_s (underscores) A Completely Blank Starter Theme for WordPress

Screen Shot 2013-04-28 at 3.38.23 AMSo when you first get into theming for a Content-Management-System you will more than likely take one of the existing base themes included with the CMS and start snooping around in the various files. You might just edit the ‘style.css’ file or equivalent – or you might go straight for the jugular and strip out all the html leaving only the relevant tags the CMS uses to fill in dynamic content, then add in your own markup around them. This is what I did when learning Drupal, and now that I am working with WordPress I started down the same path for a couple of client sites – but now I have found a real gem for any WP theming beginners out there and that gem is underscores.

A completely blank theme agnostic to any design direction to give you a blank canvas to work your creative magic however you want. No pre-supposed boundaries or grids, just a clean slate.

I really dont know what else to say – its exactly where you should start as a WP themer – and its open source and being refined and updates all the time via the GitHub repository.

Check it out here:

http://underscores.me/

And let me know how it worked out for you.

-Go make the web a better place.

-Alex Bezuska

Hello world!

Hi my name is Alex, and I’m a CSS addict.

I have been a freelance UX /Web Designer for about 6 years, and just recently – started a full-time job working as the web designer for a great local company. I have a love for HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript, and I recently took the dive into Sass, which is purely rad-tastic.

I hope to learn more about WordPress, jQuery, NODE.js, Backbone.js, and Compass!

That’s where this blog comes in, my hope is to share the new things I learn with hopes to teach others who are trying to learn the same things as I am.

Well , I’m off to work. – but check back here and see what I’m up-to, or follow me on twitter @alexbezuska!

‘Hiatus’

I took a break from the squid game, for a couple of reasons, including having the flu pretty bad, but I will be starting up the dev log again soon.

I also found this device called the SD2SNES, and I am blown away. It’s a a board that can be used like a SNES/ SFC cart that allows you to store roms/saves/home-brew etc on an SD card and run them directly on native SNES or SFC hardware. The price is quite high, $195 for the board alone (you would need to salvage an old cart to give it some ‘clothes’ or $260 for the deluxe with custom painted cart/case/ SD card/stickers etc.

The work that went into getting the multiple add-on chips many games had inside them alone is incredible, and I totally understand the cost, but I probably can’t afford one just yet. This makes me dream of creating my own games to run on a real SNES… wow I have no idea where to even begin on that one! If anyone if working an a home-brew SNES /SFC project and needs someone to work on art, contact me for sure! I will be very interested.

Mentioned Links:
Stone Age Gamers – home of the SD2SNES

Until next time,
-Alex

Squid Game Dev Log/ Learning Unity3D Day 11

Day 11 – 12-10-12
So-far so Good, I have now figured out how to have the player ‘eat’ the caffeine pills and boost the awake meter by 25pts and have the pill object disappear
– Fun stuff, most of the game mechanics are done, as this is a simple game.

  • Movement – Done
  • Collection of items  and positive effects – Done
  • Rock rolling ability – Somewhat Done
  • Enemies and negative effects – Not Started
  • Endpoints, and level switching – Not Started
  • Saving and continuing from where you left off – Not Started
  • Menus – Still needs to be done
  • fix rock dynamics – Needs to be done

I Shot a quick video of a somewhat unrefined version of the first level:

After I recorded the video, I spent some time fixing bugs with the terrain, and sealing off some of the weird visual gaps on the outside borders.
Here are some screenshots from before I went to bed:

Squid Game Dev Log – Pill Sprites and Video

Awesome things:

Using Orthello to achieve 2d sprite animation in Unity3D I found a cool setting called “Start on random frame” on the Animating Sprite which allows me to have my pill spites rotate independently – which adds a cool little visual.

Also I am learning how Hinge Joints work for attacking my seaweed sprites to the floor and allowing the player to collide with them and cause them to jostle a bit. I set the z axis (depth) to different amounts for each seaweed, and some are jostles more or not at all depending on the depth relative to the player.

I am obsessing over tiny details, but really fun!
Unity3d is crazy on options.

Squid Game Dev Log – awake meter and seaweed

Okay so, here’s where I’m at with the squid game.

I have added and have been working on a debug level where I will try out different physics stuff, objects, terrain types, and eventually enemies.
One of my friends had a cool suggestion that though the course of the game you upgrade your bed to a full, queen and eventually king size, seems like the perfect nonsense for the game!