LZorro Studios
Personal
Other Interests /
Activities
University of Massachusetts Minuteman Marching Band
· Participated in the band while at UMass from 1996 – 2000. Marched and played clarinet.
· Member of Field Staff, 1998 – 2000. Duties included teaching proper marching technique to rookies during Band Camp, distribution of music and drill charts to section, and organization of sectional rehearsals.
· Bus Parent, 1999 – 2000.
· Creator and webmaster of the Clarinet Section webpage, 1996.
· Notable accomplishments:
o Performed for President Bill Clinton at a Democratic Party rally in Springfield, MA, October 1996.
o During this time, the UMMB won the prestigious Sudler Trophy (1998).
o Marched in the Inaugural Parade, 2001.
· Marched with the Alumni Band at Homecoming from 2007 - 2011.
· Participated in a couple game jams and other events.
· 2010 Immigration Jam
· 2010 HTML5 Tools Jam
· 2012 Boston Festival of Indie Games Jam
Boston Festival of Indie Games
· 2012: Curator – reviewed several game submissions and selected a few for entry into the festival.
· Another hobby of mine is making webcomics. Here’s one that I’ve been doing for over 6 years.
Gaming
Once a week I head out to a comic store to play games with friends. Mainly I play Heroclix, a collectible miniatures strategy game involving comic book superheroes and villains. If you live in the Southern Massachusetts/Rhode Island area and are interesting in playing, I organize games at Friendly Neighborhood Comics in Bellingham, MA, and run the Friendly Neighborhood Heroclix mailing list. I also play and collect Pirates of the Cursed Seas and Star Wars Miniatures, and I’ve been known to dabble in Magic: the Gathering.
I also play board games whenever I can. My favorites include Dominion, Puerto Rico, and more of the modern board games than include little wooden pieces.
My personal taste in videogames leans toward puzzle games, especially casual games, and platformers. Often, I check out JayIsGames.com, especially the “escape the room” genre.
Some of my all-time favorite videogame series include Sonic the Hedgehog, Jak and Daxter, and Rachet and Clank.
High School
I attended Tantasqua Regional High School in Sturbridge, MA, class of 1996. Upon graduation I received the Perfect Attendance Award and the Band Director’s Award.
I started learning C in my free time, though unfortunately my programs have been lost over the years (or else I’d show them to you). Some programs I wrote:
· a Christmas carol sing-along program, where the lyrics were highlighted by syllable in time to the “music” (the duration and frequency of the notes played over the system speaker, which I entered into separate files by hand, so in hindsight it was probably out of tune), and included a dynamically created list of said music files by reading the file directory.
· a fighting “brawler” game, like Street Fighter, that drew the characters very inefficiently via screen paint commands.
· a “Chutes & Ladders” clone
· a couple different RPG/adventure games
I also created some custom levels/games for the game ZZT, so I think it’s fair for me to say I’ve had some experience in game modding and object-oriented programming from an early age.
Why “LZorro”?
LZorro is my Internet handle, and dates back to a username I chose back in high school for the mainframe we used in computer class (yes, that’s right, a mainframe). It’s short for “el zorro”, which is Spanish for “the fox” – dropping the “e” to make it look cool. I chose Spanish because 1) that’s the language I studied in high school, and 2) I didn’t quite like the French “renard”. But, I didn’t want to get confused with the classic hero Zorro, and I didn’t want people to get a negative connotation from the translation of “a fox” – “UnZorro”. So I opted for the definite article “the” instead, as most Spanish nouns are described that way.
But why “fox”? Because the word “fox” in Italian is “volpe”. ;-)
Other Links
www.andyvolpe.com – my brother’s website. He’s a historical reenacter and artist.
www.comicgenesis.com – free webcomic hosting
www.eztechgroup.com – provides hosting for this website
www.bostonpostmortem.org – Boston Postmortem, the Boston chapter of the IGDA
Boston Indies – an off-shoot of Boston Postmortem, focusing on independent game developers
Boston Unity Group – a local organization to promote and share their development in the Unity game engine
www.quickhit.com – free online NFL football strategy game
more as I think of them
Last updated: September 28, 2012
© 2008 - 2012 Tim Volpe. All rights reserved.