Pixel Beret

Video editing

2011-09-22T19:09:00.000+01:00

2010-10-19T14:37:00.008+01:00

Three random little animations I made back in 2006

2010-06-30T19:27:00.002+01:00

2010-06-28T20:06:00.006+01:00

Three New Videos

2010-06-28T19:44:00.002+01:00

A movie made from random words picked out of a hat.

Possibly my only time I got a 100% mark on anything in college.

Editing

Picture of the day

2010-03-04T16:59:00.002Z

So I bought a Moleskine

2010-02-27T00:38:00.008Z

Drawing of the day

2010-02-12T09:54:00.001Z

Money isn't real

2010-01-19T17:40:00.002Z

Today I bought a fancy phone got some new Nike Trainers and considered visiting Lanzarote.

Picture of the day:

Post 100

2010-01-14T17:44:00.002Z

Today I recorded dialogue for a one minute version of the lion king that I will be entering to Empires Done in 60 Seconds Competition.

I was assigned to the position of producer on a film seeking funding, I can't say much about it now, watch this space.

CV has had a few minor revisions,

Picture of the day:

CV added to contact page

2009-12-18T17:24:00.003Z

You can now download my CV from the contact page at Mediajack.co.uk

How many e-mail adresses do you need?

2009-12-17T18:14:00.002Z

Six, that's how many I need. This is the method i'm using to keep my inbox sorted and spam free.

A) personal address which includes my real name for trusted people, family, banks etc.

B) Three addresses using my mediajack domain, one for professional contacts such as job applications and freelance contact.
a second address for my business card,
and a third to display on the website.
The third one will likely get picked up by spambots and get a bunch of unwanted messages sent to it, but by having the other addresses I can easily get to work related mail.

C) A social address linked to my MSN Live account, this is the address I would use to sign up for facebook and twitter and get all my social updates in one place.

D) A spam G-mail address using a made up name, I use this account for whenever you have to put a legitimate email address on a sign up form. This is where all the spam newsletters from all the sites I've percussed things from end up.

Linked in, After Effects, Drawing, Coke Ad.

2009-12-16T14:46:00.004Z

I Now have a linked in profile, you can find me at http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/jack-greenslade/17/458/689

--

I've been checking out the After Effects training on http://www.videocopilot.net
I made a hoodie turn from blue to red, brilliant!

--

Drawing of the day

If captain hook, Pac man, a dinosaur and a monk had a kid, it might look something like this.

--
Coke ad added to site
You know those annoying video advertising boards you see at the sides of football pitches that are really distracting and annoying? I made one of those.

http://mediajack.co.uk/coke

--

Photoshop

2009-10-22T03:51:00.001+01:00

This is a shot from La Jetée style short film "The Slowest Crisis"

This is the original photo.

I love Photoshop.

Who Buried Paul?

2009-06-06T16:29:00.005+01:00

Brian Moriarty, a former Infocom employee and author of some classic text adventures such as Wishbringer (1985), Trinity (1986) and Beyond Zork (1987 has done many excellent lectures at Game Development conferences including Who Buried Paul? a talk about the persistent rumor that Paul Mcartney died in a car crash in 1967 and how many Beatles fans found clues in the Beatles music and album art. Near the end of the talk he suggests mystery solving could be used in games, I believe this may have inspired the the creation of alternate reality games.

Video and transcript of the lecture

ARG. Alternate Reality Games

2009-06-06T16:15:00.003+01:00

"Alternate Reality Games not only exist on the web - they call you up, invade your TV show and fly helicopters outside of your house. This talk will provide a quick introduction in ARGs, and focus on how we're using lessons learned from Perplex City Season 1 to make Season 2 a much more fun, more accessible and more immersive experience. Credits: Speaker:Adrian Hon"

I'm starting to think that ARGs are something I might like to get involved in as a job. I don't think I could do it on my own one reason being that I'm not into puzzle making, but doing websites, videos, and minigames for ARGs could be fun.

Digital Storytelling

2009-06-06T14:49:00.004+01:00

I've been looking at Alternate reality games (ARG) recently and one of the things that has put me off them is there over complexity, sometimes requiring a high level of maths to solve the puzzles.

In this video from Google Tech Talks Adrian Hon from ARG developer Mind Candy talks about the projects his team worked on that took a different approach to telling stories on the web.

Telling stories in new and interactive ways is something I have been interested in for a while, my project for my first year in Interactive Media "Sparrow" was an experiment in telling a story with interactive elements, it wasn't as interactive as I would have like to make it as then I didn't have the flash skills I do now but its something I would like to revisit.

Click the image to play sparrow

Plectrum, Exhebition version

2009-05-11T19:25:00.002+01:00

New art
parallax scrolling
ease yer
spit and pollish

Play it here

using anxbox 360 pad on a mac

2009-05-05T21:57:00.003+01:00

Driver: http://tattiebogle.net/index.php/ProjectRoot/Xbox360Controller/OsxDriver

Joypad to keyboard button linker http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/12293

CV Research

2009-05-05T07:05:00.003+01:00

A couple of sites I visited while researching CVs I did visit more but I cant post everything I do.

Imogen Heap Level

2009-05-03T22:45:00.001+01:00

http://jackuchu.net/plechide11.swf

Now with added death!

See the latest version of the game

2009-05-01T12:37:00.002+01:00

To see the latest fully updated version of plectrum visit

http://plectrum.mediajack.co.uk

GDC Vault

2009-05-01T05:28:00.002+01:00

I recomend that everyone goes to http://mygdc.gdconf.com/vault/1337 and checks out all the free recordings from the game developers confrence espeshialy The game design challege this years theme is "my first time" the participants must design a game based on there experience losing there virginity.

IGDA

2009-05-01T03:21:00.003+01:00

Another site I frequent for a more videogame centric focused talks and writings is the igda the inernational game design assosiation igda.org. They sometimes post videos of talks that have taken place. including this one about the different generations of game developers and speculates on what my generation (Generation Y) is all about.

a few of my faverate things

2009-05-01T00:15:00.008+01:00

I love good talks/lectures, we haven't really had that many people come into university to talk to us but here A couple of sites that have great talks that inspire me and often distract me from practical work.

TED.COM

FORA.TV

They even have talks about games and interactive media

Another site that deals in presentations often critequeing ones from the above sites is presentationzen.com

GotoAndPlay Website

2009-04-30T23:50:00.003+01:00

I followed some tutorials to get a better idea how to use CSS and XHTML and I made this site for the gotoAndPlay exhibition.

jackuchu.net/gtap

Its somewhat similar to the final official site put together by Jim.

gotoandplay09.co.uk

Poster

2009-04-30T23:41:00.003+01:00

I made this poster for our GotoAndPlay exhibition, lots of people liked it but it couldn't be used because Nintendo might sue us.

A life well wasted

2009-04-30T17:34:00.004+01:00

In the latest installment of a life well wasted Robert Ashley talks to an anonymous game developer about working in the industry, its sounds like a horrible business to work in and this interview has reinforced my thinking that high budget game development isn't the place for me.

Check it out

From the life well wasted blog there's a piece on Eskil Steenberg who at the moment is single handedly developing love a MMO, his outlook doesn't seem so positive either.

"My apartment, the cell of my self-imposed prison sentence." That doesn't sound like a lot of fun to me.

Added feature: FastBox

2009-04-30T02:44:00.003+01:00

FastBox

Like the water that makes you fall slower this fastbox makes the character run faster.

code on player=

var fastspd:Number = speed*1.5;

// Test fastbox and speed up
if (_root.fastbox.hitTest(_x, _y, true)) {

speed = fastspd;
}// else {
//speed = setspeed;
//}

Added features: Death

2009-04-30T00:22:00.005+01:00

Death

//Code on thing you want to kill the player.
onClipEvent(load){
this.frm = "221";
}

//Code in thing you want to kill the player.
onClipEvent(load){

onEnterFrame = function(){

var hit = this.hitTest(_root.player);

// Start Playing
if(hit)

Then
(_root.gotoAndPlay(frm));

}

//

This works in a simolar way to the soundboxes lots of diffrent death boxes that send you to diffrent frames depending on what "frm" you direct it to.

to make a respown point that you will redirect flash to, create two frames one with a blank frame where the character was and another with the character placed where you want him to respawn.

Added Features: moving platforms

2009-04-30T00:13:00.002+01:00

Moving Platforms

When trying to make moving platforms I ran into a problem the platform would move but the character would not go with it. I fixed this problem by turning the moving platform into a moving springboard that propelled the character a small height giving the player time in the air to move the character along with the moving platform.

Code =

var movspringHeight:Number = 11;
// how high you jump on movingspring

if (_root.movingspring.hitTest(_x, _y+3, true)) {
// Jump
grav = -movspringHeight;
_y -= 4;
this.gotoAndStop(4);
}

Added features

2009-04-29T23:55:00.003+01:00

Fans

I wanted to make platforms that you could jump through and then land on I managed to make them but when the character was on them he wouldn't walk on them he'd just sort of float above them playing his idle animation so I added a bit of code to make him play the falling animation and changed the art of the platforms into fans. The last paragraph of code makes adds the ability to jump while on a fan.

Code:

var platformHeight:Number=0
//platform resistance

if (_root.platform.hitTest(_x, _y, true)) {
// Jump
grav = -platformHeight;
_y -= 1;
this.gotoAndStop();
}

if (Key.isDown(65) && _root.platform.hitTest(_x, _y, true)) {
// Jump
grav = -jumpHeight;
_y -= 4;
this.gotoAndStop(2);
}

Added features

2009-04-29T23:43:00.003+01:00

Springboards

Springboards prepare you into the air much higher than normal jumping.

Code used

var springHeight:Number = 30;
// how high you jump on spring

if (_root.spring.hitTest(_x, _y+3, true)) {
// Jump
grav = -springHeight;
_y -= 4;
this.gotoAndStop(3);
_root.spring.gotoAndPlay(2);
}

Player code

2009-04-29T23:22:00.001+01:00

The actionscript2 code that is placed on the player character is

onClipEvent (load) {
var slide:Number = 0;
//moving plaform slide
var grav:Number = 0;
// gravity
var speed:Number = 10;
// how fast you walk
var jumpHeight:Number = 15;
// how high you jump
var springHeight:Number = 30;
// how high you jump on spring
var movspringHeight:Number = 11;
// how high you jump on movingspring
var platformHeight:Number=0
//platform resistance
var dangerHeight:Number = 7;
// how high you jump when hit by danger
var slow:Number = .7;
// sets water falling speed
var fast:Number = 7;
var slowspd:Number = speed/2;
// sets water walking speed
var fastspd:Number = speed*1.5;
var setspeed:Number = speed;
var scale:Number = _xscale;
var ex:Number = 10;
// makes hitTests better, change for a closer hitTest (warning, more buggy if smalle, less real if further)
this.gotoAndStop(2);

var movingItems = new Array();
}
onClipEvent (enterFrame) {
grav++;
_y += grav;

// If not touching the ground then fall down (gravity)
while (_root.ground.hitTest(_x, _y, true)) {

_y--;
grav = 0;
}

// Test water and slow down
if (_root.water.hitTest(_x, _y, true)) {
if (grav>0) {
grav *= slow;
}
speed = slowspd;
} else {
speed = setspeed;
}

// Test fastbox and speed up
if (_root.fastbox.hitTest(_x, _y, true)) {

speed = fastspd;
}// else {
//speed = setspeed;
//}

if (Key.isDown(key.RIGHT) && !Key.isDown(88)) {
// Moving Right
_x += speed;
_xscale = scale;

if (_root.ground.hitTest(_x, _y+3, true)) {
this.gotoAndStop(1);
} else {
this.gotoAndStop(4);
}

} else if (Key.isDown(key.LEFT) && !Key.isDown(88)) {
//Moving Left
_x -= speed;
_xscale = -scale;
if (_root.ground.hitTest(_x, _y+3, true)) {
this.gotoAndStop(1);
} else {
this.gotoAndStop(4);
}
} else {
// not moving or falling
if (_root.ground.hitTest(_x, _y+3, true) && !Key.isDown(79) && !Key.isDown(73)) {
this.gotoAndStop(3);
}

//fast movement

if (Key.isDown(key.RIGHT) && Key.isDown(88)) {
// Moving Right
_x += fastspd;
_xscale = scale;

if (_root.ground.hitTest(_x, _y+3, true)) {
this.gotoAndStop(1);
} else {
this.gotoAndStop(4);
}

} else if (Key.isDown(key.LEFT)&& Key.isDown(88)) {
//Moving Left
_x -= fastspd;
_xscale = -scale;
if (_root.ground.hitTest(_x, _y+3, true)) {
this.gotoAndStop(1);
} else {
this.gotoAndStop(4);
}
} else {
// not moving or falling
if (_root.ground.hitTest(_x, _y+3, true) && !Key.isDown(79) && !Key.isDown(73)) {
this.gotoAndStop(3);
}

}

// Check moving blocks
// loop through them all
for(var i =0; i< movingItems.length; i++){

if (movingItems[i].hitTest(_x, _y+3, true)){
var offset = Math.abs(_x - movingItems[i].block._x);
_x = movingItems[i].block._x;

}
}
}

// Animations
if (Key.isDown(79) && !Key.isDown(65) && !Key.isDown(key.LEFT) && !Key.isDown(key.RIGHT) && !Key.isDown(73)) {
this.gotoAndStop(5);
}
if (Key.isDown(73) && !Key.isDown(65) && !Key.isDown(key.LEFT) && !Key.isDown(key.RIGHT) && !Key.isDown(79)) {
this.gotoAndStop(4);
}

//
if (Key.isDown(65) && _root.ground.hitTest(_x, _y+3, true)) {
// Jump
grav = -jumpHeight;
_y -= 4;
this.gotoAndStop(2);
}

if (_root.platform.hitTest(_x, _y, true)) {
// Jump
grav = -platformHeight;
_y -= 1;
this.gotoAndStop();
}

if (Key.isDown(65) && _root.platform.hitTest(_x, _y, true)) {
// Jump
grav = -jumpHeight;
_y -= 4;
this.gotoAndStop(2);
}

if (_root.spring.hitTest(_x, _y+3, true)) {
// Jump
grav = -springHeight;
_y -= 4;
this.gotoAndStop(3);
_root.spring.gotoAndPlay(2);
}

if (_root.movingspring.hitTest(_x, _y+3, true)) {
// Jump
grav = -movspringHeight;
_y -= 4;
this.gotoAndStop(4);
}

if (_root.danger.hitTest(_x, _y+3, true)) {
// Jump
grav = -dangerHeight;
_y -= 4;
_x -= 0;
this.gotoAndStop(5);
}

//switches
if (Key.isDown(88) && _root.soundbox01.hitTest(_x, _y,true)) {

loadMovie("plechide.swf",_root);
}

if (Key.isDown(88) && _root.soundbox02.hitTest(_x, _y,true)) {

loadMovie("plecnin.swf",_root);
}

// Hiting from Right
if (_root.ground.hitTest(_x+(_width/2)+ex, _y-(_height/2), true) || _root.ground.hitTest(_x+(_width/2)+ex, _y-(_height/6), true) || _root.ground.hitTest(_x+(_width/2)+ex, _y-_height, true)) {
_x -= speed;
}

// Hiting from Left
if (_root.ground.hitTest(_x-(_width/2)-ex, _y-(_height/2), true) || _root.ground.hitTest(_x-(_width/2)-ex, _y-(_height/6), true) || _root.ground.hitTest(_x-(_width/2)-ex, _y-_height, true)) {
_x += speed;
}

if (_root.ground.hitTest(_x, _y-_height-15, true)) {

grav = 1;
}

_root.gravTxt.text = grav;

}

Visual style

2009-04-29T21:59:00.002+01:00

Changed my mind on the visual style, I've opted to use photographs of post it notes to create the levels

http://www.jackuchu.net/plecpost.swf

it doesn't run as fast as i'd like in the browser, I might have to compress the images or dynamical load them in.

classy-video-games.

2009-04-21T03:06:00.004+01:00

I might use this simplistic artstyle using only one or two colours.

Im running out of time, back to work.

Production methodology IDGA, Mark Cerny

2009-04-01T00:17:00.000+01:00

10 things to know before you pitch a VC for money

2009-03-29T13:23:00.002+01:00

What you've got to show

Integrity

Passion

Experience

Knowledge

Skill

Leadership

Commitment

Vision

Realism

Coachability

--
Order of things

Company logo

Buisness overview

Management team

Market

Product

Buisness model

Strategic Relationships

Competition

Barriers to Entry

Financial Overview

Use of Proceeds

Capital & Valuation

Website bulding XHTML, CSS tutorials

2009-03-28T15:15:00.000Z

http://willgoldstone.com/learn/

Latest version of the game

2009-03-19T12:07:00.002Z

http://jackuchu.net/plectrumbeta/plectrumbeta.swf

With working loading screens and less crashing.

also goto http://jackuchu.net/plectrumbeta/plecspace.swf
for a preview of how I want to incorporate more musical elements into my game.

Plectrum will be more playable soon.

2009-03-04T14:09:00.002Z

The loading screens on the previous version were broken, causing many people to believe the game had crashed, I have found a solution to the problem and a new version will be uploaded shortly.

Still looking for audio to use in the game, if you have created a music track new or old send an MP3 to jack@mediajack.co.uk

latest version of Plectrum

2009-02-12T12:17:00.003Z

http://jackuchu.net/plectrumbeta/plectrumbeta.swf

To go to a level stand over the album art and press X.

This build adds moving platforms, auto scrolling camera section. Platforms you can jump through, I need to make these better as you can fall through them and sometimes you cant jump when your on them. Also added to the length of the Imogen heap level.

Top 15 platformers of all time from Retro Gamer Magazine 37

2009-02-02T04:50:00.000Z

25...Castle of Illusion
24...New Zealand Story
23...SMB
22...Tomb Raider
21...Pitfall!
20...Monty on the Run
19...Super Castlevania IV
18...Bruce Lee
17...Super Ghouls & Ghosts
16...Banjo Kazooie
15...Flashback
14...Castlevania Symphony of the Night
13...Sonic
12...Impossible Mission
11...Yoshis Island
10...Rainbow Islands
09...Prince of Persia
08...Chuckie Egg
07...Bubble Bobble
06...Jet Set Willy
05...Sonic 2
04...Super Mario 64
03...Super Mario Bros 3
02...Manic Miner
01...Super Mario World

I might need to get an iphone

2009-01-27T20:49:00.001Z

Re making Hide and Seek

2009-01-21T22:37:00.003Z

I'm remaking the Imogen Heap Hide and Seek level of Plectrum. Originally I used the paint tool in flash to draw the levels, but I have found that its more effective to use boxes, as this stops there being rough terrain that the player can get stuck on.

I'm looking into making some of these boxes change size or rotate to the rythem of the audio thats being played, but that might only be doable in Actionscript3. I quite like this style of graphics so I might keep these pink/black boxes for this stage.

Ananita Design

2009-01-21T22:14:00.003Z

One of the developers using flash that i really admire is http://amanita-design.net/

They created games like Samerost which does not look like a traditional flash game, It uses digitised graphics, photoshoped from digital camera images.

They also made a game for the band The Polyphonic spree, which I guess was based on there music.

These games are good looking and can be fun but sometimes get a little frustrating when you get stuck somewhere and have to resort to pixel hunting.

Ananita are currently working on a new point and click game called Machinarium, which Is looking really good.

Machinarium Preview from Amanita Design on Vimeo.

Where do I go from here?

2009-01-21T18:29:00.002Z

Even though its the end of this module on the course im still going to continue developing Plectrum.
Things I'm going to do.

Finish Levels
Change the art style to something more "artistic"
Talk to Game Design lecturers and see if they have an ideas as to how to improve it.
Get noticed by publisher
get game released over XBLA PSN or Wii Ware.
Make enough money that I can keep making games wont have to get a proper job.

Evaluation of the project, so far

2009-01-21T10:47:00.005Z

I say so far because although tomorrow is the deadline of the course modual I don't see it as the end of this project. I want to keep working at this until I have a fully finished game that I can submit to flash portals/festivals etc.

Research
Having a blog has really helped show how much research I have done, It's much easier to show what I've been looking on a blog than having to print stuff out and put it in a research folder.

Development
Its been a little slower than I would have liked but creating something good takes time,the majority of the coding is done now, and I can concentrate on making levels.

Analysis
I tried to analyze most of what I researched, I think I did ok.

Outcome
Its not a finished game but I think its a good indication of where the game is going, maybe if i'd set myself a less ambitious task it could have been done by now. But if you have low ambitions your more likely to be ignored. I'm pleased with what I have so far.

Overall its been a good project. There were some miner hiccups along the way such as getting distracted by Box2d and having some trouble with code, but over it think it went well.

quick idea

2009-01-21T10:08:00.003Z

Just had an idea to feature sections in my game where there is a locked door and you have to collect musical notes to unlock it, each musical note corresponds to a music stem, so gradualy as you get each note the music will become more fully featured, when you have them all the whole track will be playing.

that might be a little more complicated that using music boxes i'd have to put code in that says

on entering all music = stop
on entering all music = play
on entering all music - volume set to 0
when hit note2 volume note moviecip 2 = 100
when hit note 3 volume notemovieclip = 100

or something to that effect.

Sound Problem = Fixed

2009-01-21T09:51:00.002Z

There was a sound bug in my game to do with the sound boxes, altering the volume of them would effect the volume for all sounds. I got My tutor Adam to fix this, but then I lost the files, so I was back to square one. But now after weeks of messing around with code I have figured it out. To alter the volume of sounds independently you need to link them to a movie clip.

So when creating a new sound use this code

this.createEmptyMovieClip("s1",1);
this.my_sound = new Sound(s1);

Im so glad that this is fixed now as it was the main thing that was holding me back from creating levels.

Although losing the code that Adam fixed for me was a set back, it did give me the chance to try and figure it out on my own and I can now understand more actionscript than I used to. This helped me create other things in my game such as the spring boards that propels the character into the air. I knew that pressing the jump button altered the characters y coordinate so I took that code and altered it a bit so it would happen when the player touches the box, then i altered how high it would make the character move.

One more thing I want to add to the game is platforms that can be jumped through and then stood on.

Latest version of game

2009-01-19T01:43:00.004Z

http://jackuchu.net/plectrumbeta/plectrumbeta.swf

Done:
preloaders
intro
menue
audio previews for first 3 levels
idle animation
springs

To do:
Make the preloaders work quickly
complete levels

Development

2009-01-19T01:30:00.006Z

With the advent of games like little big planet and halo 3 level design has become a medium not only of the game developer but the player themselves. I had an idea of letting the user draw a level out on paper and then capturing it throgh a digital camera then converting the captured image into vector graphics to be used as the ground in a level, I abandoned this idea as little big planet already does it better and because It steps away from the theme of levels based on music. I'd rather spend time developing levels of my own than enabling others to create there own levels.

2009-01-19T01:29:00.007Z

The picture above shows How I was inspired by lyrics to songs to make the levels the way they are. Here I show a puzzle where you have to send the enemys into the fire so you can cross, based on the lyric form my violent heart by nine inch nails "in to fire you can send us, from the fire we return, consider us a consequence of how much you have to learn."

Other examples of using the lyrics as inperation for the levels can be seen in the imogen heap hide and seek level. When the line "spin me round again" is sung, the stage rotates.

Development

2009-01-19T01:27:00.007Z

I wanted to include horizontal moving platforms in my levels but unfortunately it proved quite hard to do, I could create the moving platforms but the character would not move with them, this goes against traditional platforming conventions and could frustrate people. I worked with my tutor to code a solution but it relied on plotting x and y coordinates of the player and each individual platform and proved more complex than I thought it would be, I got over this hurdle by putting springs on the moving platform s the character automatically jumps when on a movin platform, this encourages the player to move with the platform.

Development

2009-01-19T01:24:00.007Z

I want some of the levls to have a very hand made kind of feel, with sketchy moving lines and hand drawn graphics in a style not to dissimilar to Yoshi's Island on the Super Nintendo. At the moment all the graphics are vectors and it looks far to much like a flash game. I want my game to not instantly look like it was made in flash a game that does that well is samarost (http://amanita-design.net/samorost-1) which uses photographic elements to good effect.

Development

2009-01-19T01:03:00.031Z

Development

2009-01-18T21:38:00.004Z

I've posted a lot of my influences and thoughts on over people's work. I haven't gone into detail about the development of my game, until now.

It started in the summer of 2008, One of the reasons I wanted to do interactive media in the first place is because I wanted to make games, I'd done Sparrow but that was more an interactive movie than a game. My faverate genre of games is platforming so I wanted to make a platform game, I looked at a load of tutorials and the best one I found was a tutorial within a platform game, that I found at newgrounds.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/426598

I used the engine from this as a starting point because it had slopes collectible's and water.

I love the music in that tutorial, I play it over and over again, it helps me concentrate and get in the working zone.

After playing Rez a bunch I decided that interactive music would be my unique selling point (USP.)

Flash game analysis: Transmigration

2009-01-18T21:15:00.003Z

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/388286

More of an interactive music video than a game, but its god to see more people linking music to interactivity. essential its a scrolling shooter, you just mash the space bar and try and shoot as much things as possible, you start off swimming underwater but as the music reaches a crescendo your character flies from the water and transforms into a dragon, there are several other changes throughout this quick game, which only takes 2:15 to complete. Its the second highest ranked game in the ArmorGames / Newgrounds "Rock Out" rhythm game contest. Which shows how popular games that do more than just Simon says style gameplay are.

Good
Nice graphics and animation
great music
Good mix of music and interactivity
short and sweet.

Bad
Gameplay mainly involves mashing the space bar as much as possible
could use more game elements.
no sound FX, it would have been good if like Rez shooting things effected the music.
Why are there mines in the sky?

****

Flash game analysis: Stabika ep.3: Defiance

2009-01-18T20:44:00.004Z

Stabika ep.3: Defiance

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/438607

The game starts off with a dragons lair style quick time event section. a key flashes up on screen and you have to press it before it vanishes. It disappears a little to quickly for my liking, also I think it would flow better if they were the same keys every time you do it instead of random ones. Another thing that annoyed me is that when you die you have to click a button to retry,and you die pretty regularly so your constantly swapping between mouse and keyboard, why not just use the keyboard? after the QTEs the game turns into a platformer the hero and most of the foreground is silhouetted against colourfull backgrounds, I like the look of it. The character has many skills he can wall jump, grind on rails and hang onto things moving from the celing, there are also combat buttons to fight the enemy's but i feel this is the weakest part of the game. Another annoyance is that when you die it instantly goes to the "retry" screen, no death animation no few second delay its instant so you don't always know why you died. What the game lacks in these areas it makes up in momentum, the character increases in speed as he runs and you can get up to a pretty high speed. it would have been god to have some more open areas that you could run around in and build up more speed. Also more than half a second warning would be good when death traps suddenly appear

Good
Graphics
animation
lots of ability's
speed and momentum

Bad
Combat
"retry screen"
level design could be improved

Rating: ***

Flash game analysis: Embryo Escape

2009-01-18T18:59:00.004Z

http://www.leakingpen.com/item/1548

It's like lemmings, If lemmings was mixed with a platformer, and had prists that diddnt like embryo's in.

I like this, not only is it a good game, but it has something so say, its messege is that religios groups shouldn't get in the way of stem cell reasearch. Stem cell reasearch has the potential to produce many major medical discoveries. Cures may be found for previously untreatable diseases and disorders. its good that games are upping the political awareness of issues like this.

Good
It has something important to say
its fun
it has infinite lives so if you mess up it doesn't matter to much.

Bad
One of the levels seems impossible to do.

Sureley to solve the puzzle you need to pull the lever and make the preist fall into the hole right? but he doesn't move far enough left. If anyone out there figures this out let me know.

Rating: ****

Analysing flash games: Dragon Gem

2009-01-18T18:15:00.005Z

Dragon Gem
http://www.thatvideogamesite.com/play.php?id=184

Kill all the baddies in the stage to unlock the gate to the next level, where you have to kill all the baddies in the stage to unlock the gate to the next level,where you have t...i think you get the idea.

Good
It looks quite good
musics nice enough

Bad
repetitive gameplay
control's fell unresponsive
You can get stuck in levels unable to move.

Rating: **

Sound and Music

2009-01-15T16:20:00.003Z

I have been watching some lectures on sound and music at ted.com

"Evelyn Glennie: How to listen to music with your whole body"

The next video is one that not only helps you understand classical music and the tension and release of music that you also see in plays and games, but also this guy has fantastic presentation skills he delivers his talk with a great infectious energy about him. He could probably sell anything to you and you'd love it.

Better Game Characters By Design

2009-01-10T14:14:00.001Z

Katherine Isbister lecture at Stamford University.

Latest version of plectrum

2009-01-10T09:05:00.001Z

http://jackuchu.net/platformx10.swf

abstract

2008-12-30T21:21:00.000Z

Afer looking at jeff minters stuff im thinking maybe the visuals should be abstract and maybe I need to try making a trance level.

Jeff Minter on tutorials

2008-12-30T19:55:00.002Z

" Back in the day discovering the nuances of an arcade game was part of the journey to mastery. You learned the basics from the label on the cabinet and the brief attract mode, but you learned the elite skills through exploration and experimentation, and also by watching and learning from other gamers.

Nowadays it seems that players expect every little detail spoon-fed to them in excruciating detail by enormous great handholding tutorial modes, and even though SG does contain a tutorial mode, a couple of goes of of which should be enough to teach any reasonably sentient individual the basics of the game, it seems that some people feel that the game requires altogether too much thinking, one website describing the experience of playing as being like trying to do sudoku under slightly unusual and stressful conditions."

from http://www.llamasoft.co.uk/blog/index.php?paged=2

Space Giraffe

2008-12-30T19:10:00.004Z

Space Giraffe has some interactive audio, at 4:15 on this video you will see the bonus round, in which the player must collect flowers with "hoovers" eachof the flowers you collect makes a sound and they play out a little tune its all very relaxing untill Barney Gumble starts burping, I'd expect nothing less form Jeff Minter, creator of Revenge of the mutant camels.

in one of his talks Jon Blow of braid fame criticised the games graphics saying they got in the way of the gameplay, in respnse the PC version has the option of having toned down back grounds (see video below)

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-GB&playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:6d367097-c280-43db-844b-9e092626c3e2&showPlaylist=true&from=msnvideo" target="_new" title="Space Giraffe - level 22(NUXX remix)">Video: Space Giraffe - level 22(NUXX remix)</a>

Jeff Minter did a talk about his games and being an independent game developer at google here's the video

Art games and Not games

2008-12-30T10:12:00.003Z

I found a cool blog post over at http://bluewyverntea.blogspot.com/ in which shows some cool art games and not games, check it out http://bluewyverntea.blogspot.com/2008/09/art-games-and-not-games.html

one of the ones he looks at is Echogenesis (http://www.echogenesis.com)a flah art peice that lets you travel through five scenes that you can interact with, the snow stage has music that reacts to your actions. I like the art style of this interactive peice and the wat it uses photographs along with vector graphics.

2008-12-29T13:49:00.002Z

just had an idea for a story, you play a song backwards on a record player, and a portal to the afterlife opens up. in a serious non funny kinda way. as you go through the game you get lost and cant find your way back to the life you knew. you wonder if your dead, and consider the people you left behind......its a bit grim.

Kandinsky-inspired Little Big Planet Level

2008-12-22T10:57:00.005Z

I've been playing Little Big Planet recently. If you don't know Its a PlayStaion 3 physics based platformer that allows the player to create there own levels and share them with other players. It's a very good game the jumping can be a little floaty and not being able to use the D-pad to move is a it annoying but otherwise its great, and its good to see a 2d platformer getting such a strong backing by a big company like Sony.

You can have up four players playing sanctimoniously which is great fun, I dont think my game would work so well in co-op as each player would be setting off difrent sound boxes and the reulting audio would be a bit of a mess. I guess I could make it so the player in the lead or the player with the most collectibles controls the music. I think ill concentrate on getting a good single player game done before thinking about multiplayer.

I have been looking at a lot of user generated levels for inspiration and I found one by
Richard "KirbyKid" Terrell he has created a musical platform level in Little Big Planet inspired by Kandinsky's Improvisation #1 painting.

Heres a liknk to his blog where he elaberates on the creation process.

http://critical-gaming.squarespace.com/blog/2008/11/24/improvisation-1.html

A video of the level.

In order to make the level sound like it does he had to put sound objects into the playfeild, here is a diogram he made showing where all the sound elelments are placed.

He also has some good tips on making platform levels

" * Check Points: I think everyone can learn from the example I set in Improvisation #1. Though I didn't put a single hazardous element in the entire level, I still added 3 checkpoints. I did this for a few reasons. 1) Especially in LBP, players will always find a way to kill themselves. The game is just too emergent to eliminate death altogether. 2) If the player ever fell to the bottom of the level, they always have the option of trying again and teleporting back up.
* So, if your level is more dangerous than Improvisation #1 by any degree, then you need to be sure to place check points that demark gameplay ideas.

* Level Boundaries: Make sure that you take extra precautions to seal off the "level from the level." What I mean by this is, we're given a very large space to create a level in. If you don't use all of that space, be sure that the player can't escape into the "no man's land." Remember, LBP is very emergent. Just because you don't think players can slip through the cracks doesn't mean they won't.
* Also, if you have an "elephant graveyard" of spare bits and broken bobs hanging out in your no man's land, then be sure to delete them. There's no point in wasting server space or prolong the download times. Just because it's electronic doesn't mean we should be wasteful."

Tetsuya Mizuguchi Interviews

2008-12-22T10:08:00.003Z

Tetsuya Mizuguchi joined SEGA in 1990 and has worked on notable games like SEGA Rally and musical games such as Space Chanel 5 and Rez in 2003 he left SEGA, He felt that sinse SEGA merged with sammy he had not been given the freedom he desired, so he formed his own company Q entertainment who are responsible for musical games such as Lumines. Here are some interviews with him.

In this video he talks about Rez and how he was influenced by kandinsky it sounds like he struggling to say what he wants to in english.

Audiosurf is awesome

2008-12-19T08:35:00.005Z

My first level

2008-12-19T07:48:00.002Z

MY first level was going to use the track "my violent heart" by nine inch nails.

but its not going to be for two reasons my first is that I think having a rock song as the starting point might put them off and make poeple just dismiss the game as just another sidescroller. The second reason is that thease music boxes dont work the way I want them to. Check out this demo of a "my violent heart"

http://jackuchu.net/mediajack/plectrum/platform024v8.swf

as you can see when you enter one box the music plays fine but if you have another box inside that box and you exit one of them both peices of music stop.

I tried to figure out a solution but after many atempts at trying I figured the best thing to do was to leave it and concentrate on getting a level finished, conviniently that decition coinsided with me hearing this song on a friends Ipod.

Hide and seek by Imogen Heap, a perfect song to use as there are distinct gaps in the audio which I could cut up and place in difrent music boxes.

I found this live version of the song on youtube, seeing her extravegent set up is pretty cool you can tell she has telent cos shes doing it all on her own. I chose to use this version of the song in my game as it has a piano section that I think would add variety to the gameplay.

heres the video:

I ripped the audio from the youtube video using http://www.flvto.com/

I put it into premiere and cut it up adding short fade in and outs where apropriate, then put it in the game.

and here it is: http://jackuchu.net/mediajack/plectrum/platformx06.swf

heres a version with the music boxes visable http://jackuchu.net/mediajack/plectrum/platformx04.swf

These music boxes play the audio once and then dont play them again. The rotating stage was inspired by "and yet it moves" that I saw on the 1up GDC 2008 show I posted a while back. The audio that plays while the level is directly on the timeline.

My big pile of Video Game Library books

2008-12-18T12:37:00.001Z

Jonathan Blow

2008-12-18T11:42:00.003Z

Braid is a fantastic game and one that has influenced me in my game design perticularly this level entitled jumpman where as the player moves from left to right in the stage time goes forward and the music plays.

Braid was created and prgramed by Jonathan Blow with art by David Hellman (http://davidhellman.blogspot.com)

Jonathan Blow's blog is a great reasorse for infomation about game development he has made numerous apearences at gaming festival, he regularly puts up videos Mp3s and powerpoint presentations of his talks.
Jonathan Blow's blog: http://braid-game.com/news/
His apearences and talks: http://braid-game.com/news/?cat=3

Time management by Randy Pausch

2008-12-18T11:35:00.002Z

Another lecture by Randy Pausch, this time about time management, wich I watched when I should have been doing work.

Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

2008-12-18T02:51:00.002Z

Randy Pausch, a 46-year-old computer-science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, a pioneer in virtual reality, a Disney Imagineer, an innovative teacher, and the co-founder of the best video game school in the world, , delivers one last lecture entitled “How to Live Your Childhood Dreams” on his life’s journey and lessons, as he expects to live for just a few more months from pancreatic cancer.

(words from khoapham.wordpress.com)

some choice quotes from the lecture:
- “And as you get older, you may find that “enabling the dreams of others” thing is even more fun.”

- “…so one of the expressions I learned at Electronic Arts, which I love, which pertains to this, is
experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted“.

- [flashing up rejection letters] “…the brick walls are here for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the
people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people."

Although its not 100% about interactive media it does have some cool stuff in it about virtual reality and the vitrual reality peice he shows about creating a world and it not wanting to be shut down is great.

He also mentions Alice an educational software that teaches students computer programing in a 3d enviroment.

"In Alice's interactive interface, students drag and drop graphic tiles to create a program, where the instructions correspond to standard statements in a production oriented programming language, such as Java, C++, and C#. Alice allows students to immediately see how their animation programs run, enabling them to easily understand the relationship between the programming statements and the behavior of objects in their animation. By manipulating the objects in their virtual world, students gain experience with all the programming constructs typically taught in an introductory programming course."
from http://alice.org

World of Goo creator's rules for levels

2008-12-12T05:57:00.003Z

While reading an interview with 2D Boy (World of Goo), Kyle Gabler said this

"1. No level can rely on luck or randomness. Luck causes frustration!
2. No level can be like any other level. Always introduce something new.
3. Every level must be visually distinct and iconic. Helps build them fiction of the world."

I shall consider these rules when creating my levels for Plectrum.

Full interview http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5839291477479315906

Today looking at indie games

2008-12-09T04:35:00.006Z

1UP GDC Impressions: Indie games

This video form 1up shows some indie games from gdc 2008 including everyday shooter which I mentioned before as being a big influence another game which really cought my eye apears at 4:25 on this video "And Yet It Moves" a platform puzzler in which you can rotate the world, I think i may steal that feature and use it in some levels of my game.

John Mac the creater of everyday shooter mentions his influences which include rez and lumines he also mentions a game called poursec 47 as being an influence on him heres a video of that game

it looks like more of a shooter influence than an audio one.

finaly heres a thred on 1up discussing lots of indie games

http://boards.1up.com/zd/board/message?board.id=games&thread.id=550036

What I've been looking at today

2008-12-05T19:58:00.004Z

Tokyo Game Show Sense of Wonder Night 2008

http://tgs.cesa.or.jp/sown/en/

--
Archive of multimedia theses papers.

http://dt.parsons.edu/thesis_archive/

untitled dystopia website

2008-12-05T14:13:00.000Z

Alongside my game and critical paper that goes with it. I also do interactive media work that is not directly related to my course my latest time consuming endeavor is for Martin Lejeune's phoenix media bursary film "Untitled Dystopia" Which I make a cameo appearance in. One of the coolest things I fond while making this site is that you can load a webpage inside another webpage using iframes.

see it at http://dys.thebiscuit.org/

Will Wright and Brian Eno

2008-12-05T14:05:00.000Z

Will Wright creator of Sim City, The Sims and Spore and father of ambient music Brian Eno Talk Talk about generative music and graphics. If you've seen any of Will Wrights other Spore demos from GDC or TED there's not much new here so you might want to skip that bit, but the rest of the talk is very interesting, I was hoping they would talk more about music in games but its still a good watch.

2008-12-05T00:22:00.001Z

This is a video about human computation. At one point the speaker is talking about the ESP game a game google made that lets people play to label images in there image search, you have to try and type the same word as the other person and if you both type the same word you both get a point. Adding a simple message that said your partner has entered a name kept people playing for 4% longer, it shows how such a little thing can make people enjoy your game more and make them want to play for longer.

Super Mario Galaxy - Music

2008-11-24T04:09:00.000Z

One of the things that inspired me to make a platform game with interactive music was this small bonus level from Super Mario Galaxy on Wii. As Mario collects the notes a note in the music track is played, I may do something similar in my game.

Latest version

2008-11-21T10:57:00.001Z

http://jackuchu.net/platform015.swf

Why games are fun

2008-11-21T10:49:00.001Z

When a game designer (or student) first starts trying to define why games are “fun” they have trouble even conceptualizing it beyond “I know it when I see it.” Then they encounter Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow and/or Koster’s Theory of Fun and have this huge epiphany: Eureka, all fun comes from learning a new skill! Then after awhile, they enter another stage of questioning this: wait a minute, if all fun comes from skill mastery, why aren’t students driven by the promise of fun to get straight A’s in all their classes (even the poorly taught ones), since that involves mastery of the material? Why is sex fun (by some standards), and yet doesn’t involve mastery (ahem, again by some standards)? At any rate, you could think of this as three stages of evolution of a game designer, and different designers are going to be in different stages, and when they encounter one another there will be chaos when they start discussing the nature of “fun.”

Teaching Game Design: Lessons learned from SIEGE.

Latest version with music boxes

2008-11-21T10:33:00.000Z

http://jackuchu.net/platform014.swf

My Game has a name

2008-11-18T13:25:00.001Z

Plectrum

The little plastic thing you use to play music on a guitar.
I think it has a nice sound to it.

Plectrums could be the rings/coins substitute that you collect along the level.

Johnathan Blow Keynote

2008-11-18T13:00:00.000Z

Johnathan Blow is creator of Xbox live arcade time altering 2d side scroller Braid, which personally I think is one of the best games of this generation.

He did a keynote at Australian gaming event Free Play 2007. In it he talked about prototyping and how should always be prototyping but dont worry about polish or looking fancy just concentrate on the core gameplay then you can see if it works or not, this was very inspiring as I was getting to cought up in the coding side of things and wanting to have the best prossible engine. I now realise that its the idea and gameplay that matters.

You can see the talk on youtube its 80 minutes long

heres the second part where he talks about prototyping

2008-11-18T12:49:00.000Z

I have a new direction

Im going to contiue using the basic art based flash engine I have, insetead of using complex physics. I saw a talked by braid creater johnathan blow who talked about prototyping and how you shouldnt get cought up in the most complex physics or using the very best newest engine.

I was going to use box 2d, lll get more in depth about that later. I got a bit excited about it before realising how complex it is to edit and add code to it.

I need to look more about gameplay than code.

im going to look a theory of fun and mihaly csikszentmihalyi who is an expert of flow.

My father knows a bit about sports psychology (sports being games albeit athletic as apose to electronic) so im going to talk to him about that.

aparently there is a creative sound and music person who is looking to be involved in aking dynamic music for games, so im going to get in contact with him.

mars racer

2008-10-31T13:23:00.001Z

http://jackuchu.net/racer/marsracer.swf

only random levels

Idea 3

2008-10-31T13:01:00.000Z

Musical platform game.

Art based

http://www.jackuchu.net/platformer

Tile based

http://www.emanueleferonato.com/2008/10/24/new-tile-based-platform-engine-part-11-slopes-part-b/

Raytrace/vector/phisics

Idea 2

2008-10-31T12:49:00.000Z

Create a game for multi touch table.
twin stick shooter could translate well.

Ideas

2008-10-31T12:45:00.000Z

Finish Sparrow interactive storybook,
add more game elements.

tutorials

2008-10-23T13:33:00.000+01:00

Is Jimi Hendrix a good level designer?

2008-10-16T16:05:00.000+01:00

A few years ago at Game Developers Conference The guys behind guitar hero, Harmonix did a talk about how they made guitar hero they talked about how choosing the right song was importand and how some songs our great but just wouldn't be fun to play because because of too much repetition and lack of veriety in the song. This has made me think about what music I want to use in my game and how have to listen to the songs a difrent way and think about how they could be transformed into interesting game levels.

You can hear the talk at GDC radio http://www.gdcradio.net/2007/04/is_jimi_hendrix_a_good_level_d.html

VG maps

2008-10-16T15:48:00.000+01:00

www.vgmaps.com is a great resource for finding maps of videogame levels when you see a whole level all at once you realize how complex some of these game stages are.

Here's one of my faverate platform gaming levels Flying battery zone from Sonic&Knucles

It's a lot more complex than world 1-1 form Super Mario Bros, possibly the most famous game stage ever.

Earthworm Jim 2

2008-10-16T15:39:00.000+01:00

This level in earthworm jim 2 has music that is suited to the music very well you can see the sections of the level relate to bit of the music track although they cant match completely as each player plays the level differently but i can defenetly see a concection between level design and music.

Earthworm Jim 2 final level, See Jim Run, Run Jim Run.
Music, Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata mvt. 3

MusicVR

2008-10-16T15:28:00.000+01:00

Mike Oldfield famous for creating tubula bells the music used in the exorcist, created some virtual reality music "games" in the earley 90s the graphics are a little crude by todays standards but they still offer a rather unique expericnce, you can download a demo of the games at http://www.mikeoldfield.com

2008-10-16T15:01:00.000+01:00

I found these threds on Rllmuk forum about the idea of games based on music albums.

http://www.rllmukforum.com/index.php?showtopic=47771

http://www.rllmukforum.com/index.php?showtopic=164513

An interesting Post by Talk Show Host

Radiohead's Kid A.

It would be a platformer in a world that is being destroyed as you play. Pastel colours, 2D scrolling with puzzles and action elements.

There would be a level where you have to construct a jigsaw ("Everything in its Right Place"), an escort a la Lemmings level ("Kid A"), an escape the destruction level ("The National Anthem"), an invisible level where your actions make it reappear slowly ("How to disappear completely), a level where you must plant trees to restore nature balance ("Treefingers"), a level where you have to escape Dinosaurs ("Optimistic"), a chill out level ("In Limbo"), a chaotic level where you shoot political figures that are destroying our world ("Idioteque"), a level where you must take care of small children and help them to live a productive life ("Morning Bell") and finally another chill out level with a maze where you are trying to find your way amongst the stars ("Motion Picture Soundtrack").

It would be an astonishing game.