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 The final version of Kill Yourself is now available for those with mobile phones that can support J2ME MIDP2.0 games. Kill Yourself was designed by Rebecca Cannon (yes, me) and programmed by Karen Jenkins. Luke Ilett made some audio and Simon T a great splash page. Download the game here. A short video here. More info here.
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hello: Slamdance Guerrilla Gamemaker Competition
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 For the second year running Slamdance Film Festival will include a competition for indie games. Awards for game Physics and Philosophy are on offer. All Independent and Student Gamemakers are invited to submit their original games before September 29, 2006. http://www.slamdance.com/games/
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Physics is the 'new black'. A couple of years ago, the new black was realistic water, and before that it was stencil shadows.
But with all the fuss about dedicated physics cards, we have to start wondering what we're going to do with all this collision-detection, rigid-body dynamics and related technology. Up until now Physics has been far down the causal chain within the event continuum of videogames. Physical events in games typically occur after primary game events but rarely do they steer or drive gameplay itself; a symptom and not a cause for play. Pinball is an example of a game that reverses this priority as is the stupidly addictive classic Bridge Builder. As it stands Physics is the best supporting actor, or trusty bass-guitarist of the game experience, wheras it could play a lead role in the broader design itself.
The clip above (a series of Rube Goldberg experiments for a Japanese TV show) is loaded with material that could be re-purposed for a game design. Force, torque, mass, anistropic friction, collision etc are all key elements in an outcome.
Don't get me wrong, I love to throw a toilet every now and again, I'd just like more interesting reasons to do it.
More on the the Rube Goldberg Device here, including some Rube Goldberg HL2 experiments we've blogged about in the past.
Besos Marta for the linkto!
Update: Chris O'Shea from Pixelsumo just sent through this fine link to a site dedicated to the topic. Cheers!
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hello: CFP Extending Experiences. Abstract Deadline 05 June
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Get yer writer's cap on, this one's a goodie.
From the site:
University of Lapland, Faculty of Art & Design, Department of Media
CALL FOR PAPERS, BOOK “EXTENDING EXPERIENCES”
While players of video games have always been waiting for the next generation of technology, less fuss is made about next-generation experiences. If such experiences are already there, what are they like? What would be the 21st-century-equivalent to the experiences of Andy Capp’s Tavern’s customers who rushed into the bar to play Pong until the machine got jammed with coins? Ask a script writer, a political mod artist, a middleware developer, a computer game researcher, or someone who has traded off his social contacts in real life for a high-level character in a MMOG – and you will be overwhelmed by the diversity of what makes an experience worth striving for.. Read the rest of the call here. |
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archive: Pirate Baby's Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006
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Not strictly a work of Machinima; Paul Robertson's Pirate Baby's Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006 is a masterpiece animation based on the graphic look and feel of platform handhelds. A kind of machinima recursion; where animations inspired by games have inspired animations. Paul's style did actually get him a job in the games industry, but he was obsessively animating these seductively disturbing game-inspired tales before making games. His work has been shown in many galleries in Australia, but until now hasn't found a big exposure online. For me, his non-interactive animations are more about what games ought to be than what a lot of games are. The kind of indulgence which triggers all the soft spots of delicious wrongness in a way Reality just doesn't appreciate.
Pirate Baby has an awesome metal-electro sound track by Cornel Wilczek.
You just *know* its going to be a classic because it's Black and White.
mpg1 112mb
Bittorrent of mpg1 file
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archive: xBlocks: A Game for a Flat Earth
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This one nearly slipped through our nets; thankfully Regine was there to scoop it up at Salone del Mobile 2006 in Milan.
xBlocks underscores an ironic predicament posed by the computational simulation of material space, that '3D' and '3Dness' have gradually become qualities only known to occur on flat screens.
xBlocks has taken '3D' from the clutches of hungry LCD's and given a little back to good old causal reality. Perhaps Mahjong is then also a '3D game'..
They say:
xBlocks is a convergence between video games & sculpture — liberating play from the screen. It is a mixed reality installation inspired by traditional platform games of the late 1980s such as Super Mario Brothers or Pitfall. Using standard game controllers, two opposing players must help their characters navigate in and around a three dimensional maze. The real challenge comes, not from traditional game mechanics but rather from moving with your character as he sprints around corners and jumps between the installation’s two play surfaces.
Nice work, I've plonked it in the archives.
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hello: Supermarit: Games by Women
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Annika Bergström, an old student of mine, wrote recently about a project they've kicked off in Visby, Sweden to "support and empower women’s position in the game industry and to encourage girls participation in the technoculture".
While we've certainly seen several academic conferences and business seminars on this topic in the past, Supermarit are comprised of women with first hand contact in the production, marketing and development of games. These guys practice what they preach.. need more of that.
The Supermarit crew have a program of workshops and conferences and will be mobile around the EU in the coming months.
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hello: The Joy of Painting
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When asked if the above image has anything to do with the console giant Nintendo, most would blink a couple of times and then go and do something else.
A new game by the AGFRAG Entertainment Group seeks to teach you how to paint the sort of paintings normally seen between a stuffed squirrel and an old silver ashtray - all on your TV and using the new Nintendo Revolution controller.
The game is based on the infamous Bob Ross painting method, who had a successful TV show on 'how to paint' late last century.
If games can teach us how to dance then perhaps they can teach us how to paint. That said it'd take the console equivalent of the I/OBrush before I'm sticking my tongue out in all the right ways.
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Pink Tentacle is the latest addition to our recommended reading list; covering robotics, architecture, impossible biology, things in danger of vanishing and other nourishment.
Speaking of tentacles, the Polybots are back.. Cheers to Chad for the tip.
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Born from the 'Verse' Project, Uni-verse aims to create a common IP based protocol and programmers interface for developing distributed 3D and 3D-audio applications; allowing developers to rapidly engineer systems for sharing data between multi-user games in realtime, application independent collaborative modelling tools and other trickery.
This opens up a ton of possibilities... imagine being able to work with several people all modelling and texturing the same landscape at the same time, despite the fact you all use different 3D suites (Blender, 3DSMax, Lightwave). Similarly when making a multi-player game, I can build Uni-verse server funcionality into my project and tag/describe all my scene content using the Uni-verse indexing system, allowing any Uni-verse capable client the ability to work with my game (from level and terrain editors, other games, a messaging system into the game from a mobile phone). What Uni-verse offers is a sensible 'common language' for sharing content between media-rich multi-user applications - about time I reckon.
The Uni-verse API is pretty low level, but there's plenty here for 3D artists to get into it. On this tutorial page you'll find a general tutorial, check out the editing application Loq Airou and the scripting interface Purple which can be downloaded alongside other verse applications here.
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| Sunday, April 09 | | · | The Pink Tentacle |
| Friday, April 07 | | · | Uni-verse Project update. |
| Tuesday, April 04 | | · | Gaming Realities Call for Work Reminder |
| · | Downtime |
| Wednesday, March 29 | | · | A Comprehensive Ogre3D Tutorial |
| Tuesday, March 28 | | · | Flow Flash Game |
| Friday, March 24 | | · | Weapons of Choice: Happiness Is a Warm Gun |
| Wednesday, March 22 | | · | Doom 3 Case Mod |
| · | Trigger Happy |
| Tuesday, March 21 | | · | Game Deconstruction |
| Monday, March 20 | | · | Massive - Research Summit |
| Sunday, March 19 | | · | Chit Chat National Park |
| · | What is the relationship between games and the movies? |
| Friday, March 10 | | · | McDonald's Videogame |
| · | COMGRAPH 2006 |
| · | Stole My Car |
| Tuesday, March 07 | | · | More HL2 Rube Goldberg device |
| Wednesday, March 01 | | · | plink-plonk. |
| Sunday, February 26 | | · | CfP: The Machinima Reader |
| Wednesday, February 22 | | · | LEGOd |
| Monday, February 20 | | · | GTKRadiant now GPL |
| Sunday, February 19 | | · | BREAKING THE GAME - ONLINE SYMPOSIUM |
| Thursday, February 16 | | · | q3apd at Lovebytes |
| Wednesday, February 15 | | · | The Game of War |
| Monday, February 13 | | · | Gameplay = Mental Agility |
| · | FuG-01/ET |
| Saturday, February 11 | | · | SecondLife Alpha Linux Client released |
| Monday, February 06 | | · | Magic-Eye Quake |
| · | Objects of Virtual Desire |
| Sunday, February 05 | | · | Games on Vinyl |
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