It's the most beautiful day in Kobe, very warm and pleasant and I'm indoors writing this blog. There must be something wrong with the world.
Today there was an update on the Parallella Blog. They've managed to run Ubuntu on the test-run version of the board. Mr Olofsson tells us to keep checking the site in the next week or two because there will be SIGNIFICANT updates. Excited!
I've been checking on their site for like six months now. And the forum. Especially the forum. Today's interesting bit was about wiring the HDMI transceiver to the Xilinx chip. Some of the readers pointed out a possible problem with the current wiring and Mr Olofsson himself reacted and the problem was explained to him in detail. This little interaction could make parallella even better and more efficient. Oh the miracles of open source. Why did it take so long for us to get here?
I don't follow too many blogs (the designers do) but I do check whats going on with Haiku-OS, parallella and the couchDB world a lot. It's quite interesting how much anticipation builds when you follow somebody doing something interesting, you feel like a little boy again, bicycling thru the frozen wastes of northern Finland only to check if R-kioski has the latest issue of Your Sinclair. Except you sort of don't have to do that anymore and everybody's getting fat. But that's a side point really. Plus we're making a game that helps you to not get fat. ahem.
So here are some updates from this week at Camp Hastur. Dr Lukasz indeed whipped up a nice pre-pre-alpha of our super secret project (handset edition). I walked around a lot, playtesting. Immediate health effects right from the start, I got a flu and was down for three days. Don't let this happen to you kids. But that too is a side point.
So we tested and debugged, version after another and now things are pretty good even with a shaky & wobbly Samsung Galaxy mark 1 with no network. This week the pre-pre-alpha will be more or less finished for our purposes and the work shifts to bombing geoCouch with interesting queries and conjuring up sexy views to lure in investment. Interesting stuff, well worth keeping us bookmarked ladies and gentlemen.
There's nothing yet I can say is SIGNIFICANT (at least any of the stuff I can reveal here, it is a super secret project after all) but it's not that insignificant either. All these little jittery movements inside the mass of Osuuskunta Hastur contribute to the thing SIGNIFICANT later on.
So basically you can all go home now and ignore us for a few weeks at least. Or read the Parallella Blog. Or check out what LLamasoft is up to. There's a whole wide world outside Hastur I tell you.
Darn. Gotta take another look at the parallella forums. Can't wait. =)
sunnuntai 12. toukokuuta 2013
maanantai 6. toukokuuta 2013
Back in Black!
First blog entry in like two months, woo-hoo! A brief report of things that are going on with Osuuskunta Hastur and The dead of the dead follows..
Two months ago I packed my bags to spend a few months in Japan, meeting friends and working on DeDD. Getting organized took a lot of time, dusting off the part of my brain that can handle all those Japanese situations took even longer. It was fun to come back tho, seeing all my friends and going to hundred different live shows. DeDD documentation and players guides were crafted along other things. But as there was nothing really to show, I just postponed writing the blog. Sorry About That!
We got into talks with my programmer friend, Dr Lukasz, about another project that would be more lightweight than DeDD, one that we could whip up and test in a few days. Dream on, that little project got our designer and myself really excited and we were banging away on the design docs and related things. Nothing is as simple as it looks.
But now the preliminary design of the Super Secret Sideproject is wrapped up and Dr Lukasz is blasting away on the compiler, we will have a pre-pre-alpha testing version for this coming saturday. Using a hacky command line dark side manouver, the binary will be planted on our android handsets and we can go out and test the thing. Next week will be used for fixing bugs and finalizing stuff that's going to be needed to make a bit of a video demonstration of the game.
I'm almost tempted to post our elevator pitch (yeah, we still believe in elevator pitches and we wear bell bottomed trousers as well) but because of this and that, that's going to have to wait.
It had been a year since I met Dr Lukasz and he told me he's been involved in gps/geospatial data application development. Well that's a curious coincidence I thought, we've had an idea for a game in the geospatial world for a quite a long time but for some reason (DeDD?) had done nothing with the idea. I talked to Lukasz about the idea, he was excited and wanted to jump in and code some. Whoosh!
I'm spending the rest of the month here in Kobe as there is a lot of stuff to do and people to meet. When I leave, there'll be a nice thing to show back home, i'm sure we'll get an excited response with the Super Secret Game demo. =)
So time passed, we're not dead and the Dead of the Dead is not dead. More stuff here soon, keep your peepers peeled!
Oh. Call for arms! Please like our page on facebook by clicking this link! Every like encourages us, please show your support and tell your friends too.
Greetings from the land of the rising sun, strangers!
Sami
Two months ago I packed my bags to spend a few months in Japan, meeting friends and working on DeDD. Getting organized took a lot of time, dusting off the part of my brain that can handle all those Japanese situations took even longer. It was fun to come back tho, seeing all my friends and going to hundred different live shows. DeDD documentation and players guides were crafted along other things. But as there was nothing really to show, I just postponed writing the blog. Sorry About That!
We got into talks with my programmer friend, Dr Lukasz, about another project that would be more lightweight than DeDD, one that we could whip up and test in a few days. Dream on, that little project got our designer and myself really excited and we were banging away on the design docs and related things. Nothing is as simple as it looks.
But now the preliminary design of the Super Secret Sideproject is wrapped up and Dr Lukasz is blasting away on the compiler, we will have a pre-pre-alpha testing version for this coming saturday. Using a hacky command line dark side manouver, the binary will be planted on our android handsets and we can go out and test the thing. Next week will be used for fixing bugs and finalizing stuff that's going to be needed to make a bit of a video demonstration of the game.
I'm almost tempted to post our elevator pitch (yeah, we still believe in elevator pitches and we wear bell bottomed trousers as well) but because of this and that, that's going to have to wait.
It had been a year since I met Dr Lukasz and he told me he's been involved in gps/geospatial data application development. Well that's a curious coincidence I thought, we've had an idea for a game in the geospatial world for a quite a long time but for some reason (DeDD?) had done nothing with the idea. I talked to Lukasz about the idea, he was excited and wanted to jump in and code some. Whoosh!
I'm spending the rest of the month here in Kobe as there is a lot of stuff to do and people to meet. When I leave, there'll be a nice thing to show back home, i'm sure we'll get an excited response with the Super Secret Game demo. =)
So time passed, we're not dead and the Dead of the Dead is not dead. More stuff here soon, keep your peepers peeled!
Oh. Call for arms! Please like our page on facebook by clicking this link! Every like encourages us, please show your support and tell your friends too.
Greetings from the land of the rising sun, strangers!
Sami
perjantai 15. helmikuuta 2013
The vidiot game
Rant alert, standards have fallen in adult entertainment as Jackie Treehorn would say.
I've spent the past couple of weeks talking with our designers about Dead and trying to find some cohesive angles to the game development and design and where we should go next. So it's not that we're dead in the water with no postings, we've just been busy.
It's my impression that finding proper investment for a game requires the designers to make a list of items that describe in which ways the game will be Exactly The Same as the handful of successfull CCG's around. Read again, it has to be Exactly the Same. Every developer seems to complain about the same thing. The budget for producing Dead is no small amount of money so anything we present to potential investors has to be tight. Exactly the Same - business models are viewed as 'tight' if i'm not badly mistaken.
We took a close look into a CCG that one of our designers plays almost every day. That game is available on Kongregate, written in flash, has severe crashing bugs and looks like the graphics were drawn by a retarded child on Corel Draw 1.0. It certainly looks and behaves like a complete piece of turd, if you'd compare it with say the Vidiot Game, vidiot game would come on top for innovation and staggering graphics.
I've been watching Kongregate over the past four years as a platform to host my games. Sure enough the platform has lots of users and a few popular games. Is it just me that thinks most if all of the stuff on Kongregate is of very low production value. And people seem to be ok with that. Why?
Thinking of something I produced sitting on a page that's full of these ugly widgets with 256 different font types and sizes makes me shudder. It looks so bad but still people are ok with that. Why?
Maybe it's the band analogy thats gnawing away inside me. If my band had the best shit but no recognition, would I do a tour with two other bands who have recognition but that are rubbish? The answer is always no. Why would I like my band to be associated with rubbish? No effing way.
We went thru a lot of monetization models and things in our research and the staggering fact is that you have to do all those dirty powercreep-inducing manouvers to keep people playing and buying. Never lose sight of your begging bowl seems to be the rule. It can look like crap but still you can beg. And the most astonishing fact is that people actually spend money on a game item that basically is a piece of steaming dog's excrement done in corel draw 1.0 and that gives you +3 mana for the next 3 minutes for your pay-to-win kicks. What absolute rubbish. Am I the only one who's pissed off about this kind of tactic?
As our mission is to give good production quality and good value, we've decided to produce a physical version of Dead. Yup, real cards. Maybe you remember those, things that look cool on the store shelf, you pay for them, take home and open the packaging, feel the new card smell, shuffle your cards in awe and focus on the instructions on How to play. Call up a couple of mates, grab a few beers and have fun. Magic moments. And that's what we want to give to you guys, magic moments with your friends, memories for life.
The 'real' version of Dead doesn't mean there won't be any online fun ever, oh no. The online development is alive and well and we'll keep on building. But it's completion is still ways ahead so we're doing the paper version first. No powercreep, no begging bowls. Just buy the deck and the game will be as much fun as day one even 20 years after you bought it.
That's what i call value. Exciting things ahead, we'll keep you posted!
I've spent the past couple of weeks talking with our designers about Dead and trying to find some cohesive angles to the game development and design and where we should go next. So it's not that we're dead in the water with no postings, we've just been busy.
It's my impression that finding proper investment for a game requires the designers to make a list of items that describe in which ways the game will be Exactly The Same as the handful of successfull CCG's around. Read again, it has to be Exactly the Same. Every developer seems to complain about the same thing. The budget for producing Dead is no small amount of money so anything we present to potential investors has to be tight. Exactly the Same - business models are viewed as 'tight' if i'm not badly mistaken.
We took a close look into a CCG that one of our designers plays almost every day. That game is available on Kongregate, written in flash, has severe crashing bugs and looks like the graphics were drawn by a retarded child on Corel Draw 1.0. It certainly looks and behaves like a complete piece of turd, if you'd compare it with say the Vidiot Game, vidiot game would come on top for innovation and staggering graphics.
I've been watching Kongregate over the past four years as a platform to host my games. Sure enough the platform has lots of users and a few popular games. Is it just me that thinks most if all of the stuff on Kongregate is of very low production value. And people seem to be ok with that. Why?
Thinking of something I produced sitting on a page that's full of these ugly widgets with 256 different font types and sizes makes me shudder. It looks so bad but still people are ok with that. Why?
Maybe it's the band analogy thats gnawing away inside me. If my band had the best shit but no recognition, would I do a tour with two other bands who have recognition but that are rubbish? The answer is always no. Why would I like my band to be associated with rubbish? No effing way.
We went thru a lot of monetization models and things in our research and the staggering fact is that you have to do all those dirty powercreep-inducing manouvers to keep people playing and buying. Never lose sight of your begging bowl seems to be the rule. It can look like crap but still you can beg. And the most astonishing fact is that people actually spend money on a game item that basically is a piece of steaming dog's excrement done in corel draw 1.0 and that gives you +3 mana for the next 3 minutes for your pay-to-win kicks. What absolute rubbish. Am I the only one who's pissed off about this kind of tactic?
As our mission is to give good production quality and good value, we've decided to produce a physical version of Dead. Yup, real cards. Maybe you remember those, things that look cool on the store shelf, you pay for them, take home and open the packaging, feel the new card smell, shuffle your cards in awe and focus on the instructions on How to play. Call up a couple of mates, grab a few beers and have fun. Magic moments. And that's what we want to give to you guys, magic moments with your friends, memories for life.
The 'real' version of Dead doesn't mean there won't be any online fun ever, oh no. The online development is alive and well and we'll keep on building. But it's completion is still ways ahead so we're doing the paper version first. No powercreep, no begging bowls. Just buy the deck and the game will be as much fun as day one even 20 years after you bought it.
That's what i call value. Exciting things ahead, we'll keep you posted!
keskiviikko 30. tammikuuta 2013
Chaos Reborn!
Just found this on the net and I absolutely have to share it here right now. Julian Gollop is working on a new version of his 1985 speccy strategy,Chaos. And it's going to rock! Chaos Reborn!
maanantai 28. tammikuuta 2013
Finnish Game Jam 2013
Back home after a fun weekend at the FGJ Oulu. This was our first game Jam and I'll write a few notes about the event here.
I have been hearing about the gamejams from my friends for a couple of years now and was quite hesitant to go actually. Situation where you got a bunch of people you don't know trying to come up with an idea in half an hour and actually getting stuff done in two days didn't feel very attractive. My normal mode of operation is coding alone in a dark room without too many distractions, I thought if there are people around, It would be impossible to get anything done. Plus I have my memories from early 90's atari demoscene gatherings where people were drinking and KLF was played on High Volume and it was all very festive =)
Anyway I made a last-minute decision to go and I'm glad that I did. We had a good few people coming to the event, kick off with a few presentations and then the game theme was let out, they played a sample of heartbeats. After that, 30 mins or so to come up with a game idea and pitch it in front of everybody. I went with a vague idea of a game that featured sheep, wolf and Double Rainbows. That kind of thing that might appeal to very young children, be less gamey and more like let's just make these sheep happy and have a strong AWWW.. factor.
I was surprised to hear the high level of the pitched ideas that people had, all cooked up in only 30 minutes. I pitched mine and after the pitching, mix and mingle and try to get involved with a project or try to persuade somebody there is a demand for games with sheep, wolf and Double Rainbows. =)
Eventually, the team sheep formed, two Vietnamese guys who had no previous experience about game development joined in and we went thru the details of the game on whiteboard and set to code. I wrote a few skeleton classes for the guys to start working on. Displaying the graphics turned out a bottleneck, the guys had their mind set on CraftyJS for gfx. We discovered that crafty is very badly documented and a total PITA for first timers. End of the friday night we had nothing on screen, the boys went home and I stayed working on the base classes until late. Lots of coffee was consumed. Picked up my friends from this bar at 2am and went to bed.
First thing in the morning I checked our repo and hey, the guys had managed to harness crafy to display some sprites, great! Back to the venue and more grinding. More trouble with crafty, at 9pm team Vietnam went home and I got looking into EaselJS gfx lib (the guy in the next table recommended using it). Spent around an hour converting the crafty stuff for easel and saw a commit coming, the guys had worked out how to do their thing with crafty. Dropping easel that instant, more coffee and back on track. Eventually I coded until 5:30am and found out I wasn't the only one who had a hard time with crafty. The game was nowhere near complete but I just had to get some sleep before driving home later on sunday. Commit to repo + sleeeepp..
Our sheep game featured pigs eating apples in the end and no Double Rainbows. But it was all good fun, learning new things and getting to know new people. I definitely recommend attending a gameJam if you have the possibility. It's fun to see people being playful, hanging out and producing something out of nothing in a very short time. Don't hesitate to go even if you're not sure how it's going to work out. It's about the travel and not about the destination. Good times.
The pictures in the article are by kind courtesy of Oulu Gamedev Club Stage who organized the event, thanks a bunch guys!
As a side note here's something really ancient. But it's justified so it's all good. =)
Nice snowfall today. Going out to do some snow clearing, yih!
I have been hearing about the gamejams from my friends for a couple of years now and was quite hesitant to go actually. Situation where you got a bunch of people you don't know trying to come up with an idea in half an hour and actually getting stuff done in two days didn't feel very attractive. My normal mode of operation is coding alone in a dark room without too many distractions, I thought if there are people around, It would be impossible to get anything done. Plus I have my memories from early 90's atari demoscene gatherings where people were drinking and KLF was played on High Volume and it was all very festive =)
Anyway I made a last-minute decision to go and I'm glad that I did. We had a good few people coming to the event, kick off with a few presentations and then the game theme was let out, they played a sample of heartbeats. After that, 30 mins or so to come up with a game idea and pitch it in front of everybody. I went with a vague idea of a game that featured sheep, wolf and Double Rainbows. That kind of thing that might appeal to very young children, be less gamey and more like let's just make these sheep happy and have a strong AWWW.. factor.
 |
| pitching the sheep-double rainbow idea |
 |
| planning on a whiteboard |
 |
| Let's code like mad hatters! |
 |
| preparing DeDD decks for playtesters |
I was surprised to hear the high level of the pitched ideas that people had, all cooked up in only 30 minutes. I pitched mine and after the pitching, mix and mingle and try to get involved with a project or try to persuade somebody there is a demand for games with sheep, wolf and Double Rainbows. =)
Eventually, the team sheep formed, two Vietnamese guys who had no previous experience about game development joined in and we went thru the details of the game on whiteboard and set to code. I wrote a few skeleton classes for the guys to start working on. Displaying the graphics turned out a bottleneck, the guys had their mind set on CraftyJS for gfx. We discovered that crafty is very badly documented and a total PITA for first timers. End of the friday night we had nothing on screen, the boys went home and I stayed working on the base classes until late. Lots of coffee was consumed. Picked up my friends from this bar at 2am and went to bed.
First thing in the morning I checked our repo and hey, the guys had managed to harness crafy to display some sprites, great! Back to the venue and more grinding. More trouble with crafty, at 9pm team Vietnam went home and I got looking into EaselJS gfx lib (the guy in the next table recommended using it). Spent around an hour converting the crafty stuff for easel and saw a commit coming, the guys had worked out how to do their thing with crafty. Dropping easel that instant, more coffee and back on track. Eventually I coded until 5:30am and found out I wasn't the only one who had a hard time with crafty. The game was nowhere near complete but I just had to get some sleep before driving home later on sunday. Commit to repo + sleeeepp..
Our sheep game featured pigs eating apples in the end and no Double Rainbows. But it was all good fun, learning new things and getting to know new people. I definitely recommend attending a gameJam if you have the possibility. It's fun to see people being playful, hanging out and producing something out of nothing in a very short time. Don't hesitate to go even if you're not sure how it's going to work out. It's about the travel and not about the destination. Good times.
The pictures in the article are by kind courtesy of Oulu Gamedev Club Stage who organized the event, thanks a bunch guys!
As a side note here's something really ancient. But it's justified so it's all good. =)
torstai 24. tammikuuta 2013
Brad Mehldau and Pat Metheny
I'm still contemplating whether to go with my Haiku laptop and eat my own dog food. Maybe I should take the ubuntu one.. Anyway we're ready for the action!
lauantai 19. tammikuuta 2013
Playing for pleasure
I woke up in the middle of the night on my holiday trip to Thailand after I had a vivid dream about the essence of Art. That made me think about the pleasure of making art, which led my thoughts to the pleasure of playing games.
What brings pleasure to the player of a game?
Achievements. Why do I grind the same race in Need for Speed: Most Wanted on my iPhone, race after race? To get better times, to unlock new cars and to get in-game money to buy them. It brings me pleasure to achieve those things.
A short and very crude timeline of pleasure in games
- Pong - winning your physical opponent
- Super Mario Bros. - finishing a level, finishing the game, finishing a hard level faster than before
- WoW - leveling your character/alter ego and comparing that level to characters of other players, showing off your level with equipment (PvE), playing skills (PvP), titles, rankings
What kind of pleasure could our game offer to our players? How is skillful playing and using your time to play our game rewarded?
Grinding should lead to something - preferably tangible - you can show off for you efforts. But what is tangible in the digital world of a game? Everything you achieve in a game is usually confined in that small world, quite possibly viewable by other players also playing that game, and in some cases something can be viewed in larger digital environments like internet, PSN or XBox LIVE.
Could some of our rewards directly target those large digital environments? For example: graphical rewards for Facebook, story/lore/text rewards for Twitter, musical/sound/video rewards for YouTube. And the player should be able to show them off easily, without needing PhD on Internets.
After these thoughts I went back to sleep.
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