So we finally got around to work in the other of our jobs’ workshops. This coincided with an upcoming project which I’ll be happy to write about in a little while, also VR related. Towards the end of the day we got around to do some upgrades on the gun. We gave the recoil its own power supply and added some springs to re-center the piston after use. Feels better, though we are still looking for more juice.
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A project with Liseberg!
We attempted it before, pitched doing a VR experience for the local amusement park Liseberg when they wanted a simulator of an upcoming coaster. Didn’t quite make it, instead an old student of mine and the consultancy bureau he works at got it (so still kind of fun). However, thanks to our very honest approach and down to earth promises, I now have the opportunity to do two things I like; build a game and teach in game development.
There is still a lot of paper work to fill out, we are looking to agree on a contract which leaves us with realistic expectation given the budget and the fact that I’m going to do most of the work myself. The project is basically going to be me learning a bit about the amusement park, their developers and their customers. Then I’m going to work with their developers, using motion chairs and HMDs they have since their previous VR project, to create one or more games. It will be a challenge for sure, but also super fun!
GGJ 2018 & RAGE 1.5
Global game jam, one of the great annual events! Several things have happened in my life, I turned 30 during jam and earlier this month I got a little child. So, it’s indie dev hard mode from here on, although I have a very neat full time job besides my game dev so I guess it’s not that hard mode… Anyway, this year’s GGJ theme was “transmission”. I, however, used the event to put together the RAGE gun and made a little game for it. To make it more convenient to bring to the venue, I picked up HP’s Mixed Reality HMD rather than the HTC Vive which is a little bulky to jam with. I also brought a new computer, with all that comes with it in terms of missing software and linking issues. So I had some issues, but in the end I had time to be with my family and not be stressed towards the end of the event, and I got something working out of it! I also had a bottle of sparkly wine. All in all, great event.
GGJ submission site:
https://globalgamejam.org/2018/games/rage-spiders
Divine Attack, Jam Over
So the jam is over, I think it was a really cozy and inspiring one. Cheers to all my fellow game deveers attending and I hope that something I have taught them thus far was of use. : ) As for me, I didn’t quite reach all the way to a full blown prototype of my game, but it was very presentable and I think the idea was clear.
Thanks for a cool jam!
Final General Assembly in Paris
We went for a final meeting with all of the partners hosted by our French colleagues at BIO by Deloitte. Generally a good meeting, although we all feel that we would have loved to do more with the project. It’s the good old issue of “if we had only known what we know now at the start”, but all in all I’m happy with what I have contributed with.
It’s jam time!
A game dev class which I’m teaching programming to are hosting a game jam, and I’m pumped. : ) They choose a pretty interesting procedure to create a theme for the jam, an open Spotify playlist (to which all attendees can submit songs) and three songs will then be shuffle picked at the start of the jam. I’m attending of course, and one of my songs were actually picked, making it extra fun.
So themes are:
J-E-S-U-S spells Jesus (weird church gospel)
The art of dying (slow melancholy electronic, metal)
In the waiting line (pretty nifty electronic)
Humans are such easy prey (my song, cool, hard electric)
I felt there was an obvious sort of religious, after-life, temptation theme. In my early ideation I came up with wanting to create a mix between an RTS and a JRPG battle system Final Fantasy style.
I couldn’t join at the start because of work, but I got started in the evening of the first day. The second day we spent in one of the jammers freelance office, very neat, they had a snow scooter. Will be interesting to see where it ends up.
Automat 2017
I attended this year’s Automat arcade event! It was super fun, attendance could have been better, but given the somewhat remote location and the wonderful visitors I think it was great never the less. Sadly, I didn’t have the time I had hoped for to prepare Enbarr mac Lir and RAGE for the event, so in the end Enbarr was pretty buggy and I didn’t even bring RAGE. The issue with Enbarr was mostly that I hadn’t had time to test it fully and the cables I brought were glitchy and such. I also managed to break one of the chair chips due to unexpected need to pack the chairs in a compact way… and then I had to fix a software thing rather than fixing a new chip for the chair. Well well, I had a really good time.
More on the event: Automatarkad at Tumblr
2017 edition, and finale
There we go, MakerDays 2017 is over. It was a good event from the perspective of the conference. For my part, I held a really fun workshop on the micro controller Arduino and a crash course in component based electronics. This worked out just fine, I had prepared (and even gotten my girl friend to help me out) several kits from our buckets of components as well as some good exercises. Now, this is probably the most challenging workshop we have been giving on the conference, so simplicity is core. I think I managed fairly well, after all I had several groups which I in turn split up into several groups and I got all of them to create little blinking and sensing machines in one hour and thirty minutes. My participants were teachers, so many of them had barley or never even programmed before.
I also took the opportunity to promote the energy efficient behavior project I’m working on, TRIBE 2020. I pretty much had zero material and time to prepare it, so I worked during the night between the two conference days on remaking a roll-up into a TRIBE one. It looked really trashy, but I managed to blame it on being “maker themed”. At least I got the bright idea of projecting the game from TRIBE on the roll-up using a pico projector, with a bit more preparation it could have been awesome. :)
We are going to discuss whether we’ll have a 2018 MakerDays, the general feeling is not though. We feel that we, and other initiatives, have come through to the teachers and educational system in Sweden. We might try new approaches on the subject, and already are touring across the country to motivate teachers ahead of new requirements due to a national curriculum update where programming is required. However, we’ll probably do some other conference or such next year.
Cooling System mk1
Yesterday I did a hasty CAD for the connecting part between an air pressure spray can and the functional part of an Airwick Freshmatic and set up the print before heading out for indie game afterwork. Today I picked it up after lecturing a morning class and did a bit manual polish to get it to work. It’s not quite good enough, it needs some help to work. But the print took only 4 hours, so there should be no problems making some adjustments and printing a new version.
System Test
Managed to get to test most of the system this week (only missing part is network and having four players at once). After some minor bug fixes it worked rather nicely with the chair rotation and back pumping. There are a few issues though, most notably the game is too heavy too run at a good frame rate on our available phones. The plan is to try to find the right balance between flow and graphical quality this weekend.
Next steps will include coding new logic for smoother LAN connection and race rules as well as testing with four players.