etc) and email webhead@garagegames.com.

Internships, contracting and fulltime positions available. Please specify your preference as well as your availability.

Location:
This position is based in Eugene, Oregon

Requirements:

Must be well organized and good at working with others, with experience in communicating across groups.
Exceptional problem-solving expertise and attention to detail.
UI design interest/experience, particularly in organizing information.
Superb self-management skills.
Strong oral and written communication skills.
Demonstrated portfolio of work required.

Technical Requirements:

Expert cross-browser HTML and CSS skills.
Cross-browser and cross-platform design and testing experience.
Expert PHP scripting skills
Firm understanding of Apache/PHP related security issues
Strong Javascript scripting skills
Comfortable administering/using Linux
Apache 2.0 setup and configuration experience.
MySQL 4.1 or greater database experience.
Comfort with version control systems.
Comfort with bug tracking and resolution systems.
Photoshop/Gimp familiarity a plus

Some of the benefits of working for us include a casual working environment, professional energized co-workers, cool projects and technology everywhere and a job all your friends will wish they had ;).

GarageGames.com AJAX'ified

Rick Overman — 2006-02-13T23:28:03+00:00

This web update contains the soft launch of an AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) library that I have been working with. If you care it's cool, if you don't you'll never notice, because the page should "just do" what you expect it to.

AJAX is the buzzword of the web with everyone using "it" for all the wrong reasons in all the wrong places. I finally found a nice small "library" without all the framework baggage that lets me inject a little RPC anywhere I want without all the overhead of most the "libraries" floating around the web.

So after too many lost posts -- rating resources and the notification checkbox are finally AJAX background calls! I have tested this with Firefox, IE, Safari and Opera! If you have any problems, please let me know.

If this test goes well I will be expanding into other areas of the site, form posing comes to mind (no more broken back button). Suggestions welcome.

--Rick

Be a Hero Answer A Question

Rick Overman — 2006-02-09T23:51:40+00:00

I added a new link on the Community page to display a list of Unanswered Forum Posts for the last 60 days.

If you have a few spare minutes and you would like to contribute back to the community this is the easist, most rewarding way to promote indie development.

Let see how long it takes us to get this list to ZERO!

Enjoy!
--Rick

Website Update, Update

Rick Overman — 2005-12-22T00:54:39+00:00

I think I have all the "oops" bugs fixed right now. Been doing some minor tweaks to the community page to help improve work-flow, it is still a work in progress and I am open to suggestions (even dividing it into multiple pages). It is a tough problem because everybody uses it a little differently and there is so much data to display.

The plan is to come back from the holidays and give some love to the rest of the site. We have not prioritized the list yet so your suggestions here are very important. Product, Solutions and Training pages will be flushed out too.

I will be out of the office through new years, so no site updates until 2006!

Major Website update in an hour!

Rick Overman — 2005-12-16T20:19:32+00:00

We will be preforming a MAJOR site update in the next hour. During that time the site will be unavailable.

...time passes.

Ok, it looks like it all went as smooth as an update of this size can go. Very few comments so far so betting many of you are still picking your jaw up off the floor and wondering if you are on the right site.

Too many changes to list here. The focus was on core site navigation. Still a few rough edges here and there but I think you'll agree it is easier to find stuff now.

Blog posts now have titles! Also previous / Next blog buttons.

Developer->community page has been totally modified LOTS more info, moved the screenshots up.

New and improved product and demo browsing www.garagegames.com/products/browse/

Over the next few months we will be filing out the Solutions pages and adding case studies.

RSS feeds are a little hosed right now, I'll do my best to get them fixed today.

Verizon blocks GarageGames email

Rick Overman — 2005-09-22T15:00:42+00:00

For all of you using Verizon email address here at GarageGames and have not been receiving emails I just wanted to let you know what has been going on and that it is fixed.

Verizon automatically blacklists send-only mail servers like www.garagegames.com, assuming they are spam zombies. I agree, it is not a very good metric and they have likely blacklisted tens of thousands of valid email sources but it does block all the hundreds of thousands of zombie spammers too.

After sending Verizon a number of emails personally and requesting the assistance of over a hundred GG'ers using Verizon accounts we have been successfully added to their whitelist! Thanks for your assistance.

New Webserver Hardware

Rick Overman — 2005-09-06T23:29:26+00:00

Upgraded our webserver today, hope no one noticed more than a brief interruption in service. Couple minor gliches but otherwise a very smooth switch over.

We are now running on a Dell PowerEdge 1850 Dual 3.0GHz/2MB Cache, Xeon Processors w/ 2Gigs of RAM. We were previously running on Dual 1.0Ghz P4 Processors w/ 1Gig of RAM, so a considerable horse power upgrade.

Also using a new php accelerator (eAccelerator), so far looks good.

Happy Surfing!

--Rick