Using Unity for 4th challenge
Unity has recently been made available for free for privates and hobby developers. I have long wanted to try it out, but haven't had an excuse so to speak. However, the fourth challenge in my Experimental Gameplay course requires us to make a game that easily can be run from the net. I have tried the Unity web player a couple of times and it seems awesome! I’ve begun the tutorial step while trying to come up with my take on an experimental climate game using abstract shapes as the fourth challenge more or less dictates.
I got the first prototype/toy done, which can be played with here.
Downtime, but back again
Surprisingly my site was suspended due to exceeding the bandwidth quota. I think it's because of the videos, though the limit is 10.000 GB per month. I might have to move them to youtube.com though to prevent this from happening in the future.
Card game prototype
As part of studies I'm following a board game design course. Tonight I have been pondering on what to do. Up until now I have been thinking about doing some sort of drafting/deck building game, like Dominion, Magic the Gathering. I began working and ended up with something which is a bit different from what I had my mind set on. There hasn't been any playtesting, so a warning should be given that it might be flawed, but here goes:
A regular deck of cards can be used, which limits the players to four.
1. Each player is given cards from 1-8 in the respective suit.
2. A starting player is selected.
3. Beginning with the starting player and going clockwise, each player puts down a card facedown.
4. The starting then puts down a (bidding) card and going clockwise the rest of the players follow.
5. The player with the highest bidding card “wins the pot”. That is, every player turns over their face down cards and the winning player collects them. The bidding cards goes to a mutual discard pile.
6. The starting player is advanced to the player left of the previous starting player and the game progress again from no. 3.
7. When no more cards remain (after four rounds) everybody adds together the cards they have won and the player with the highest total score wins.
Please feel free to leave feedback if you try it :)
Code contest
Allan Juhl Petersen is holding a "light" contest consisting of seven questions within the code domain. Different prizes can be won! Check it out, here.
IronPython by Harry Pierson
By invitation by Martin Esmann, Harry Pierson will be touring Denmark during week 37, that is from the 7. of September. He will touring Denmark and coming at a place near you (should be read with an advertisment voice ;)). He is in the big league when it comes to IronPython which the talks are also going to be characterised by - be warned ;) So, when? For the Copenhagen area it will be:
Time: Friday the 11. of September, 9-11.
Place: Microsoft Development Center, Frydenlunds Alle 6, 2950 Vedbæk.
Requirements: Sign-up. It is free!
For information about the other dates keep yourself up-to-date by going to the bottom of Martin's post, here.
Award show
At long last some video from the award show at Gotland have been released. Follow the link to a direct stream of the award show, here.
Gotland Game Awards 2009
It has been quite a while since my last post. In the meantime I have been to Gotland Game Awards (GGA) as part of the prize we got from the Nordic Game Jam (NGJ). At GGA we were so fortunate to receive another prize namely the Best Game of NGJ with our game Sheeped Away. Below I have uploaded some pictures from the award show where we receive the award.
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All in all it was a great trip. Gotland University has an amazing game programme, which focus on programming, designing, and visuals. From my experience they also push the game productions that one step further, which includes publishing. This meant that every game showcased were very polished and combined with their amazing booths and advertisement gave the feeling of professionalism. During the award show it turned out that Ernest Adams, who was presenting one of the awards, was also going to teach at the university part-time. GGA is definitely something I would like to come back to next year.
The Surface surfaced
Three days ago I was invited to play around with the Microsoft Surface for the whole day. The only prior knowledge I had of the Surface was from various demonstration videos, so I had great expectations when I entered the room where the Surface was kept.
The Surface stood in the middle of the room resembling a coffee table in size and thus telling us something about where it should be placed within the house. After playing a bit with it and trying out some of the demo applications (puzzle, fireflies, XNA scatter, map, and paint) it was clear that the tracking delay varied. I'm not sure why. It might be the implementation of the current application or something happening in the hardware. But it was not acceptable at its worst performances. I find it important to tell the reader at this point that this post might seem a bit negative in its view on the Surface, which is likely due to the fact that I've worked with multitouch for an entire semester, so to me it's not new in that sense - my arms have come down ;) My expectations were therefore on some of the extra features I had seen in videos and on how to utilize multitouch in an ingenious way.
Coming to terms with my expectations... It seemed a lot like Microsoft's Vista - a lot of promising and interesting features, but in the end scrapped away leaving us with only a multitouch table. Features such as scanning of images placed on it and communication with e.g. cell phones, digital camera etc. is hot air. The Surface supports 52 inputs as I recall. It supports tracking markers (stickers) that can be placed on objects like e.g. a cell phone. The Surface will then recognise when that object is placed on the table. The surface of the Surface is smooth allowing your fingers to move freely on it and the picture projected is quite good. However, the Surface is noisy, which will be a problem if it’s placed in the living room. Aside it is equipped with speakers that seem able to produce decent sound. The video below doesn’t quite give it credit for this.
The Surface has better tracking capabilities compared to the table I did when I was at AAU. The increased price however, doesn't add up (think it was $ 7,000-10,000). It's very expensive and I think that multitouch is currently more hyped than we have actual seen usefulness for it. It’s clear that touch is more intuitive to use, but hey – were talking multi-touch here! That is not to say that multitouch doesn't have interesting properties that we don't find within our normal peripherals, but I like to see demonstrations that display multitouch as a more effective interaction method for some applications compared to regular keyboard-mouse use. Most of the people I’ve seen use multitouch, including myself, rely on one-finger interaction. Many of the applications out there doesn’t require more than one-finger use. In rare cases up to four fingers are used (index and thumb on both hands) typically for gestures. So is it the applications fault or are we the limiter? I blame some of the applications, but in the end I think that we are the limiter, even with better applications, due to occlusion. One of the worst downsides of multitouch is that you occlude your own view when using it. Seen from a more game oriented perspective, since that what I’m studying, this only gets worse when multiple people are using the table at the same time (as can be seen in the video below). This greatly restricts what type of applications are possible doing on a multitouch table, since the users creates noise on their own in the interaction process.
Being a coffee table in size I find it uncomfortable and exhausting using the Surface for a prolonged time. Firstly, there is no room for your feet underneath it forcing you to sit at a distance or sideways. Secondly, you are bent over the Surface when using it consequently sitting in an awkward "working" position. We were told, I think it was in the license, that the table wasn't to be raised, which means it’s a solid block from top to bottom and thus doesn't seem to aid in solving this problem.
We were given access to the Surface SDK and used most of the day developing for the Surface. Unfortunately Windows XP is not a darling among Microsoft anymore, which meant that I couldn't install the SDK :/ I worked at another machine but didn't have enough time to finish my game :( I used some time after I got home, since I'm a bit stubborn and don't want to install Vista or Windows 7 just to be able to install the SDK. It might be possible to get it to work, since I got the contents for the .msi file extracted after updating the Windows Installer Service to 4.5 (prior 3.1). Using a MSI viewer a short glance the registry keys told me that it'll require a serious amount of manual labour if it's not impossible at all.
I think that rolling this out as a coffee table is entirely wrong. Ideally it should be made into what its name implies - a surface. I know this might be impossible currently based on the technology used (projector(s) and cameras), which require space, but if I want it in my home I need to replace my current coffee table with this noisy one which comes in one size. If this is still the aim, then Microsoft should focus on making it 100% silent and develop applications that interplay with the rest of the electronics found in the living room. I want to e.g. use it as one big remote, use it to easily see today’s TV program and make easy selections of what I want to record using my HD recorder. Interaction with your TV using a remote is lame ;) In the games section focus should be on games similar to trivial pursuit that doesn’t require players to constantly interact with the Surface – I want to be able lean back on the couch and observe (and relax my back :)).
The video shows a combined effort in surviving for as long as possible in the game created by Jacob Korsgaard for the Surface.
Playtesting Sheeped Away
We only got to do one play through of Sheeped Away at the Nordic/Global Game Jam 09 before the submission deadline. I recorded a small video (found below). I was really great to hear the players communicate to each other during play as it was one of the things that we'd strived for with the design. The video also shows some nice teamplay with both slowing and blocking of opponents as well as teammates hovering over sheeps of opposite colour; buying time until the teammate arives to beam them up.
Memories of my 4. semester on AAU
As I began the blog way into my studies I will also be adding content from the past instead of just the present.
The 4. semester required sensors and sound to play a large part of the project. We made the game, Beat Ball, that uses a ball as controller and focuses on creating a one-to-one mapping between it and the game. It is sensitive to both pressure and movement (force). You play as the beat ball and have to safely progress through the downhill obstacle course while at the same time gathering as many points (stars) and score multipliers (notes) as possible. Each note collected adds a layer to the music thus making it more rich and exciting. Through the obstacle course the player will be required to jump over gaps by applying movement to the ball as well as shrinking the ball as to fit small tunnels. Shrinking is also used to absorb liquids as e.g. with water to counter fire. A clip from the playtesting session can be seen below.