KIXEYE

“A Brief History of Sass” by Ace KIXEYE Web Dev Jeremy Laskar

Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS, is the language that powers the design of the web today. CSS3, the latest version of the language, supports animation and advanced image/text effects. The language itself, however, is still locked into a static role - there’s no logic in CSS. It can’t make any decisions. 

Enter Syntactically Awesome Stylesheets, or Sass. Sass is a CSS Preprocessor; it is to CSS what PHP is to HTML. It lets you apply logic easily to your CSS, and takes care of translating your instructions into working CSS files.  An added bonus of using a preprocessor like Sass is that it accounts for CSS fragmentation between browsers. Sass will generate code so that your pages look as similar as possible on all browsers and systems.

Sass, and its competitor LESS, are the two most popular CSS preprocessors on the web today. The key differences between the two are that LESS is a Javascript library, meaning the code is compiled on a user’s system. SASS is programmed in Ruby, and runs on the server. Both have their own advantages and drawbacks, but each offers new possibilities for design on the web. Bootstrap, one of the most popular front-end frameworks on the web, uses LESS to generate its CSS.

Developers at KIXEYE use both Sass and LESS for projects and sites. CSS allows our developers to eliminate redundancy in their code and automate the creation of smarter stylesheets.  Cross-browser compatibility allows our designers to stop worrying about browser-specific tweaks and focus on creating effective user interfaces

Time To Get Ill

A few months ago, a group of KIXEYE employees chipped in to help support the Pebble Watch Kickstarter. After finally receiving his, marketing developer Jeremy Laskar decided to use the recently released Pebble Software Development Kit to put together a watchface featuring our very own unicorn logo.

The Pebble SDK is coded in C. One of the main challenges with programming on the Pebble is managing the limited amount of memory. Currently, the SDK only has some functionality - there’s no space to store app data, and there’s no communication line between the watch and the internet.  Eventually, when these functions become available, Jeremy plans to update the display to show active users for KIXEYE games, in addition to other cool company information.

Pebble users who’d like their very own unicorn watchface can visit http://cdn-vip1.sjc.kixeye.com/kx-corp/kixeye.pbw on their mobile device to download it for free!

Catch The Red-eye

Here at KIXEYE, we’re always looking for ways to turn things up to 11, and this sweatshirt is no exception. Employee Ken Rogers recently came up with the Lifehack of the Week when he installed a red LED light behind the Unicorn eye in his KIXEYE hoodie. Powered by nothing more than a 3mm LED light, a 330 Ohm resistor, a small coin cell battery, a micro slide switch, and a few inches of heat shrink tubing, the first model was super impressive by itself. But in the spirit of innovation, Ken’s already at work on an improved second version which will be lighter, washable, and rechargeable - complete with a USB! 

GDC 2K1-3

The KIXEYE Team had a big week at the annual Game Developers Conference last month! Armed with an eye-catching recruiting booth, our Talent Team was able to talk to a lot of exciting potential hires. After CEO Will Harbin’s address on ‘Death To Downloads’, the crowd headed over to Mezzanine for an after party for the ages, complete with mind-altering Unicorn propaganda. Thanks again to those who helped make GDC a success!

Everything’s Bigger In Texas

KIXEYE recently sent our superstar Recruiting Team down to Austin, Texas for the annual South By Southwest Festival! They generated a lot of buzz surrounding the company and also got to talk to a lot of great potential employees. Check out our awesome booth below:  

That’s No Moon…

Interior Design Magazine recently published a 4-page spread on the inner-workings of KIXEYE HQ. Intimidation plays a large part in our games, and our design studio Rapt “suggested evoking it from the start.” Whether it’s the military-style interrogation room entry way or the markable walls, no corner has gone forgotten. Read the article below and take the virtual tour.

Story:  http://bit.ly/VKAopJ 

Photo spread:  http://bit.ly/YYyiQq

IT Time

Last week, KIXEYE hosted a group of 15 visitors from Russia and the Ukraine who all hold C-level and director level roles within the IT, Operations, Engineering, or Product realms from companies such as Cupid PLC, Murka, Komar Games, and PM Media. The visit was part of a week long Stanford-sponsored tour visiting tech companies including Facebook, Google, EA, Chart Boost, and of course, KIXEYE. 

Our Recruiting Team gave the group a tour of the 19th floor and held an informative presentation/Q&A Session given by John Todd and Niall Hayes. John Todd spoke about how KIXEYE works on an operations level, while Niall spoke about the game studio model at KIXEYE and how the game teams are run. Needless to say, they were hooked! 

Mobile Hitmen

In addition to sponsoring the 2012 Silicon Valley Hackathon, KIXEYE also fielded a development team for the competition. Our hit squad included Abby VanGilder, John Sasser, Tay Carpenter, Lorenzo Pisani, and Matt ‘Hoke’ Hokanson.

Our concept for the Hackathon was a mobile companion to our very own War Commander. The goal was to have a functioning prototype that allowed a player to check in on the status of their base. Teams were allowed to do some planning prior to the event, but not start coding. Part of our planning included some mockups from KIXEYE’s  UI team.  

To begin, we set up the server infrastructure (Git repo, PHP, Ubuntu, nginx, MySQL), got the basic project up and running (Vagrant, Kohana PHP Framework, Backbone.js, require.js, jQuery), and chopped up the mockup PSD’s. 

Happy with what we’d created, we packed up the bean bag chairs, found some more coffee, and headed north. Be on the lookout for more KIXEYE sponsored development projects in 2013!