On this year’s Global Game Jam I teamed up with Stefan Svellingen to create an augmented reality game we titled Deprivision. It is a game where you don’t see the game world, but have to use audio only to navigate the level to avoid pit falls and monsters. The player uses a wireless headset with a PlayStation Move controller duct taped onto it. The move controller tracks the player’s position and rotation, and via the PS3 move.me application this is sent to Unity for us to use.

This is how the level looks like for the audience watching it being played, while the player don’t get to see this at all, while playing.

When coming close to a pit, the heart rate increases and the monster is making monsterish sounds such as flapping its wings and growling. When turning the head the player can get a sense of direction to where things are in the room, and the sound volume + heart rate indicates proximity.

The shape of the level is the same as the field of view of the PSEye camera and the player is supposed to get to the other side of the level without dying.

The concept works and is quite fun to play, but we would have to optimise and tweak it some more for it to play better. The concept was thought up on the saturday with only 24 hours to go and all the Move gear was bought that same evening. It took six hours to get the move.me app purchased and downloaded since we are located in Norway and I guess we are not supposed to have it? Is my 100$ not good enough for you Sony? The game itself got implemented on the last day, during the 6 last hours of the game jam.

All the visual assets are from the Unity Asset Store, so props and thumbs up goes to the amazing people of the Unity community.

This is my January #1GAM entry.

Download for:
Windows
Mac
Linux

A new year, with new opportunities and good times ahead. It is early in the morning 6.30 right now, and I am about to go to regular work, but first I’ll do a quick post about my first entry to the one game a month challenge. I have decided to join this, to push myself into finishing 12 small game projects throughout 2013. It will be a challenge for sure, since it will not be a full time endeavour. I am sure it will teach me to think small and scope projects accordingly. Some months I might fail the challenge, but all in all I hope to get a double digit game release count this year.

Some of the games will most likely be a joint venture between me and Leigh Bamforth as well as the great peeps from Henchman & Goon, while some games will be solo projects, programmer art and spaghetti code FTW.

First project up is a Word War I plane game, inspired by classic Amiga side scrolling shooters as well as modern infinite runners with simple tap and swipe mechanics. Visual art style will be heavily influenced by art deco. Even thought the style came just after the war had ended, it works well when portraying bi-planes and anything that would look like war propaganda. Perhaps an unholy mishmash of art deco and art nouveau will be the way to go?

Unity will be the game engine of choice, of course, and LightWave will the trusty steed for content. I’ll be posting mini updates on twitter while major milestones will be posted hereabouts.

…2013, bring it on!

There hasn’t been a lot of LScripting as of late and I blame the new Python scripting in LightWave. Well, I blame my reluctance to get into another programming language all over again. I’d much rather spend my time in Unity and C#. Apart from Python, LightWave is getting better and better by each iteration and I love the direction it has taken under Rob Powers and Matt Gorner. The upcoming 11.5 release will rock! I promise to keep on hammering the Unity integration aspects in the LightWave beta forums.

I am still working on Galactic Fleet, my space trade and action game, which I hope will be of interest to the world once it gets released. I am only cautiously optimistic about it as there seems to be a flood of sci-fi/space games popping out of the woodwork nowadays. Galactic Fleet started as a brainchild in 2005 or so and has gone from a “one man and his space ship” type game, to more of an old school tycooning game with action events/sequences. I have gotten Facebook and Kongregate integration working by using the Player.IO API and will continue to use it for payment solutions and multiplayer aspects.

On my full time job at Proactima, I am steering towards a more full time Unity situation as well, and hope to bring another level of added value to the company by utilising Unity for both training and visualisation across the board. I have been upgrading my whole software suite this year, so my Adobe CS package is at CS6 now, LightWave at 11, preordered Unity 4.0 + full iOS & Android versions. To match the freshness of the software, Proactima approved the acquisition of a schnazzy MacBook Pro Retina to get up to speed on the hardware front, so I owe them extra hugs, perhaps not kisses, but at least hugs. Proactima FTW!

All in all, it seems like Unity will be the at the centre of attention in the foreseeable future.

Oh, and me and my wife got a baby girl in June happy diaper changing times abound.

Right off the bat, installing the Android SDK was a bit of a “huh?” moment, but I came across this nice guide for getting up to speed with installing the Android SDK on a Mac: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTh1i-7D75o

So to recap and make it more geared towards Unity peeps, do this:

1. Download the latest SDK: http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html
2. Unpack it and place it somewhere, i.e. /Developer/android-sdk-macosx/
3. Fire up a terminal window go to /Developer/android-sdk-macosx/tools and execute the Android SDK Manager:   ./android
4. When the window pops up, check the boxes for target APIs you need, and hit “Install x packages” <- x the number of packages to install
5. Connect your Android device to your Mac with a USB cable and go to it’s Settings->Applications->Development->USB debugging and turn it on
6. When you build for Android in Unity the first time, point it to the /Developer/android-sdk-macosx/ folder when it asks for the SDK location

Tadaaa!

if(Tadaaa==false)
{
RestartUnity(“BuildAndRunAgain”);
}

I must say its quite entertaining to see my name on a movie production like Iron Sky Thanks to Kelly, Alex and Luke for letting me play and helping out in getting some automagic LScripts going. Now, how to get some LightWave going for the next Star Trek movie… Mr J.J. sirr, need some VFX assistance or what about you Mr Lucas, any live action TV series about to be made?

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4339735/

In any case, now I need to get on with my own space ship projects. Where do I go to order more time in a day?

Edit: It seems to be doing well at the Berlin film festival:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/feb/08/sci-fi-nazi-berlin-film-festival

Its 2012 and the local peeps are awesome. After attending Bergen Game Jam last weekend and the first international Join Game conference yesterday and today, one can not help but to be excited and inspired to get back into the game dev mode. I need to update some LScripts and I think some Unity/C# scripts should be released too. Sharing is caring.

If you so happen to be a Norwegian or a local Bergeneese, head over to spillmakerlauget.no and join in on the game dev fun. If you are in the 3D/CG realm, then also head over to cgbergen.org and join the mailing list.

Full steam ahead!

It’s been a few days since the Android version went live, and I am awaiting the approval process from the App Store. In any case, the swtor.com RSS reader marks the kick off for many iOS and Android apps in the coming months.

To any and all LightWave scripters out in the interwibble.

There is quite a few LScripts in circulation, some are very focused and task oriented while others are quite wide in scope. These tools can sometimes become a vital part of someone’s pipeline and if we as creators of LScripts become less invested in it, both in time and effort, people using it may end up suffering from unfixed bugs and scripts not working at all.

I would urge all developers of free LScripts to release them as uncompiled .ls sources, so that the scripts can be maintained and stay alive even after the creator of them has stopped caring or been hit by a truck.

Circlify is now free and uncompiled for all to poke at: http://mentalfish.com/uploads/lscripts/MFCirclify.zip

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=11341761&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1

MentalFish and Scary-Monsters have teamed up to deliver an absurd experience in the form of a 3′rd person shooter named B.A.G. The game is a tribute to the 80′ies comic D.R. & Quinch and will feature ridiculous weaponry for disposal of annoying aliens.

Leigh Bamforth has created some awesome models and first up is one of the two characters:
Unity turntable of Quinch in all his splendor.