My personal blog.
One of the most popular game development competitions, Ludum Dare, was run over the weekend. This Ludum Dare (#23) marked the 10th year of the comp, and it was a big one, with over 1400 entries! (That’s 1400 working games!) The competition is split into (a) a solo event that runs for 48 hours, and (b) a more casual 72 hour “game jam”, in which the rules are more relaxed and you can work in a team. The theme for LD23 was Tiny World.
Read more about our entry, Eye Quest, after the jump…
Today was my last official day on my Fugu project. I made a Fulubula thing. Its code/DNA is after the jump.
What a crazy week. Since Fugu was posted on creativeapplications.net and mentioned on a few very popular twitter accounts, there were 2000 visits to the fugu site, and over 1000 downloads (600 – windows, 400 – mac). At this stage, I only wish I had more time to fix a few of the bugs and add some cool features. Still, I’m very stoked that Fugu made it to this point and was interesting enough to reach a few hundred people. I’ve learnt a lot from building the system, and I’m sure that I’ll revisit this idea in a more concentrated form sometime in the future. Until then, I’ll be keeping an eye out on all the other cool code-based creative systems that are popping up all around the place. :)
Fugu got mentioned on creativeapplications.net! I’ve tried to get it on there before, but I guess the latest website redesign and gallery update got it through the gates this time. :)
A form built with James W using L-systems, generalised cylinders, and mesh extrusions, all done with fugu. (And rendered in Blender.)
Update: This post was written in March, 2012. Since then I’ve published a puzzle game on the AppStore called Shade Dogs. We developed most of the animations etc using After Effects, as hinted at in this post. So download that game if you want to see what is possible with this method. It’s been a long time since I’ve done this stuff now, so I probably can’t help you much. Instead, check out the comments section below for answers to some common questions.
Half of my brain is now working on a fantastic new project. It’s a two person venture, with a range of roles played by both. Although for simplicity I’ll refer to myself as The Developer, and the other person as The Artist.
Seeking a solution to streamline the workflow between The Artist and The Developer we decided that After Effects may be the key. I’ve used After Effects only once before — to do some most awesome DVD titles :|, and apart from what I’ve learnt watching the awesome youtubes of SurfacedStudio, I never really knew much about it. But it turns out, with a little help from XML-Gibson, AE may be a great tool for game development — particularly in regards to laying out scenes and creating animations.
So with my coffee and code, I spent a veritable googleplex of nanoseconds testing the idea out. Here’s a scene mocked up in AE:
… and after importing into The Game (which is totally about smiley faces made up of beach balls):
Couldn’t be easier! Although in writing this I now see a bug .. the z-order (or layering) of the sprites is backwards … whoops! In a nutshell, this now means that The Artist can now maek Arts and click Export, and The Developer doesn’t have to jot coordinates in his code. :)
My first iPhone/iPad app is Appacus, a simple abacus. I developed it to learn the full iOS development pipeline, from code to AppStore. It is available on the AppStore (link).
It’s a very awesome abacus application that features:
A modification of J.Wetters calcispongae ( https://vimeo.com/28099281 ).
Made with fugu ( http://bp.io/fugu ).
