This is just beautiful. This machine turns plastic back into oil. Not only is this machine a wonderful solution to a problem, but it already is pretty much the size of something you could put in your home and use right away.
Author: Steven
HATKC
W00t! They updated Hannah the Kreludor Caves! Now you can just hit play and then type in my username to see my levels. My username is Zeddorex. (It’s not my main account so it’s not very impressive otherwise)
HATKC 3 – Short and Sweet
And finally this level was made on my lunch break as a quick and easy one that can be done in under 5 minutes.
If you want to check it out it takes a few steps:
1. go to the game at: http://www.neopets.com/games/play.phtml?game_id=1252&size=regular&quality=high
2. Click “Level Editor”
3. Select “Load Level”.
4. Select “Paste in”.
5. Copy and paste this code into the box and hit ‘Load’:
6. Close the instructions box.
7. Click the icon at the top center with the picture of the character running with an arrow.
Enjoy!
(Just a quick reminder – I did not program this game, I simply used the level editor to make a level)
Another HATKC Level – Non-linear Daisy
Over the weekend I threw together another level. This one also used the Daisy chain, but I added a non-linear element so you can take different parts of the level in a different order.
Once again, If you want to check it out it takes a few steps:
1. go to the game at: http://www.neopets.com/games/play.phtml?game_id=1252&size=regular&quality=high
2. Click “Level Editor”
3. Select “Load Level”.
4. Select “Paste in”.
5. Copy and paste this code into the box and hit ‘Load’:
6. Close the instructions box.
7. Click the icon at the top center with the picture of the character running with an arrow.
Enjoy!
HATKC – Daisy Chain Level Design
There is a new version out of an old “Hannah and the _____ Caves” Flash Game Series called “Hannah and the Kreludor Caves”. Since they have a nice little level editor to work with I decided to put together a level (which is more like 3 levels) that uses the Daisy Chain Level Design. It’s a simple design concept that I really like. The idea is to have a central location that the player is safe in and then you send them out into danger and then return back to the safe location. This version I find much more forgiving because you can use your rockets to slow your descent so you don’t fall onto nasty objects like the spikes in the picture below.
If you want to check it out it takes a few steps:
1. go to the game at: http://www.neopets.com/games/play.phtml?game_id=1252&size=regular&quality=high
2. Click “Level Editor”
3. Select “Load Level”.
4. Select “Paste in”.
5. Copy and paste this code into the box and hit ‘Load’:
6. Close the instructions box.
7. Click the icon at the top center with the picture of the character running with an arrow.
Enjoy!
Fringe Festival 2010
Alright! The Fringe Festival is here again! Yesterday I saw the show “Peter ‘n’ Chris Save the World!” It was hilarious! It was filled with their signature chase scenes and had more of the fantastic tales of their adventures. They had more characters than last year and have definitely shown vast improvements in their storytelling abilities. I highly recommend seeing their show.
I’m also looking forward to seeing the live version of “Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog!” and one show (or two) that’s taking place… on a fire escape!
Indie Game: The Movie
So, I came across a link to this awesome preview of “Indie Game: the Movie” courtesy of my MDM Colleague, Dave Marhal.
It’s a documentary about Indie Game Designers. I found it very touching and related quite well to it. I look forward to seeing the full movie when it’s completed in 2011.
Project Blue Sky
Project Blue Sky (November 2009 – April 2010)
We were awarded the Coca Cola “Living Positively” Award for this project. It was accepted by Dave Calder on behalf of the team.
My latest project has been helping out the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Sustainability and Social Innovation (or CSSI) on an Olympic Athlete inspired project called “Project Blue Sky“. The premise is to get people to walk, bike, or use public transit instead of their car to reduce their carbon footprint. By entering their distances into the widget they can see how, if everyone contributes, we can make a difference.
One of the big challenges for me was that I knew a lot of the theory of accessing databases, but only worked with one once before for a two week project. Furthermore, I didn’t have an artist to help me out and have not considered myself much of one. However, given the existing assets I feel I pulled off a decent job of using Adobe Photoshop on an old splash page of theirs to create backgrounds, logos, and buttons. (We removed the splash page as one of our first items of business since it stopped more users than brought them in)
Here is the project before I joined the project (November 2009) :
and here is the website currently (February 2010):
Back-Country Skiing
I was fortunate enough to go back-country skiing in the Selkirk Mountain Range this past week. Back-country skiing is really neat because you’re getting to ski in untouched powder snow that is soft, fluffy, and uncrowded to ski in, unlike regular ski hills. Using Alpine-touring skis and fur skins (to give you traction) you hike up to the top of a hill and then switch to downhill mode and ski down. Skiing down is different from on a groomed slope because the snow is so thick it would slow you down to a standstill if you used traditional techniques. So you have to kind of “bounce” your way down the hill. It’s neat because if you’re used to doing blue runs with an occasional black diamond, like me, you find you can do much steeper hills and get a real nice flow to your skiing. It’s lots of fun!
I even got to check out a natural ice cave! It’s quite pretty inside with the sunlight turning the ice shades of blue.
It was a useful trip because it also helped me refine my ideas for a snow-level for a game I’m working on called “Abscond”. It’s a game that uses the “Escape the Room” game motif as a starting point to springboard off into something quite creative and new. I’m planning to use that as a featuring point for my new website design. (coming soon…)
48-Hour Global Game Jam
Gosh the global game jam was fantastic this year! Not only did we have over 100 jam sites, but the jam spread over to 35+ countries from 25 last year. I had the honour of chairing the UBC location in Vancouver this year. With my fantastic team of volunteers, as well as the helpful UBC volunteers, we put on a great site for our participants.
So hold on here – if you haven’t heard of it, the global game jam is an annual event that was started last year by Susan Gold of the International Game Developer’s Association. The idea is to get a bunch of developers in the same area face-to-face and create games in a short, intense game development session: 48 hours to be precise. To make it even better, they are connected via live webcam to other groups of game jammers around the world who are all doing the same thing. With the assistance of industry mentors and some volunteers reminding them to eat and sleep they all work on games based on a theme and some constraints. The theme is the same worldwide, while the constraints varying from timezone to timezone and, sometimes even, location to location.
For example, this year’s theme was: Deception. And the constraints for our time zone was to include at least one of the following: Punk, Monk, or Skunk. Meanwhile another timezone had something like: Snake, Cake, or lake to be included.
We had some great ideas put forward. My favourite from our location was called “Sleuth“. In Sleuth you were either the punk or the detective. The punk tries to disguise himself as a monk and blend in with the other monks while the detective tries to find the punk before time runs out by lifting off the hoods of all the monks.
This was not a competition (no matter how much all of us North Americans seem to try to make it so) but we still sent everyone home with some industry swag from Big Fish games, Radical Entertainment, UBC, BCIT, and other local sponsors of our location.
One of the big reasons I liked this jam site was because it felt like MY jam site. Why? I love board games and it ain’t a Steven-hosted event without some board games involved. During some of the down times for volunteers when they really just needed to keep an eye on things so they don’t get stolen, we pulled out some board games and got some game playing happening as well. It was awesome! We even kept a few of the live feed watchers watching one game of Catan by zooming in the camera close for a while.