planet pigmi

A short collection of interesting links/articles recently:

• Designing Fast Cross-Platform SIMD Vector Libraries plus source code, an interesting read on rolling your own vector libraries. If your looking for a bigger library you can try WildMagic or the Sony maths libraries.
  
• Compiler Cache helps reduce your compile times.
  
• Howard Yeend has an excellent tutorial on K-means clustering (ie: grouping data together, given you know how many groups you want - always a shame..)
  
• New DirectX SDK is out, not sure how this is exciting..
  
• Apple released the iPad, I have no idea if this is good. But I like the alternative, Linux-friendly iPad.
  
• I stumbled upon Alexandre Mutel's blog on 4k programming
  
• I discovered the IEEE has RSS feeds for most journals.
  
• nVidia have named the GF100 chips: GeForce GTX 480 and GeForce GTX 470.
  
• Anandtech have an
  article on GF100 explaining how the CUDA centric card is also great for gaming.
  
• Facebook released HipHop a PHP to C/gcc conversion tool.
  
• Clang self-hosts! I wonder how long until it becomes a serious g++ competitor.
  
• Symbian OS will be open sourced, perhaps a little too late? Still, Nokia are to be admired.
  
• An interesting gallery of processor cache behaviour, unfortunately I don't think the author is fully qualified on this topic. Still, interesting pictures.
  
• The PS3 hypervisor was hacked
  

Finally, a video of the top Tron AI from the Google AI Challenge:

One of my favourite programming tasks is to create a program in under 4k.  This is something the Demoscene excel at (see scene.org awards).
Some of my favourites are:
stiletto by Rgba for the humanoid 3d models.
Glitterati by Fairlight for the ambient occlusion and fantastic physics. (My favourite overall perhaps?)
Micropolis by TBC & Mainloop for the awesome robot and city.
 Void 3 by Kolor, an oldschool DOS intro, with a voice synthesizer. Awesome DIY.

Of course, achieving this seems impossible, however a few tools make this easier. I used many of these tools and tricks to create my 3kb entry to the global game jam.  First of all a drop/compression tool. Crinkler has eliminated the need for com/cob droppers and gives excellent compression. This little tool has made most of my 4k productions possible.

IN4K has plenty of tools and code examples to help you learn the trade, but Iñigo Quilez has an excellent set of beginner projects. (Not the most optimized ones out there, but still a fantastic starting point).  FIT have an excellent set of demoscene resources, including source code to some fantastic 4k intros (plus synthesizers!). Ryg/Farbrausch has some interesting reads as well.

The other thing that you will find when making 4K intros is the lack of maths functions (which you can get around by using intrinsics /QIfist in MSVC, or something like that), and by writing them yourself in assembly. 

The next problem is often getting rid of the C standard library, in particular rand(). This is where Linear congruential generator (LCG) come in handy. This is where IQ comes handy again with GlobalAlloc instead. (Feel free to overide operator new and use your standard C++ coding style).

If your really looking to crunch size, then stick to values that will compress well (ie: powers of 2), but the latest crinkler can drop floating precision for you anyway, so I'm not sure how much you save with this trick these days...

I entered the 2010 Perth Game Jam again this year, but only had about 6 hours to put together an entry. Simon Wittber did a great job of organizing it again this year.

Simon has put up photos from Perth Game Jam, and ofcourse the Perth 2010 Game Jam games.

I put together a very simple multiplayer game for OSX, with the aim of making it into a 4k game. I managed to bring it in at around 3.5kb, but it was quite unstable.
You can download the game (Puggle) for Windows/OSX.

Below is a time-laps video of the event, I arrive at around 2:30..

Together with Ronald Jones from iVEC, I organized a presentation from CMLabs.

Michel Carignan, lead product engineer from CMLabs, discussed the internal structure of Vortex, a real-time physics-based simulation engine with collision detection. Michel covered issues in maintaining interactive performance with complex dynamical systems, and a number of applications from the areas of vehicle simulation, robotics and control.

Details of the constraint solver, collision detection, scene graph interaction, and the interactive editor were covered.

Vortex has a number of interesting features designed to support the simulation of cranes / booms with rigid-body chains for representing wires, etc. The simulation system features a highly accurate and fast solver (iterative/LCP, so I'm not sure what is so special about it..) and most constraint interactions are modeled as simple spring-damper systems. The package does not support continuous collision detection, but has 'Fast' objects, which perform iterative collision detection. A simple way to save computation time, while still achieving the goals of a CCD system, by putting some labor onto the programmer.

Constraints can be 'relaxed' to different degrees, enabling 'wobbly' links, eg: ropes. Each constraint can have a maximum force allowed, and this enables frictional forces with the ground to be simulated in a generic manner.

Vortex also has a few additional novel features including SPH fluids (and normal RB hydrodynamics), simulation of sonar sensors, cameras, etc.

One area where CMLabs seems to have put a lot of effort is the validation of the physics engine - quite an interesting topic, especially in validating motor models, etc.

The key new feature seems to be an interactive editor, however I was disapointed to hear they were building on their own file format and not supporting COLLADA (or let alone any other common 3d package like SolidEdge or Havok's physics format)

In any case it was an interesting talk, but unfortunately I had to leave early. Hopefully I can get the slides.

I had no idea that Adrian created a 4KB game for GGJ 2010.

Respect.

Some experimenting today while working on a few new illos.

I wrote my first Unity3D shader today.

It uses vertex colours only, and adds an outline around the edge of the model. Instant Toon! Unfortunately it does not work on the iPhone. Ah well.

So, let’s catch up with what’s been happening.

Last week, I commissioned and received new “box art” for Star Hammer Tactics. I’m really happy with it, and I hope it gets peoples attention when they are browsing through the various Indie games available via Xbox LIVE.

I also started working on a game engine for the PSP. Last year, Black Lab Games applied to be an authorized PSP Minis developer, and was accepted. It’s taken a while to get around to it, but I’m finally starting development. Good times ahead, I’m sure!

Finally, Star Hammer Tactics was submitted for peer review for inclusion in the Xbox LIVE Marketplace. What this means is that other Xbox LIVE Indies Games developers can review the game, and providing they don’t find any objectionable contents (which they won’t, because there is none), or crashes, it will be available for sale.

Thanks to all the jammers, we had a great time this year and produced some stand out games.

It’s been said the quality in Perth surpassed all our fellow jammers at other locations in Australia!

Check out the list of games on the website, the photos, and make sure you check out the brilliant time lapse movie taken and created by Daniel Barry.

True.

I always tell myself the Big Day Out will be good and am disappointed by an abundance of festival jerks, but Laneway actually was good! Great, even.

On a whole the crowd was respectful. You still get the some that’re there purely for the social aspect, but the BDO has degenerated into pretty much only people that are in attendance to be at a festival… Or to get blind drunk and show off their pecs while rubbing their sweaty arms against you.

Anyway, bands I rated live…

BDO:

• Kasabian!! I’m gonna have to catch them when they tour. I really like their latest album – the energy behind them and their tunes gets the crowd pumped.
• Passion Pit were pretty good. Another one I’d like to see touring… with a better sound setup; the vocals were somewhat drowned.
• Rise Against was a surprise. I don’t follow them or anything but the singer is so powerful. And a winning showman!

Laneway:

• Mumford and Sons!! Pick of the day. Awesome! I can’t figure out how much is novelty though. Their music is new and exciting, involves a banjo, and their songs are really well structured. They build up so well and typically develop into some form of hoe down. Also, the crowd extended as far as I could see outside the Museum. I was quite proud of Perth, and the band seemed genuinely stunned by the support. Heartwarming stuff.
• The XX were pretty good. The vocals were a bit airy on the girl’s behalf but otherwise a fine set.
• Florence and the Machine went off. I was having crowd issues during her set but if I wasn’t raging I would’ve been loving it. Her voice cuts through ambient noise like nothing else. If she hooked up with the Rise Against guy they could have very loud (but gifted) babies.

I don’t read Gamasutra much anymore, mostly because I find half-baked ideas that either frustrate me or make me feel insecure and insignificant. Recently, though, a friend of mine linked to a link to this. It narrows down the desire to collect items and achievements to one of two drives: either you’re OCD, or you really enjoy bragging.

But I believe there is a softer, deeper desire that was not explicitly touched on. The desire to be valued, and the desire to express out value to a society which we feel we deserve to be a part of. If I am on Steam, people can look at what games I’ve played, for how long, with what achievements, and what I am playing now… Or the last time I was even online. We want to appear appropriate to the Steam community, having played the “good” commercial games, the “best” retro games, and the “coolest” indie games. Even if we don’t explicitly try to wear our choices as a badge of honour, it’s still all there, comparing us with our fello Steam buddies.

On the other hand, sometimes we just get achievements because wee like a challenge

Ellen

This 4x4 has a mere 574 vertices. It uses Vertex colours only, no textures. Quite adequate for an iPhone game.


Update: Spent a few more vertices on details.

This guy (ossipena), is clearly a legend.

Step 1. Tell your users to go elsewhere.

Step 2. Tell them to stop bitching.

Step 3. Tell them to not bother posting, just shut up.

This is a brilliant strategy to help engage your users, and create a friendly community around your product. Great work ossipena!

</sarcasm (if you didn't notice)>

That and your firey red hair.

Every now-and-then, a game comes along which seems to have infinite re-playability, despite it's simplicity. In 1984, a game just like that was released and it was called Sopwith.


The player conrolled a tiny little biplane with speed and elevator controls. The aim of the game was simple, bomb the buildings and avoid getting shot down by other enemy planes. The bombs were huge, (triggered via the 'B" key of course) and they followed a graceful curve towards their target. The launch vector followed the trajectory of your plane, so you had to be careful you didn't launch it while upside down!


The game arena was surrounded by two large mountains at each end of the map, so you need to become adept at flipping a bomb into the corner of the screen, while executing a tight loop and rolling to continue on in the other direction!


This was one of the few games I managed to finish. IIRC, once the last building or fighter was taken out, your Sopwith Camel (the biplane) promptly executed a tight turn and flew off into the screen, rewarding you with a great 4 colour sunset.

Heidi and I moved down to Albany on the weekend and we’ve just got online. Yay!

The hospital where Heidi works has arranged for a great little apartment for us. It’s fully furnished and equipped (so we were able to just drive down with clothes, computers, etc.) and we’re able to keep cats! It also has a good view of Albany (although the ocean view is blocked by a tree).

The view from our apartment:

Brucey Goosey looking rather vacant:

Princess Mao Mao:

Gosh, these images took a while to upload. The Internet connection is only 512kbps (around 3% of the speed we’re used to). Hopefully we can arrange for something faster.

My recent experience with Gamma IV and Unstable Radial has shown me that it is indeed possible to build something fun in my spare time over a week.

I'm pretty keen to try this again very soon. Especially as a very cool new game console is coming out soon... and I've heard that Unity3D are planning 0-day developer support for the device... Excellent!

...for many different reasons. Here is one more.

Over on the AGS Critics Lounge I've finally gotten around to doing a quick background drawing tutorial.

Those of you interested in game design/illustration/pictures may find it interesting, and maybe even a little bit useful.

Another exhibition is on the horizon! A mythology themed group exhibition with a couple of locals which promises to be awesometastic.

I may or may not encorporate robots into my arts so I thought I’d do a lighting study of typically robotic materials… So I googled robots, and ended up doing a study of I, Robot. It’s not completely identical to the robots in the movies though. I gave it a hat and some markings for good measure.

I've spent the evening porting my Gamma IV entry to the iPhone. I had to make quite a few modifications, but it is now complete, and playable. In total, I've spent about 40 hours on this game over the last two weeks.

That 40 hours gave me a Mac, PC, Web and iPhone version of the same game. Unity3D is pure awesome.

Well, the RocketHands crew has finished another Global Game Jam, and come out smiling. We're in the process of catching up on much-needed sleep, and we're starting to check out the games made by our compatriots in other locations around the world.

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So I worked on a game with: Simon Boxer, Ellen Jurik, Brad Power, Daniel Adams and Robert Barnett (get blogs guys! ><), with help from Jason Hutchens who splintered off early on to make a mini masterpiece: Bogus Quest.

We made “Bored Room” it’s available at http://www.globalgamejam.org/2010/bored-room.

Some things went wrong:

• Tech – We decided before the jam to use flash (without any experience) and quickly found that getting it to do what we wanted (without reliable internet at one stage for docs and tutes) was too much effort. We slipped effortlessly into old habits and used pygame. Note that this decision was made at like 20? 15? hours till deadline :/ Jason did the same but stuck with flash and succeeded with bells on so big props to him.
• Team size – While I think it helped us in the end (we got a lot of work done fast) the team size really caused some slowdown and friction when deciding on an idea. People are different, in a team people need to be unified. Sorry to everyone if I was a main offender in the struggle to get settled on something. I can be a tool like that :/
• Team size 2 – As a large team it felt (at least I felt) like we had more to prove than a smaller team, this further hindered the choosing of an idea.
• Theme - The theme was a bit restrictive and early on we tried too hard to be too clever about it. We should have just used it to get ideas flowing and then been more relaxed about sticking to it.
• Multiplayer – We didn’t want to do a multiplayer game because it’s harder for people to play. I now think we should have said “Who cares? We can play it!” if we really wanted to do a multiplayer game.

Overall I think I took it too seriously and worried too much. Not next time!

I also learned a dirty secret. Non-’programmers’ are making kick-ass games with fantastic tools such as Construct. *Shakes Fist* Put us programmers out of a job will ya?! But seriously I’m all about doing more making games and less making tech so I’ll definitely be checking construct and similar packages out in future. Are there any that can target flash?

I did ended up having good fun in the end and our team did some amazing work in a short time and produced a game that (albeit with some glitches) is fun and funny. Thanks heaps guys and gal in my team! Thanks also to Anthony Sweet who appeared miraculously with burgers and sundaes in our time of need and then vanished into delicious smoke. And thanks especially to Simon Wittber for setting it all up and being the loving father of gamejamming in perth!

Last week I posted some images of potential “box art” for Star Hammer Tactics. Well, having considered the issue for a bit, I decided to get some professional help.

I contacted my artist friend and former colleague Darren Yeow to get some assistance. I’m really glad I did. Here is the new Star Hammer Tactics box art that Darren created. Much better, I think

I managed to convince that Colin Loafshorts guy to make a 48 hour game with me this weekend.

So we did.

You can download it by clicking the new banner in the games section there - the one that says "Hope".

I'm about to go and play it through to the end for the first time myself.

Then I'm going to watch Ghost in the Shell for the first time as well.

Today is truly a day of firsts. Hooray for my exciting life :D

After deciding late Saturday to actually participate in the GameJam, I've made something that is barely playable. It is a remake of the cemetery scene from "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly".


The cemetery is procedurally generated, and contains 74 different tomb stones, in various stages of disrepair, and they're all normal mapped. THere are about 5000 tombstones in total.

In contrast to the detail on the stones, the characters are cardboard props, with some textures splatted on the front. At the end of the tension building glances and facial close ups, you get to spend one bullet on your choice of the bad guys. If you manage to hit the cardboard cutout, you are rewarded with an end sequence and victory scene.

I used Unity3D, made all the models and textures myself, however I borrowed the original soundtrack from the film. I think I'm allowed to do this, as the game is effectively a satire or parody of the original. :-)

Global Game Jam is an annual event where game developers of all walks (hobbyists, professionals, students etc) meet and form teams to make a game over one weekend. There’s a theme which is revealed via the interwebs on Friday evening, this year it was ‘Deception’.

Last year I ground my hands to a pulp producing ~30hrs worth of art, which equated to not much sleep! This year I cut my participation back to about 16hrs (and went to the Big Day Out).

My main focus this year was a game we titled Bored Room. You can download the game install here and play it yourself! It has some very amusing dialogue.

I only had Saturday to make all the art, so kept it simple; but charming! Here are the characters:

And a room! Complete with a hulking security guy.

Very straight forward. After the "SDL_Init" call, simply call:

SDL_GL_SetAttribute(SDL_GL_MULTISAMPLEBUFFERS, 1);
SDL_GL_SetAttribute(SDL_GL_MULTISAMPLESAMPLES, 4);

before the call to "SDL_SetVideoMode".

You will need to call

glEnable(GL_MULTISAMPLE);

as well.

The smooth hint calls might help you too:

glHint(GL_LINE_SMOOTH_HINT, GL_NICEST );
glHint(GL_POLYGON_SMOOTH_HINT, GL_NICEST );
 
glEnable(GL_LINE_SMOOTH);
glEnable(GL_POLYGON_SMOOTH);

All done, you should see smoothed edges (as in the picture above, left is antialiased, right has jaggy edges)

A scantily clad one at that. Not the most functional of outfits, but well aerated!

Anyway, I wanted to run with the backlighting look of last night’s sketch. It seems like a good initiative to do a study and then apply it to a completely fabricated scene. I know the lighting’s flawed in parts but the image has a sort of graphic novel feel to it.

Currently they’re all in planning mode, after enjoying a BBQ dinner.

We have 21 in attendance with more expected to arrive later, or tomorrow.

GlobalGameJam 2010 begins in Perth a few hours (it has started elsewhere in the future world that is GMT+>8). I am crazy excited like it’s Christmas Eve 15 years ago. Hmm make that 20 years ago

Anyway I have some thoughts on how I want to approach it this year.

Make a COMPLETE game. (including engine and tools as appropriate).

I’d love to see and create some games this year that can stand on their own. IE that we could stick on a website (for in browser play or download) and actually say that they are finished products. Games that someone in some universe might spend $5 to purchase or $15 to buy the extended version (more content only).

Games that we can take and extend after the fact.

My own games suffer from this a lot. Ladybug Garden and Troll in particular were both ‘complete’ to the point that I’d implemented most of the features I wanted and managed to tack on 10-15 minutes of gameplay. But I’d rather it was an hour of gameplay, or 20 minutes that left you insanely wanting to know what happens next.

Achieving this level of ‘completeness’ requires a better focus on tools, and a better balance of developing the tech vs developing the game. For example I think having someone in the team actually spending some chunk of time writing story and dialog etc would make for a more interesting end product (If that’s the type of game you’re making). Same goes for tools. If you spend 5 hours hacking in 20 minutes of  ‘campaign’ (with all kinds of hard coding and workarounds) then making the next 40 minutes of the campaign is going to slay you. If you can manage to make a great little suite of tools in 10 hours, and from then on can make an hour of content per hour of dev, that is freaking sweet. Whether there is time for this or not remains to be seen.

If you end up with hacky code that is not extensible (IE our Under One Roof from last years Global GameJam) then the product will end its life there. The prospect of having UOR on iPhone or as a flash game is very compelling to me and it pains me that we haven’t done it yet. But rewriting the game from scratch because it’s utterly unportable is really hard to swallow, especially when there are sooo many other ideas vying for attention and development time.

Basically I think the point I’m trying to make, distilled, is:
Make a product that can have a lifetime, not a something throwaway for the purposes of the challenge.

In order to achieve this I think we should be very wary of feature creep and scope.

The other issue, to confuse matters even more, is that a few of us (notable Kranzky, it was his idea) are planning on learning flash during the gamejam (about time, yes). This means more time scrolling through documentation and less time banging on the keyboard.

It’s going to be a blur.

Well I hope some of that made sense. Have a great Jam everyone!

The second ever Global Game Jam is on this weekend and everyone here at Let’s Make Games would like to wish all participants the very best of luck.

For those of you who don’t know about the phenomenon that is Global Game Jam, here’s a quick summary: 48 hours of unadulterated creative energy poured into collective game development at breakneck speeds by teams all over the world!

Here in Perth, the local site is being hosted at the Joondalup Business Centre. Setup begins at 5pm tonight and submissions must be in by 3pm on Sunday (the event officially ends at 6pm on Sunday – leaving some time to actually play the games!).

Thanks to the efforts of Simon Wittber (aka. Different Methods), Perth is very well represented as a regional centre for game jamming. Perth was the only Australian location for the first Global Game Jam (at which point Simon had already organised two previous local game jams). This year, the Perth site is also being supported by local game developers Rockethands and Subversive Games.

For more information, see: the Global Gam Jam website; the list of participants for the Perth site; the local event schedule; and the official website for the Perth site.

It is 4AM... and it is done. Also... the Global Game Jam starts tomorrow. ERgh. I am going to be wrecked next week.

I would like to present Unstable Radial! Beta Testers please apply to simonwittber@gmail.com! It run's on Windows and OSX.

ZzzzZzzzz....

Update: Download from here.

Something pretty non-exhaustive this evening – A lighting study of Emily Haines from Metric.

In less than 24 hours, 00100000b game developers in Perth will be taking part in Global Game Jam 2010. RocketHands will be there With Bells On. We're proud sponsors of the Perth event, and well chuffed that Perth was the one and only venue in Australia for last year's event (this year Sydney and Melbourne have rustled up a handful of participants, but Perth still remains, by far, the largest Australian gathering, and one of the larger of the 130 or so venues worldwide).

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Whilst doing the end of year game round up a few weeks ago I realized how boring it is to read lots of boring words about all the commercial titles I beat over the course of 6 months. I thought it might be nicer to write them one by one as I go instead, and even steal pictures from Google image search to make the write ups more colourful. If this gets boring or annoying let me know and I'll go back to big long spiels that you can ignore all in one go.



Celebrities have gotten into a strange habit of naming their children some very strange things. Whether it be Fire Vai, Moon Unit Zappa or Margarine Chandler (in some strange parallel universe where I am a celebrity parent). Whether for a child or pet bandicoot, I have to say that "Crash" is a plain stupid name. And this is a stupid kid's game.

Instead of ultra realistic graphics like Crysis and Stalker, Crash of the Titans has stupidly colourful worlds - from deserts to glaciers and toxic junkyards. Instead of realistic combat Crash of the Titans has stupid pretend kiddy combat - like Tom and Jerry. Instead of spouting blood your enemies shout out fourth wall breaking one liners when they are defeated. That's just stupid.

So stupid is Crash of the Titans that the cutscenes pay tribute to all manner of cartoon styles - from South Park to Dragon Ball Z - and do so without managing to look lame.

Also the game is a platformer. That's just stupid - I demand that the developers add iron sights!

The main gameplay feature is mind controlling lots of big mutants that you beat and taking control of their special abilities to solve puzzles and get through stages; something like a cross between Messiah, Mario and Nanobots. Although I got a bit lost at times the game was never super hard and the boss battles were all quite simple - even the final one.

In short, theologists, bus drivers, video game journalists, Dimmu Borgir fans and other equally jaded and cynical people will probably think this game is stupid.

The rest of us will realize that stupid kids' games don't have to worry about making everything totally cool and realistic and groundbreaking and therefore can focus on actually being fun. The only question now is "Why can't us adults have games that are pure and simple fun as well? How come kids get all the wacky fun games?"

Stupid kids.

(PS Play Psychonauts and Beyond Good & Evil)

So for a few weeks now we've had a studio space. Renting a room out of a house, not too far from home, but far enough of a trek for it to feel like traveling to work. It may sound silly to some, but by having physically separate spaces for home and work has been making all the difference. I've had the opportunity not only to work my normal workload, but also slowly get more organised by the day, and even find time to create experimental work again.

I'm about to start a new wordpress blog to mark the occasion, of "out with the old and in with the new", so to speak. It's been a tough couple of years personally, and 2010 marks the beginning of a new attitude for me. I've conquered a lot of my personal goals, and the new set are mainly concerned with: work, personal voice, happiness, and experiencing life less as a hermit.

So when I figure out all the technical details on switching everything over so RSS feeds remain unchanged, I plan to go all out with finding that voice. Creating work that I enjoy and finding a way to make myself more marketable in this work that I enjoy, in a no-holds-barred way in terms of censorship and creative exploration.

Racing is really tough when you have to dodge exploding barrels...


And you have no control over the steering!

I've added some exploding barrels to my Gamma IV One Button Game. My eyes are so blurry now, I must sleep.

Heartless Robot are a rad little record label from here in Perth. They’ve released a bunch of the more experimental and interesting projects from around here. When Scott from HRP approached me about designing a new logo for them, I was totally stoked (especially recalling the Bassta Pex / Gutter Guitar split 12″ limited to 100 copies, which each had original artwork by different participating artists. 100 x 1 off vinyls. For whatever reason I didn’t have time to try get involved, but yeah, such a cool idea.

From the beginning of the project I wanted to document the process as much as possible for the purpose of sharing it here.. and so here goes. As comprehensive a process recap as I could scramble together, minus a few stages in between.

I like to gather a buttload of visual research most of the time. I tried to gather as mixed a selection of robot references as I could, and then culled that selection down to designs I liked. Below are 2 of the collaged pages (had weeded down to about 5 pages of robot refs). I had also originally been excited at the prospect of possibly taking some inspiration / paying homage to Boris Artsybashef. Unfortunately wasn’t really appropriate though.

Style-wise, I wanted to try and avoid robot cliches as much as I could, and wanted to draw influence from some of the darker disney characters and great cartoon villains, Camille Rose Garcias dark and sweet character designs, and of course Japanese influence – aside from my own influence, Heartless Robot have a bit of a relationship with Japan (bands touring, releases, frequent visitors, etc.), so was more than appropriate.

Below, the first few rather embarrassing sketches, but can’t skimp on the bits I don’t want to show.


Not having much success with my initial doodles, I moved onto experimenting with block shapes and how they affect the character. The bodies mostly inspired by Ashley Wood, the master of bad arse bots. The feedback from Scott along the way being that they were after more of a “City Destroyer” as opposed to “C3PO”. The face design was probably my favourite part of the whole process. The dial-eyes my favourite detail.

As I’m sure some people reading this will know, Google ignores most punctuation in search terms.

This means searching for things such as “ruby .one?” or “ruby ||= trick” etc are much less helpful than they’d otherwise be.
(Side note, “.one?” is an array instance method that returns true if the array has exactly one item in it. Ahh ruby, you so crazy.)

Every few months this really pisses me off.

Here is a line from google’s basic search help page:
With some exceptions, punctuation is ignored (that is, you can’t search for @#$%^&*()=+[]\ and other special characters).

And if you follow the link the most interesting of the exceptions is:
Punctuation in popular terms that have particular meanings, like [ C++ ] or [ C# ] (both are names of programming languages), are not ignored.

Well thankyou google! For some reason this annoys me even more. There is someone who every now and again (every few months? or maybe they’ve only done it once when google first added punctuation rules?) goes in and adds “popular terms”. Well most of my terms aren’t popular! That’s why I’m searching for them!

I just checked Bing and notice the same problem. Anyone know a more thorough search engine for special use cases? (Don’t get me wrong google is great for most of my searches.)

Friday 29th
- 05:00 PM: Turn up at 15 Barron Pd, Joondalup
- 06:00 PM: Keynote and Tech Talk
- 06:30 PM: Theme Announcement
- 06:35 PM: Team Forming and Planning

Saturday 30th
- Keep Working

Sunday 31st
- 03:00 PM: Deadline and Upload
- 06:00 PM: Close

Notes:
- The venue will be locked Friday night, and supervised from Saturday 8AM till Sunday 6PM.

A long standing supporter of the Perth GameJam Community, Subversive Games has once again provided much needed financial support to GGJ 2010.

Special thanks go to the CEO, JM Guitera for his generosity. JM also sponsored last year’s GGJ, and the massive end of year party put on by the letsmakegames crew.

Thanks SG!

Heartless Robot are a rad little record label from here in Perth. They've released a bunch of the more experimental and interesting projects from around here. When Scott from HRP approached me about designing a new logo for them, I was totally stoked (especially recalling the Bassta Pex / Gutter Guitar split 12" limited to 100 copies, which each had original artwork by different participating artists. 100 x 1 off vinyls. For whatever reason I didn't have time to try get involved, but yeah, such a cool idea.

From the beginning of the project I wanted to document the process as much as possible for the purpose of sharing it here.. and so here goes. As comprehensive a process recap as I could scramble together, minus a few stages in between.




I like to gather a buttload of visual research most of the time. I tried to gather as mixed a selection of robot references as I could, and then culled that selection down to designs I liked. Below are 2 of the collaged pages (had weeded down to about 5 pages of robot refs). I had also originally been excited at the prospect of possibly taking some inspiration / paying homage to Boris Artsybashef. Unfortunately wasn't really appropriate though.

Style-wise, I wanted to try and avoid robot cliches as much as I could, and wanted to draw influence from some of the darker disney characters and great cartoon villains, Camille Rose Garcias dark and sweet character designs, and of course Japanese influence - aside from my own influence, Heartless Robot have a bit of a relationship with Japan (bands touring, releases, frequent visitors, etc.), so was more than appropriate.


Below, the first few rather embarrassing sketches, but can't skimp on the bits I don't want to show.


Not having much success with my initial doodles, I moved onto experimenting with block shapes and how they affect the character. The bodies mostly inspired by Ashley Wood, the master of bad arse bots. The feedback from Scott along the way being that they were after more of a "City Destroyer" as opposed to "C3PO". The face design was probably my favourite part of the whole process. The dial-eyes my favourite detail.

The chaps over at RocketHands recently released a unique physics/action/puzzle game called RocketFuse. I know that the RH crew are all keen Python coders, so I figured it would be great to get an insight into how Python factors in their game development processes.

Now that you is getting into iPhone development, is Python still important for RH? How does Python factor into RocketFuse development?

Python wasn't a huge factor in RocketFuse because the iPhone platform didn't support python. (This might have changed since then but apple have some strange rules to do with development on iPhone). We did however use python and pygame to knock out a very smart level editor in record time. Another strange connection is that the library we used on iPhone is cocos2d-iphone. A port of a python game library that RocketHands have used on other projects, notable PuzzlePeeps, a gamejam entry.

EC: download at -  puzzle_peeps_win32.zip or puzzle_peeps_linux32.tar.bz2 (Linux).

What exactly is RocketFuse all about?

RocketFuse is an innovative physics action game. You need to draw thrusters with fuses onto a Rocketship which is otherwise immobilised and trapped at the bottom of a cave. The fuses will burn down and the thrusters will ignite causing the ship to move in quite realistic but obviously cartoony ways. You can attach heaps of rockets on the ship to have it blasting all around. The goal is to escape the ship from a series of levels. You need to pay close attention to the number of thrusters you use and the time you take in order to unlock achievement medals for each level to properly finish the game. The game has a distinctive cardboard look to it which gives it some character above the generic sci-fi look.

Why do you use pygame?

Choosing pygame for the level editor was mostly due to a case of familiarity and speed of implementation. Most RocketHands programmers are very familiar and proficient with python as well as pygame. We especially like it for gamejam project because of the quick turnaround that is possible. (Example games from RocketHands members written in pygame: Ladybug Garden, Troll, Lurching Urchins, Dodgy Game, Under One Roof.

EC: download at - LadybugFinal.zip, LurchingUrchins.zip, DodgyGame.zip, troll.zip or see the Under One Roof GGJ web site.

What other libraries to do you rely on?

Other libs we've used include Hafs game engine, Box2d, Chipmunk, Cocos2d for python and iPhone, psycho, XNA. We spread ourselves around and try to use the right technology for the task at hand :)

How else do you, or would you like to use Python?

RH uses python a lot for our gamejam activities, also for prototypes etc. (see the list above). If we could use it more easily for XBLA or iPhone development we probably would ;)

The RH Team are keen participants and supporters of the local GameJam community in Perth. In fact, they're participating in the upcoming Global Game Jam. I can't wait to see what they come up with.

It's probably time to go to sleep, seeing as I have to work tomorrow... I'm happy with the holiday's progress. Track is complete, it looks reasonable, and 4 player mode is working. The cars are tuned for stability and maximum fun. I've finally got the hang of Unity3D wheel colliders.

I had a simple idea, and spent an evening seeing if it would work. Having spent the last 30 minutes "play testing" with my neighbour, I can say that the game is definitely fun. It's a simple little racing game, with cool physics!

I’m getting close to the end of development of Star Hammer Tactics, so it’s time to start thinking about the evil M-word : Marketing. From reading about the experiences of other developers who have released games through Xbox Live Indie Games, it seems that box art is especially important to getting noticed (and in turn, getting sales). It seems many people do judge a game by it’s cover.

Although digitally distributed games don’t have boxes, they still have artwork and descriptions that are intended to communicate to potentials players/customers what the game is about and why you should click the Buy Now button…Now!

So, here are a few layouts I’ve come up with so far.

Layout 1:

Layout 2 (note the blue tint of the ship):

Layout 3:

Layout 4:

The concept is pretty simple, a big bad-ass ship and the name of the game. From the viewpoint of someone browsing through the online store, if you like big bad-ass ships, you’ll hopefully be interested in this game. The grid background suggests the strategy elements of the game. I thought about adding more action, but decided not too, since it’s not really an action game.

Does it hit the mark? Which one do you think is best? Am I missing something? Feel free to comment! (I’d love to hear from some graphics designers about simple tricks that can add some impact to the image!)

Always adjust the centreOfMass attribute of the rigid body of your vehicle AFTER you've attached the WheelCollider components. Otherwise, the centreOfMass attribute appears to be reset, resulting in much unstableness (unless your vehicle is particularly well designed).

Depending on your objective, you probably will get the best results if you set the centreOfMass to just below your wheel axles.

Some fun in between jobs.. same as “Spacer”, an idea I’d had in my head for ages, finally put to paper in my 100 Figures Project and since had wanted to paint it up.

Inspired by some brilliant-for-the-wrong-reasons editing on an episode of “Extreme Makeover”, or some such show.

SUMMER is still on for just under a week @ Little Creatures Freo – wraps up Feb 1st.

Thanks to all who made in down to the launch in December, pre Xmas and all . Below are the pieces Otilee and I collaborated on, followed by some shots from the night. Was a great lineup of artists and their pieces, met a bunch of awesome people, drank some top beer.

Shots from the night:

Apologies to Jessica Singh, as it doesn’t appear I have a photo of her pieces, but go check out her work here http://www.jessicasingh.com Jessica also has her solo show on the opposite wall, which I presume runs until Feb 1 as well. Rad feminine indie styled illustrations.

Some fun in between jobs.. same as "Spacer", an idea I'd had in my head for ages, finally put to paper in my 100 Figures Project and since had wanted to paint it up.

Inspired by some brilliant-for-the-wrong-reasons editing on an episode of "Extreme Makeover", or some such show.

SUMMER is still on for just under a week @ Little Creatures Freo - wraps up Feb 1st.

Thanks to all who made in down to the launch in December, pre Xmas and all :). Below are the pieces Otilee and I collaborated on, followed by some shots from the night. Was a great lineup of artists and their pieces, met a bunch of awesome people, drank some top beer.



Shots from the night:





Apologies to Jessica Singh, as it doesn't appear I have a photo of her pieces, but go check out her work here http://www.jessicasingh.com Jessica also has her solo show on the opposite wall, which I presume runs until Feb 1 as well. Rad feminine indie styled illustrations.

If you're dynamically creating WheelCollider components in your game, make sure you position/transform the GameObject instance BEFORE you call AddComponent("WheelCollider").

Much frustration and question marks will be avoided.

Two nights ago I spent an evening dressed as Indiana Jones. Admittedly, I was at a costume party, which makes my introductory line less exciting, but anyway… I ended up getting to bed at about 4am only to wake up at 5:20am to my cat chasing a flying cockroach around the room. I turned the light on and tried to catch it, but it got away.

Fast forward to last night. I’d just gone to bed when I heard something scuttling around. Lo and behold, I turned on the light and used my keen tracking skills to find a cockroach behind my bookcase, out of reach. Shortly after, it emerged from underneath, and while still channeling Indiana I whipped it with a shirt lying nearby. It started scampering around a pile of sketchbooks, and as it did so I heard a flutter from behind me…

The flying cockroach from the previous night charged out from under my filing cabinet, powered across the carpet and launched itself directly at my legs! What the hell?!

I jumped aside, dodging its assault, and after landing next to the other cockroach they bolted side-by-side into a stack of paintings.Since when do cockroaches cooperate?! It’s these kinds of acts that make you think you’re the bad guy in a Disney movie. I’m not one to rampage against nature but now there were two cockroaches in my room! Possibly even a husband and wife combination that could disrupt my sleep with several future generations if I didn’t put an end to it right there and then.

I spent the next 20mins or so ransacking my bedroom. The flightless one was the first to reveal, and suffered the consequences. It played dead after a few whips so I just relocated it outside.

The flying one was a little more cunning, doing laps around my bed where I couldn’t get to it. I’m pretty sure it was mocking me… Jerk. When I finally caught it in and open area, I gave it the old ‘rubber sole smackdown’ and breathed a sigh of relief. I took the corpse outside wrapped in the whipping shirt, which probably wasn’t the most efficient of weapons, and having just heavy-handed two cockroaches I went to put the ‘relocation shirt’ into the washing basket.

When I turned on the bathroom light another cockroach manifested on the counter! 3 for 3 I went. It was pretty much how I envisioned the zombie apocalypse… But with cockroaches. Speaking of which, if you still haven’t seen Zombieland – go see it.

However, unlike the zombie apocalypse I haven’t faced wave after wave of cockroaches since. Those were the only ones I’ve seen in the house this year, they just had some strange agreement to strike in unison.

After reading Brad's post about his Gamma4 entry, I feel a little inspired to take part.

Hmm but I'm so busy and there is so little time left... Hmm tommorow is a public holiday after all...

Hmm indeed.

Another game which I never finished was Infiltrator, released in 1986. I'm pretty sure this game used a printed code book for copy protection, with black writing on dark purple paper, so that it wouldn't photocopy.


The game consisted of a short flight through enemy airspace in a helicopter, where you could choose to fight or fool enemy aircraft. After landing outside the enemy camp, you walked through the gates and had to avoid enemy guards. If questioned, you could show some fake papers or use a can of sleeping gas. Sleeping gas, handy stuff that!


I don't remember the point of this game, I think you had to go and take out some big boss or some such. Gameplay basically involved exploring buildings and avoiding getting caught by wearing enemy uniforms or using the sleeping gas. There were no guns or combat, just lots of sneaking around and hoping you didn't run out of gas.


Why didn't I finish this game? It used a very poor game mechanic, the count down timer. When the time runs out you had to repeat the whole flight/land/sneak/gas sequence again. This is a miserable way to add difficulty to a game. After the umpteenth restart, all fun evaporates.


Infiltrator was interesting, because it combined a few games into one. It was part flight sim, part action isometric, and it had a interior building exploration component too, which reminded me of the Spy Vs Spy games. Ultiimately, despite it's innovation, the game failed. The sum of its mediocre parts still summed up to a total of... mediocrity.

Here’s a quote from an ABC News story on rating public schools:

Education Minister Julia Gillard says the “disadvantage” rating will not be used to stigmatise schools.

How could it not?

Most disturbing is that the number of indigenous students will affect the “disadvantage” rating. So on top of getting teased because their school is “bad” (implying that they are stupid), indigenous kids are also being told that it’s their fault.

Very poorly considered policy.

I needed to convert a Windows platform standard ico format icon file to a Macintosh icns format icon file and didn't find any quick relevant details via Google.

Well, here is a little quick recipe for doing so without having to use any additional software, only what is already on your Macintosh. At least this worked just fine on my Leopard machine so it should at least be able to be done on Leopard and Snow Leopard.

From the command line do the following, substituting in your relevant information.


pookie:tmp admin$ sips -s format tiff icon.ico --out icon.tiff
pookie:tmp admin$ tiff2icns -noLarge icon.tiff icon.icns