dock

I'm working really hard on Tumbledrop iPhone at the moment, and it's really starting to take shape. I'm aiming to enter this into IGF Mobile early next week, so I'm really in crunch mode at the moment. Working on new level designs is a lot of fun though, and it's exciting to see things fall into place!

Eurogamer Expo was last weekend in London, and I was due to attend as part of the 'Indie Arcade'. Unfortunately I've been ill for the last ten days with con-flu, i.e. a bad cold from London Expo. This killed my productivity and also made it so that I couldn't travel down to attend Eurogamer Expo as planned. Tumbledrop was there without me though, and apparently it went down pretty well. My favourite shared moment from the show is that one of the stern looking security guards became enthalled by Tumbledropfor a while! XD

I really regret missing this show, as it was something I was looking forward to. Nevertheless, it sounds like it was a cool event for everyone, and I hope I get to show my games at upcoming shows.

pickled_jo as Vicky the Viking!


sonia_leong would make a better Holmes than Robert Downey Jr! 


yapipie would enjoy being a palace guard solely because of the hats!

esjay is very handy with the net in Animal Crossing!

rikfuzz can really be the prinny, dood!

toothycat makes a fetching Seiji Hayami - Cutey Honey cosplayers watch out!


chococat hasn't cosplayed Ranke from Cool Cool Toon yet, to my knowledge! The only zombie girl she hasn't done? 


tyris_flare as Yumi from Ulysses 31 already has the blue hair! 

e_m_e_r_a_l_d misinterprets the bunny costume from Donnie Darko! XD (sorry!)


tigerangel_hel is, well, a tiger angel! XD Is this accurate?



pinkapplejam is zx spectrum tan! She needs to take care of her cassette player! 

That was a lot of fun! I'm looking forward to seeing what you have drawn! :) 
Happy Halloween everyone!

The halloween exchange pictures I'm doing are mostly finished now, and I should be able to post them up at midnight tonight! Whoo! I'm really looking forward to seeing what some of you have done, and I think you'll be, uh, surprised by some of these XD They were a lot of fun to draw!

Just a pinup using markers for colour. :)

'Klik of the month' is a group is psychopaths whom decide to make a game in two hours from scratch each month.

One of those psychos reminded me of the contest, and for some reason I felt like giving it a shot. I didn't have any ideas for games, so I settled for a 'toy' and spent 90 minutes making this. There's not really much there, but it seems to work okay and I was pleased to complete anything within the allotted time. I'm generally becoming more much more comfortable with the idea of creating games quickly like this. You can play it HERE (use sound if you can).

The 'Isla de Muñecas' (Island of Dolls) is an island in Mexico which is heavily decorated by plastic dolls. They have been there for sixty years, and can be found in the trees and around the huts of the island. There's a charming photo expose on youtube which talks about the island:



There's more information about the island here and in some other youtube videos.

I'm a big fan of K.K. Slider and Hatsune Miku, both of whom are computer generated singing talent. Someone has put together a duet! :)

Watch the HD version here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWgWGk07Ueo

I've just uploaded the timelapse video for my ludumdare game. This is the 48 hour development period reduced to about three minutes, with a little bit of gameplay footage shoved on the end for good measure. :)

Ludumdare 15 is over! This was my third time entering, and my first time having a successful entry. It wasn't without its problems though, so I figured I should do a write up of how it went.



The idea behind the 3D environment was to make 3D 'tiles' that can be put together in a grid arrangement. These were made in 3D Studio Max and exported to be used in Unity. The shapes had their texture co-ordinates setup so that they share one material for all of the objects. PCs can render a LOT of geometry so long that it shares the same material. This concept worked out pretty well, as the final game runs nicely on even the shittiest laptop!

I also decided to go with low-resolution textures, with 32x32 per metre square. This didn't quite work out unfortunately because 3D Studio MAX's UV texture co-ordinates are pretty inaccurate at low numbers, and even unfiltered textures suffer. This method was a thoery that didn't work out, but that's okay.

The graphics in general are very rough. These are all my 'first pass' attempt at graphics, and I didn't have enough time to clean them up. The tiles for the walls were never really finished properly, and some of the areas didn't get a proper treatment for the floor. In general I think the graphics look okay though, and I was pleased how consistent the visuals are.

Building the 3D environments also took me a while longer than I had hoped. Things because faster when I started from scratch, but I didn't expect the environments to take so long. Unity's editor isn't too helpful with this either because there are no easy ways to select multiple objects, so I had problems with things like enclosed areas being invisible or hard to click on.

I lost a bit of time by wasting time on code that wasn't important. I spent a while trying to get good keyboard only controls working, which I later scrapped because they clashed with the mouse controls, and I didn't have time to make a toggle. I would have been better off spending that time on a title screen and ending screen, which I regret not implementing.

I used 'SFXR' (CFXR on the mac) for sound effects, and I was massively pleased with the results. I started work on some music but I couldn't get anything to suit the theme. Sorry the sound effects are a bit loud! I was pleased to get some sounds in there though, it makes the whole game feel much more responsive!

In terms of game design, I didn't really have a solid game design figured out. Towards the end I decided to use what I had working well (doors and object-keys) and make the game progress based entirely on those. I think this worked out okay, with the game being a bit of a challenge but not so long to become boring.

All in all, I think it went okay! I am looking forward to the next ludumdare! :)

I was able to submit my Ludumdare entry on time! Whoo! It's very ugly and ghetto, but it works and you can play it from start to finish! It's my first time having a successful entry into LD48, so I'm really happy about that. :)

play the web version, or you can download EXEs for PC or Mac from HERE

Here's my first test build of the game! Please test it out and let me know what sort of FPS you get.

I'm still working hard on my ludumdare game. I have NPCs working now, and some sound effects too. I need to work hard to build a basic 'quest' ASAP, and then I can come back to clean up the artwork later on, and maybe get some music in there if there is time.

The game is coming along slowly but surely! I haven't got any new screenshots to release from the last few hours because I've been working on things like GUI and keys and doors. I'm starting to work on some better tiles now too. :)


Selina made me some really nice Risotto for dinner. I feel replenished and ready for a few more hours of game dev before bed .


I also enjoyed some strawberries whilst working on a few 3D object tweaks!

The best thing about this theme is that it gives me an excuse to use grid paper! Yay!



And here is my cavern so far. It's looking a bit more 'fecal' than I would prefer, so I think a palette change is in order soon!

Ludumdare 15 just started, and the theme is 'Caverns'. I have about twenty hours from now to make a game!



Here's my first screenshot! Not sure what sort of gameplay it will be, but there will be some sort of 8-bit style cave going on! :)

Today I replaced the CR2032 battery on my Apple Remote. This came with my imac about 18 months ago when I first got it, and has turned out to be one of the things I enjoy most about my imac. Most evenings I use Front Row on the mac to watch video podcasts that I've downloaded, and it's become something of a habit for me. I also use my mac to listen to podcasts, and having a dedicated remote makes it much more like an AV device. I know you can do the same thing with Windows Media Center, and I think I would do the same thing if I had a Windows PC now. As it stands, however, this little tic-tac sized remote is my friendly companion for entertainment. I'm happy that it uses the exact same battery as the Dreamcast VMU, and the Neo Geo Pocket Color. What delightful stablemates!

Today I had a very relaxing day of tasty foods, lots of gaming, and chilling with awesome people. Hung out with dache + ruadh (thanks for hosting!!), sonia_leong , soundslikebuuu and others in order to see off pretendbeard before he flies back to Australia! We played a little of BlazBlue and KOF12 and a lot of Wii Sports Resort! It was great fun.  Oh, and for lunch, I had a milkshake made from Daim bars at Shakeaway! :D~~

When I first played Tetris I didn't like it very much, and I regretted our family buying it! The first version of Tetris I ever played was on Commodore 64 in 1987. This was two years before Nintendo ever got its hands on it.

One of the only ways I received new video-games as a child was during some trips to the supermarket. Sometimes we would take turns between me and my three siblings to choose the game, but sometimes we would all decide to agree on one game. Tetris was one such game, and my eldest brother (12 at the time) said that Tetris had received a very hi score in 'Zzap' magazine. At the time I thought my brother knew everything, so Tetris was purchased. I remember setting the game to start loading before we had even unpacked the shopping, as C64 games would take about thirty minutes to load. After which I was met with this:



Firstly a title screen with two naked men, and then a dreary screen with miserable music! This game didn't excite or inspire me! I was able to play it just fine, but I never had a great amount of fun. Over the years I equated this to my seven-year-old pallet, but in hindsight I think my seven year old self was onto something. Let's take a look at a video of it:


Not only are the visuals dreary, but there is absolutely ZERO player feedback. Whenever you did something well, nothing happens. Whenever you did something bad, nothing happens. There is a score in the corner doing its own thing, but there's not much to associate your actions with the score. At no point do you feel rewarded when you manage anything in C64 Tetris, you're just met with more brown and grey blocks to awkwardly flicker and judder across the screen.

As a game designer, I hope to learn something from this experience. There might be a good game behind it all, but if you don't stimulate your players in even the most basic manner then you've failed to make a quality product. I hope to always make better games than this.

Another 3-hour game I worked on during BIGJAM is now available to play online! It's called Bullfist, and it was a collaboration with Terry Cavanagh and Alex May, with Battlerager doing the music. I did sprites, animation and all that sort of thing. You control a herd of communist bulls, and you have to destroy capitalism!

Edit: Tim W at the indiegames blog featured this and put up an amazing gameplay video! XD He's much better at it than I am!!

Here are a few random music pieces that I have been making, They're all unfinished, but I figured I should share them here.

http://deadpanda.com/lj/zxspaceman_wip1.mp3
Retro Sci-fi sounding piece.

http://deadpanda.com/lj/simplecsong.mp3
A simple lullaby/children's style song.

http://deadpanda.com/lj/bouncykali-01.mp3
Clav Piano and Marimba in a fight to the death?

Feedback would be appreciated as always.