Fringe Festival 2011

Posted on August 24, 2011 by Steven

Alright, the summer is winding down (what little there was in Vancouver) but that means only one thing: The Fringe Festival is coming to town!

September 6 – 24th there are going to be tons of plays put on by talented artists! I am renewing my vigilance this year on seeing productions in odd locations. I am going to check out “Wreckage” down at the docks, and a “Truck full of Chickens” both sound interesting Bring your own venue locations. (I’m hoping that while it’s at a church that it’s just using the parking lots for a truck of audience members.)

I am also going to be checking out the “Peter ‘n’ Chris Show!” Because every year it has been hilarious and fun!

Another one that looks like it’s in a strange venue is by Itsazoo Productions. Under a bridge and I think with a boat… called “Stay away from my boat @$$hole!” Peter (or was it Chris) I first saw in an Itsazoo Productions and they were fantastic. So I recommend it highly.

You may also notice that my screenshots conveniently include some other plays… whoops! heehee (maybe they will appeal to you if my recommendations don’t.) If you didn’t notice, you can also click on the pictures to be taken to a page with more details on them. So go check out the Fringe Festival and support the artists!

Geeking out on Game Theory

Posted on June 30, 2011 by Steven

Alright, so my iPhone app has fallen a bit behind schedule because of a minor distraction. I stumbled across a series of FREE video podcasts of Yale Lectures on Game Theory! I thought, “Well I know I like this stuff. I’ve seen some of it before. It should be a nice little show to watch during lunch breaks.” Now I cannot seem to get enough! It’s so addicting! Everything from Prisoner’s Dilemma, to Mixed Strategies (both of which I’ve seen before), to Credible Threats and negotiations. It’s fantastic! They’ve done a good job at the class and I just love the material. I must say that it also helps that there aren’t exams for me to take, but still – yummy stuff! I eat it up like… well like great novels! I should read more of those again…

Anyway, I highly recommend that if you haven’t checked out Yale’s free lecture series on the iTunes Store under Video podcasts then you really should!

Check it out here: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=341651977

In other news, I am working on functional polish to make sure all the working bits of the iPhone game are nice and slick and easily extend-able for future updates. Art and Music are next on the slate!

Full Indie Game Jam

Posted on June 20, 2011 by Steven

This past weekend at Great Northern Way Campus I helped the Full Indie Game Development Group, led by Jake Birkett, host a 48 hour game jam! Over 10 games were made with 31 participants (plus some of the helpers even made games or worked on personal indie projects) in the time frame of 48 hours.

I really enjoy helping out with game jams. They’re filled with a wonderful experimental spirit and you see results fast! I’ve helped out with 3 game Jams and participated in 2. The theme this time was Spawning. Some great ideas that came out this time were:

an Augmented Reality Game where you guide your UFO over soldiers and abduct them and turn them into aliens
a real-time strategy game a la Nanowars, but set in the theme of the famed book (and now TV series) “Game of Thrones” (and don’t forget the awesome board game!)
MutatoMatch: a block destroyer like bejeweled except instead of trying to get sets of three you’re trying to destroy the right type of block to mutate your creature into the kind of creature that will survive on a planet

If you’re interested in more of the details of what happened during the event, you can see a news feed of events happening during the jam on the Facebook page for Full Indie. I helped out with a lots of those posts while another helper took photos.

iPhone Game Development

Posted on June 16, 2011 by Steven

So, I’ve been working on an iPhone Game in Unity lately. I’m remaking Star Catcher (mostly because I saw an easy project and my previous iPhone Game idea – a racing game with a twist – got a bit large in scope for one person to do in a reasonable amount of time. ) I decided to make it small and doable quick.

I’m really excited and plan to be releasing it on the app Store at the end of the month (plus probably 6 more weeks after that for Apple to approve it. So, two months away)

It should be great as I’ve added a lot more story to set the scene for Starcatcher and I am laid it out so I can have some add-ons you can purchase (extra levels, extra subplots, all sorts of stuff!)

I’ll have screenshots soon (once I’ve got some of the art done – it’s pretty ugly right now.)

Phone Dying

Posted on May 4, 2011 by Steven

Hi there!

Just a quick note to all that these past few days my phone has been dying on me an dropping calls all over the place. I’ve been looking over new phones and am making the switch today. If you’ve been trying to get in touch but haven’t been getting through then I’m sorry and I should be contactable again really soon.

Thanks!

GGJ Project Post-Mortem

Posted on February 8, 2011 by Steven

My fellow designer, Jake Birkett, has placed a post-mortem for our GGJ project on his blog. His post is a bit more lengthy than mine, but check it out for a nice summary of our jamming experience.

Check it out here.

The Invasion of Giant Planet-Eating Bacteria From Outer Space

Posted on February 8, 2011 by Steven

Click the image to play!

Check out the 48 Hour Global Game Jam Game here. (opens in a new window)

This was created by a team of 5 over the course of the 48 hour event. Click on the crown in the game menu for detailed credits of the team involved.

We ran out of time for a tutorial so the quick tutorial I’ll give you here (we told the participants at the jam this).

1. Click to move (you can even hold the mouse button down for a continual flight)

2. Fly into the power ups that the planets release to pick them up (you’ll change colour as long as you hold the power up)

3. Use the power ups on the bacteria by flying into the bacteria. Each one does different things!

4. Look out though! The Bacteria are each immune to certain weapons.

5. Protect all 3 of your planets as long as possible!

Good luck!

What we would do next to make it better (these were things we had discussed, but didn’t have time to implement):

1. We were definitely looking at refining any progression in the game so people would be more comfortable with it. To do that I would look at making the first few “waves” of enemies go through the three different enemies and weapons one by one, followed by giving the player the weapons that the enemies are immune to. Players can do it on their own now, but making sure it’s clear early on would be a nice gift to the player.

2. Add a scoring system so that players can compare scores, keep track of their progress, and try and do better next time.

3. Refine the feedback to players. We added a few things such as sounds and visual effect rings to let players know when they flew into bacteria, etc. but occasional players mentioned they would like more feedback in some regard. So making the feedback more effective would have been useful.

Global Game Jame 2011 – Theme: Extinction

Posted on February 3, 2011 by Steven

Global Game Jam Team 2011

48 hours Long | 44 countries participated | 170 locations | 6500 participants | almost 1500 games

The Global Game Jam 2011 was last weekend and it was great! We had over 100 jammers at our location and made some great games over the 48 hours. We had not only one keynote speaker (the global one by Keita Takahashi, maker of Katamari) but three! In addition to Keita’s recorded video, we had Scott Jones of “Reviews on the Run” and Kelly Zmak the former President of Radical Entertainment.

After the keynote we were given various icebreakers to meet other people. Then we were told the theme (this year it was Extinction!) and broke into teams to brainstorm game ideas based off of the theme. We had over 20 people pitch the best game ideas and then people joined the teams to make the games pitched (or formed new ones if none of the games were what they were looking for).

I was fortunate enough to work with Jake Birkett and Alex Vostrov, two experienced indie game designers, and two great artists. Together we put together a game called “The Invasion of Giant Planet-Eating Bacteria From Outer Space”. It was a good game, but we felt a tutorial would’ve helped. Alas, in 48 hours time is very limited so we generally told people the tutorial over their shoulder.

Check out all the games people made at globalgamejam.org

Global Game Jam 2011 Coming Soon!

Posted on January 25, 2011 by Steven

This weekend is the Global Game Jam 2011! Thousands of developers and game design enthusiasts from all over the world will be coming together to create games in the space of 48 hours. Trying to hit special achievement goals such as “Based on a True Story” or “Both hands tied behind my back” they will make innovative games that will push boundaries and will also be lots of fun. During this event they will get to meet new people, both developers in and out of the industry, and get to learn new tools or new roles as they work to fill in any gaps in their teams as not all locations end up with a balance of programmers, artists, sound engineers, and other specialists.

Starting in New Zealand first and ending off with the west coast of North America, it will be a wild ride as thousands of games are uploaded to globalgamejam.org over the course of the weekend. Check it out as it’s the place to be this January 28-30th! I know I will be there!