Paradigmatic monochrome

Chromodigmatic?

The past weekend I’ve been on a game jam with the usual jam guys (Fer, Nitram, Tyranus, Zurashu and Tembac ). For this jam I wanted to try something different rather than transport myself there and figure out what I’m going to do for the jam on the fly.
This time I made a little planning and preparations previous to the jam. I wanted to experiment gameplay with a pair of modified old 3D cyan/red glasses, I took a couple of these:

And craft them into this :

This way I can make two players share the same game space filtering the information and objects what they can handle, giving me control upon their realities inside the game by just picking the right color. In others words, as designer I can play with what goes in and out from their monochromatic paradigms.

I ended up choosing the simpler mechanic to apply this concept one in order to keep the scope to be gamejam friendly. I would have liked to try the use of differents mechanics for each color and make them converge in some point. This was the result:

Different views with simulated glasses by color

This is how the game looks without glasses, click to play.

I wanted to make something more like Spy vs Spy but ended up being something more like a 2D capture the flag. The goal of the game is to take the diskette at the center of the level outside using the door located at the opposite corner of where you started from.

• If an enemy hits you you will flicker in black making you visible and vulnerable to the other player if you are hit by a bullet while flickering you will be warped to the starting point.
• If you kill an enemy you actually send them to the other color’s reality.
• When you pick up the diskette you are visible and vulnerable to the other player so hurry up to the exit.
• There are unfinished turrets, I wanted to make them target a specific color by turning a switch but I ran out of time.
• When you are standing over an X tile you are slightly visible for the other player.

The controls of the game are made to be controlled using a two sticks joystick (I used two Xbox360 controllers) and JoyToKey if you like you can download the configuration here . I made some modification so it can be tested without glasses and joysticks and added a glass view simulation built-in in the game by pressing the X, but this is only for testing purposes not for playing.

Some pictures :

And the timelapse:

Planetarium

This past sunday I was at the Buenos Aires Planetarium in a mini game jam with a bunch of indies (Fer, Nitram, Daniel, Tyranus and Tembac ).

There wasn’t too much time to make something too fancy, so I decided to grab a box2D tech demo of ragdolls and hammer it until it has some gameplay, it was fun. The mini jam lasted 4 hours I started with the idea of make a ragdoll fighting game but then turned up with a ragdoll basket game.

This is the time lapse:

And this is the game, it doesn’t have any scoring control so by convention the player 1 go to the right basket and the player 2 to the left.
The controls : Player 1 WASD and Q , Player 2: Arrows and Space . Q and Space change the pulling point from the ragdoll.

We are fine!

It’s been a very hard week but we are all right. Just a broken leg .We have stopped trying to eat the bandages and started to be a happy kitty again.

Goodbye 2010

I wanted to write down a summary of what was 2010 for me as developer. It had few satisfactions and some losses for which I could tell that the 2010 was a bittersweet year for me. This is what I did this year:

The Global Gamejam 2010 was a great experience, very intense ,we end up exhausted. I’ve never been in a gamejam before that and I had the chance to know and work with other good developers (this was the team) and it was very fun and I learnt a lot. We made a bizarre game of  a mime who fight against an evil lime ninja  clan using mimics, we couldn’t explain well how to play it but I think it had a some potential. After the jam we had intentions to continue it, but that never happened.

A bit later after the GGJ I started to work with a colleague from work on a noir detective adventure using the Web Adventure Kit. The game never saw the light because some troubles that ate our time at job, so we decided to pause it indefinably .

At margin of my independent projects, at job the most part of 2009 and the beginning of 2010 I’ve been working  in Sabarasa as project leader on a Wiiware tittle called Horizon Riders. I quit from Sabarasa after we reach feature completed, the team who was left fixed some heavy bugs and sent it to Nintendo. The game hasn’t been published yet for other reasons.

I wasn’t happy about leaving Sabarasa I’ve met great people there and I liked the job very much. I wish that things would have worked better there. Later this year at EVA (the Argentinian GDC) the game received a Sapo award and I was called to receive it. I hope that this game could be released some day. It would be a shame to waste the work of all the talented people who worked on that project.

Another interesting fact which happened this years is that the independent developers from Argentina started to gather together in one place and talked, sharing experience, knowledge, rants, developments, making gamejams, etc. Before that, we were all scattered by their own.

Later this year, like in 2009, there was the Videogames Conferences in Santa Fe . A game developers exposition organized by Codevisa and the National University of the Litoral where companies and indies show their work and and give talks about the subject. I was there along with other indies (Nitram cero, Compositeredfox, Ilmare, HeavyBoat, et al) showing our work on this event.  I’ve spent a great time with these people.

Sometimes I have procrastination stages where I develop technology instead of games. In one of this peaks of procrastination I’ve developed a tile editor called Quest. I wasn’t happy with the number of tile editors out there so I’ve decided to add a version of my own. I used it a lot since it was finished. A few weeks ago I’ve released it free for friends : ) .  I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it the next year.

After some bumps at work. I finally started to work on my own project on my spare time. While I was thinking about how cool would be to make a platformer on a continuously looping space that you can modify by drawing the floor and live with the consequences of your changes EGP announced Neverending as the September theme where the winners will  be shown at Babycastles.

My game was selected as runner up and I am very happy for it. I know that is not big deal have a game inside an arcade cabinet, but I feel this as my personal achievement of the year. Neverending Dejavu was my first game developed entirely by me alone as indie. Win this gave me some kind of confirmation feeling of having started with the right foot on the right track.

After that, I started this web site to put me more serious on being independent, despite the fact that I still having a job. Then I entered on the November EGP ( with Day and Night theme) from where Lumiere and Nycteris came out. And that is the project on which I’m working right now and I plan to explore this gameplay to see where it goes.

If you still reading so far I’d like to wish you a happy new year. 2011 will be a very interesting year for the independent developers.

Before and after

As I mentioned before, Lumiere and Nycteris was an unfinished attempt which I made for a Codear 100×100 (November 2009) . I’d like to show you my first try.

Originally on my first approach ( back then called Day Boy Night Girl ) I thought the game as some kind of little adventure with puzzles. I didn’t find out a way to make something interesting with this, so the project was never completed and I never sent my entry.

The swf doesn’t has a preloader so be patient on the white screen while it loads.

Lumiere and Nycteris

Hey There

Finally I have my personal web site as game developer. I’m not sure what someone would expect on a first post so I’m going to tell you what I’ve been up to.

A couple of weeks ago DejaVu, a game which I made for the Neverending theme of the Experimental Gameplay Project (EGP) was shown at BabyCastles. I didn’t get the first place but I was selected as runner up. A fact that makes me very happy and  a fact which was a trigger for me to put me to work seriously on this. Besides it was a great morale booster for me.

Right now I’m working on something for the November EGP whose theme is Night and Day. Some time ago, during 2009 I started to work on  something for the CODEAR 100×100 pixels using night and day. I really liked the concept but I got stuck before taking off with something playable so I didn’t submit anything. But the idea kept bouncing on my head since then and this EGP is the perfect excuse to continue it.