Which 3D Modeling program to use?

For quite a few years I have used 3D Studio Max or variants of it such as the free Gmax version.

I currently own an educational license for 3D Studio Max 2010. 

Obviously I can only use this for personal an educational use.

So here I am having had shipped two games, and honestly thinking my next one might be nice to try some 3D in it?

But 3D Studio is outside of my budget for its commercial license fee of $3,675.

Yep for an indie developer that is a killer right there.

So I am exploring some alternate products.

Right now Steam has a special on Silo 3D for less than 50 dollars.

I went ahead and downloaded the trial and am doing some video tutorials.

I like its interface and it seems easy to use; however it has no animation capabilities. For its price I do not find that to be a problem ; but this leaves me in an 'incomplete' solution status.

I do also own Milkshape 3D which I have animated in before.  Its functional, and lightweight. But it is quite old and lacks a lot of polish, ease of use and features that more modern animation applications poses. I do wish he would update , even at an additional cost.

And then there is Blender.   I tried Blender many years ago and did not like it. I think I'm going to have to try it again as the price of FREE is very hard to beat.

I'll update soon with info about how my trials are going.  Stay tuned.

I built my first Firefox build last night!

So in an effort to learn more about programming I've decided to explore contributing to the Mozilla.org Firefox browser.

Mind you this is an exploration at this point not a commitment.  Its possible this is beyond me at the moment? But I believe in setting goals .. stretching myself. Learning things I know nothing about .. that way I'll know something right?

I also strongly believe in open source projects and have benefited from them for many years in my life. I would very much like to give back and Firefox has been my favorite browser for many years.  It sort of competes with Chrome nowadays .. not because Chrome is so fantastic but because Firefox changes so fast I some times feel like I don't know where my stuff is?

So last night I downloaded my first nightly build and all the pre-requisites and was able to compile and launch my first nightly build.

I suppose its not much of an accomplishment but I feel good about it. Having actually done this much feels meaningful to me and encourages me to go farther.

At this time my planned contribution will be in the C++ code area.  As I taught myself C++ this year I want to really get my head fully immersed in it. I want challenges.

Sure I figured out how to write several games and publish them on iOS and PC .. that is freaking AWESOME.

But I'm not stopping at that. I want more! I want to learn more!

Firefox will make me learn stuff I didn't even known existed is my thought .. and I'm really looking forward to it.

I hope to blog more about my experiences exploring on Firefox in the future.

My First PC Published Game!

So great announcement here, WildTangent.com has published my second self produced game Holiday Cheer on their online game portal.

http://www.wildtangent.com/Games/holiday-cheer

Note: Screenshots show the iOS version

This is really huge for me. I had really expected a very long (many years) of work programming before I could expect a game portal to publish one of my products.

Obviously my 15 years of game development experience in areas *other* than coding have contributed strongly to this goal being reached so quickly.

I have been working diligently on an update to this game and it is almost ready..