It seems I only have a few hours here and there in the evenings to work on this now, but I’m making progress from time to time. I revisited the Bioman stage design again and decided to go for a more distinct inside-body theme as this is what really can set it apart from the other stages. Purple rooms have been replaced for fleshy, veinous parts and mushrooms for organic openings (taking inspiration from the forest background in the official Plantman stage).
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Beer Bartest Fest
Every other Tuesday there is an afterwork with the local game dev (and game dev interested) community here i Gothenburg. Our current bar of favor is GG bar with a distinct E-sports and gamer theme. Last Tuesday I joined, as one does, and brought a laptop and gamepad for some testing. The first person to finish the somewhat full level of Fagerman would get a beer. I can only conclude that Armoryman’s stage is really tough and that the victor was very deserving of their drink.
Bioman Begins, Again
Spent this weekend working on the general layout of some levels and fixing some minor bugs that seem to have come from the update of the game engine (I think it’s all the way from MMF2 to Fusion). So there is Bioman and Reaperman that I already had some progress on since seven years ago. I made a full plan and general layout for both of them, and then focused on implementing Bioman in some detail (sprites and enemy position but not working code).
At a point I felt like added a jungle session to Bioman, but I realized that’s what I want Voodooman to be all about. I put the jungle part away for future use and tweaked Biomans part to more of a mushroomy, inside-body style.
I also begun changing the Megaman sprite into Fagerman. : )
WSED 2017
I attended the World Sustainable Energy Days in Wels, Austria this week. My purpose was to talk a bit about the TRIBE poject which I have been working in with game design and general development for the past two years. I have never been to Wels before, it’s a fairly small town with a bit over 60K inhabitants and no international airport. I stayed at Bildungshaus Schloss in Puchberg which is an old castle repuposed as a conference venue just outside town.
I couldn’t make it in time on the same day which I was supposed to present, so instead I arrived a day early and spent some time checking out the rest of the conference. I’m not really an enegy expert, though I of course find the subject interesting. I would probably not have attended it if I wasn’t a speaker. The veune where we presented was an an old church, repurposed as Muesum and then again repurposed as a conference hall (a recurring theme throughout Austrian towns I was told by a native colleague).
We got the tinies space, a small praying room in a corridor next to the mass hall or something. It was very pretty though, and the intereset was really big so people filled up the tiny room and more sat just outside the enterence peeking in. I was surprised to learn that the visitors were unaware of the concept of gamification and knew very little of game design. I managed to keep a fair group of people there well after our session was over, even though I frequently told them that the session was over and they needn’t stay if they didn’t want to, until it was ten mintues till they would lock the building.
All in all, it was a fun conference to present at, and it’s appearantly a fairly reknown one having been held for 20 years now, but I would probably not have attended if it wasn’t for the TRIBE project. I learned that Mozart was born in Salzburg (neighbouring town where I landed with the airplane) and as such “Mozart Balls” (which are also popular in Sweden) originated there as a result. I also got to speak to a lovely lady from Mexico who presented a composite from sugar can ashes and some other rest product which could be used for house construction. Good stuff!
Gameplay Video
Here is a work in progress video of the TRIBE game.
Tomorrow I’ll be going to Wels in Austria to present the game and work done within the project on the World Systainable Energy Days conference. Hopefully it will be intersting and productive. : )
Update Feb 2017
I have iterated a bit on the webpage, simplifying the layout and replacing the free-wall javascript library with flex containers. I have also replaced wordpress category icons via some weird plugin for a custom php solution where I look for specific images on the webpage. I now have these “feature” images for all projects, inspired from Google Play, which have a landscape layout and are supposed to replace both icon and title.
Getting a Proper Name
So I recently came to think of this project again as I was attending this year’s global game jam (where me and said person made Enbarr mac Lir). I just so happens that my friend liked the project and tested it a lot for me. As a result I though I should rename it to something that is copyright infringement, change all borrowed sprites and sounds and honor my friend by letting him pick or inspire the new name. : )
TestFlight & Google Play
I have been working on this behaviour change game for energy efficiency in public spaces for some time now on my day job. It’s probably about time that I post it here on ztinker. So the basic idea is to mix a simplified energy simulation (simplified in order to be real-time) and mix it with a person and activity simulation ala The Sims. The result is a fairly interesting game and simulation platform that could fit as an edutainment tool as well a building energy monitor system (BEMS).
The app is up for public testing on Google Play and there is a form to become a tester on TestFlight:
tribe2020.eu
New Identity
So I feel that the page is finally starting to get a more refined identity. It will be a dev blog where I post whatever I feel like, not a polished portfolio for trying to look better than I am. I will probably still use it for portfolio, communication and distribution purposes, but fundamentally it’s my blog.
I made a fresh wire frame for it bounded with some look and feel, and I have a very good feeling about it.
GGJ 2017
As I have done for the last six something years, I attended the global game jam this January. In what’s gradually becoming a trend I also made a pretty weird and setup-heavy game. This time I had the honor of working together with my good friend Erik who is a game developer at the local amusement park, Liseberg. Together we re-purposed some IKEA office chairs into VR arcade game stations. My girlfriend also contributed with some awesome horse models. :)
The game submission can be found on the official GGJ site here: Enbarr mac Lir