Bob Comes In Pieces
Today is a good day for Ludosity Interactive (http://ludosity.com/, 10/12/2009). Ludosity is a game company founded by a bunch of my friends back from the University and they've made some small games. Both "gaming games" and "serious games".
For a long time I've been visiting them about once every two weeks to check up on them and see how far along their awesome game "Bob Came In Pieces" was. It's been a joy to see it develop and it's been great fun to be able to give some feedback along the way.
http://ludosity.com/games/bob/
They've just released a trailer and the response has been great and they're popping up all over the Internet! Not bad for a little indie game.
International Media:
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/debut-trailer-bob-came-in/59801
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/12/10/ship-building-bob-came-in-pieces/
http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2009/12/preview_bob_came_in_pieces_lud.html
Swedish Media:
http://www.fz.se/nyhetsarkiv/?id=35835
http://spel.feber.se/art/170315/trailer_fr_bob_came_in_pieces/
(All URL worked 10/12/2009)
It's a physics based puzzle game and I really enjoy playing it! You should definately have a go at it when you get the chance.
And btw, it's made using Unity3D which I've been writing about every now and then.
So here's a shout out for my friends over at Ludosity Interactive! Fun game and good luck!
We need a Spotify of games
If you haven't heard about Spotify already, it's a client in which you stream music from a huuuuuuuuuge library and it's available for a bunch of platforms, including Windows and iPhone. The biggest change for me after starting to use Spotify way back when, isn't that I seldom downl...erm... buy music nowadays. It is that I'm listening to stuff I never would have if it wasn't for the easy access to share playlists and link to songs.
http://www.spotify.com/en/ (1/12/2009)
With simple drag 'n drop actions from the Spotify Client to the Instant Messaging Client of your choice, you can send links to songs, albums, artists and playlists.
When I find something good I often send it to some friends, after which they click the link and starts listening within seconds. People around me do this all the time as well, They post it via IM, Twitter and Facebook.
Nowadays I'm a fan of over 30 bands I'd never heard about before. The reason I listened to them the first time around was because it was so incredibly accessible!
We need something like this for games!
A way to share gaming experiences within seconds with friends and other people! No download required and it'll "just work". It doesn't have to be complete games. Let's say I have the complete Modern Warfare 2 and want to make a friend test it, then I'd just send him the link and if he doesn't already own it, a demo will start.
Please, give me Google Games.
It's somewhat possible with flash games at Flash portals like Newgrounds and Kongregate and that's great. But that's only for Flash games, I'm talking about "real" games (I hate myself for using that term right now).
Maybe GaiKai and OnLive is getting there. At least a bit. I hope so.
There are so many games I just want to try, but even more so, I want to play the games I don't know about or just won't go through the hassle to try them out.
Global Game Jam
There's an international game creation competition called Global Game Jam (even better than Strawberry jam) and I just wanted to give a shout out to the Swedish branch.
http://gspgames.com (28/11/2009)
Each country as I understand it has their own competition, with different branches but they're all a part of the big Global Game Jam. One of my very close friends is Project Manager over at Gothia Science Park, the ones holding the Swedish branch this year. It's the first year Sweden is a part of it.
http://globalgamejam.org
The Global Game Jam (GGJ) was founded in 2008 as an IGDA event to broaden the outreach of the organization while giving the world an opportunity to create games in the world’s largest Game Jam to date. The 1st Annual Global Game Jam was held January 30-Feburary 1, 2009 to much critical acclaim and success. With over 1600 participants in 23 countries, the GGJ produced 370 games.
- http://globalgamejam.org/jam (28/11/2009)
If you participate, you're placed in a team and you're supposed to create a game within 48 hours. Awesome! Have a look if there's a Game Jam in your country as well.
And if you're in Sweden, why not join? I have, so maybe we'll end up in the same team?
See you there!
http://gspgames.com/anmalan
AboutGameDesign.com
Hey y'all!
Just wanted you all to know that a new project starts today.
We're a bunch of game designers from various parts of Europe that's gonna share a blog and write about game design. The "twist" is that there's always an active topic that we have to post about and the topic is changed every two weeks.
We got people from ex-GRIN, Outbreak Studios, Radon Labs, Strabreeze, Spellbound and Freelancing.
I'll re-post the stuff I write there here on my blog as well with a day or two of delay, but to read everything the other great guys write, you'll have to visit the site:
I really think About Game Design (AGD) can become a great learning experience. Oh, and feel free to join the AGD fan page on Facebook.
Blog Update
Quick Post:
I just updated WordPress (my blog system), so please let me know if you encounter any bugs or other problems. Comment this post or just e-mail me.
Thank you.
Flash Game Engine – PushButton
There are some different game development environments our there for people to "easily" create games. A personal favorite is the classic; GameMaker over at YoYoGames. (http://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker/ 26/6/09)
I just came across a Game Engine for creating Flash games. I haven't tried it myself, so I can't say for sure if it's good but it seems promising. So if you're into Flash development or are looking for a way in and want to create games, have a look at PushButton Engine from PushButton Labs:
http://pushbuttonengine.com/ (26/06/09)
The PushButton Engine is an Open Source, Flash game engine and framework that's designed for a new generation of games. PushButton Engine makes it easy to bring together great existing libraries and components for building Flash games. Spend less time on code, more time on building fun games.
- PushButton Engine
But after seeing GaiKai, maybe Flash seems kinda lame...
If you do try it out. Please, lemme know what you think of it.
Issuu
As some of you might have figured out, I love web-apps and trying out new tools in pretty much all categories.
I recently got a mail from a friend inviting me to register an account at this place “Issuu”.
Thank you, Jesper! (http://jesperbylund.wordpress.com/ 17/6/09)
I’d never heard about it before so I looked it up on Wikipedia and guess what, it turns out that it seems great!
You can publish whatever you write there and they host it, provide statistics and let’s you embed your text anywhere. In a nutshell.
As I said, I’d never heard about it and none of my friends I’ve asked either, which is really strange since apparently it’s been around for years.
I’m gonna give a thorough test run and I’m really liking it at the moment. Right now I have it for my resumé at my CV-page and I’m thinking about publishing all my articles with it.
To show you guys what I mean, I’ve embedded my older post about Achievements. All I did was to upload my original document and the rest was automated.
The great thing about this whole concept is that you read it in the browser. If I were to link to a downloadable .pdf-file most of you probably wouldn’t bother to click it, download it and then open it up to read it. But by embedding the document here, I bet all of you will at least look at it, even if you won’t read the whole thing.
Office Live Workspace
A bit over a month ago, a Mr. Jeff D commented my post about different tools for documentation and recommended that I’d try out Microsoft’s Office Live Workspace.
I thought I would and then let you guys (and you Jeff, if you’re reading) know what I think.
The official website reads:
- Access Anywhere
- Online Storage and Sharing
- Works with Programs You Know
Yet, I’m afraid it’s not for me. Sorry, Jeff.
It’s a useful tool indeed, but since there are other better alternatives, I won’t be using Workspace. I’ll stick to DropBox and Google Docs.
Workspace let’s me save my document on their server, making me have a backup of the file which I can access from any computer, but so does DropBox. DropBox even let’s me save any kind of file, while Workspace only supports a few.
To browse my files I need to use Workspace’s own interface via the browser (as far as I know) but with DropBox, I can view, edit and work with them as with any other file on my computer.
Having the files on a server is the major point of interest with these services and yet again, DropBox wins. When working with a document in Workspace and I choose to save, the document it saved to the server, making me wait for it to finish. But with DropBox I work with a local copy on my harddrive, so saving is just as fast as ever. Then, afterwards when the file is saved to my harddrive it syncs the new file with the server without me noticing it.
Being able to share my documents is another aspect that as far as I gather, Workspace does quite well. Unfortunately Jeff, I’m in not often in need of that function and when I am, I use Google Docs which works even better than Workspace.
Why, you ask? Because anyone with a Google Account can share documents with me on Google Docs, just as anyone with a Live Account can share files on Workspace. The difference is that Google does everything in browser, while Workspace requires Office to be installed!
That’s right. If I don’t have an Office-package installed, I’m out of luck with Workspace. That’s not a requirement with Google. At least I haven’t gotten it to work without it, hence the victory goes to Google.
But not only does Workspace requires me to have Office installed, it also doesn’t support Chrome! I’m using Chrome as my main browser and I’m not about to change because Microsoft doesn’t support it with a service I have better options for.
Sorry Jeff, no deal.
Sorry for the downtime
Hah, just my luck!
I'd been waiting with upgrading the blog to 2.7.1 for a long time, afraid something might go wrong and because I didn't feel I've had the time.
But yesterday I finally got down to it and upgraded. It went smooth without any hiccups.
Guess what I find out today? It seems as if a few hours after I upgraded, a new stable release was made available! I had already postponed it several months, why couldn't I have waited a few more hours?!
I immediately decide to upgrade once again and of course, this time I encounter some serious trouble. Just my luck...
Anyway, I'm sorry about the downtime if only for an hour. It's been resolved.
If you notice anything strange or broken on the site, please let me know!
Blog Upgraded
Hi y'all!
Just wanted to let you all know that I've just upgraded my blog system (WordPress) to a newer version.
So if you find anything that seems weird or broken, please let me know. Just comment this post, send me an e-mail or anything.
Hopefully you shouldn't notice any difference.
Thanks in advance!
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