danielblackburn.co.uk

Playful in NY

admin — Fri, 15 May 2009 12:52:17 +0000

I’m in New York with Tuomo preparing for this weekends Playful event, part of NY design week. Tuomo is exhibiting Playkka and together we are running a kids solar sound toy making workshop this Sunday afternoon. If you are nearby come along to Gansevoort plaza in the meatpacking district. It’s free to take part and should be noisy and fun.

Ludum Dare 14

admin — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 14:21:42 +0000

It’s happening now and I am doing my best to make a game for it.

more to follow…

update : 17 hours down, 31 to go. I think it’s time for a rest. It’s been a productive first day and I’ve got a just about playable version. Lots of things to do tomorrow though not least improve the graphics as it looks about as exciting as a crossword at the moment.

update : Blimey that was hard work but the finishing line is within sight. Here is a release candidate.

Download Murus RC1

update : Final compo version here. Sadly I had to remove the audio due to an annoying bug. I’ll post a fixed version in the next couple of days. Hope you like it.

danblack_LD14_murus.zip

Do you Kodu?

admin — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:53:51 +0000

I don’t know much about Kodu as I’ve not used it myself. What I do know is that It’s from Microsoft Research and runs at a slightly overkill 486.47fps. Apparently It is an icon based game creation language interface aimed at children. Teaching children to program is a good thing and what better inspiration than creating games. It might be fun and hopefully inspirational but personally I’m sceptical about how much children will learn from this kind of approach.

Given how quickly my generation usurped the new digital world for ourselves I remember joking with fellow game developers about the next generation of coders making us look like dinosaurs. If we could achieve all this with our meager 8bit upbringing just think what the next generation would achieve growing up on a staple diet of Internet connected super-computers. Thankfully it never happened though and I’m still in a job (sort of). The point has already been made about the advantages to developers of my generation of growing up with a computer you could program rather than a console you couldn’t. The simple hardware (by today’s standards) made coding incredibly direct and therefore so much easier to understand. You could actually see the individual pixels your code was changing. Now you would have OS’s, API’s, SDK’s and many other barriers in your way. Hopefully Kodu and other game creation tools will inspire kids to dig deeper and not just train them to use yet another piece of middle-ware. Give me my trusty Atari 400 any day.

Alternative Parties and Technology Loving

admin — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:49:14 +0000

I’ve not been to many events this year but the two I have made it to have been excellent. One I already new about but the other was new to me. Recently I was kindly invited to take part in a workshop for a major Finnish mobile phone company. The workshop was very interesting but also excellently timed as it coincided with Alternative Party 2008. I only got to attend briefly but really enjoyed what I saw. A nice mixture of old computers, demos, electronics, art and of course beer.

The other event I’ve been to is WeLoveTechnology and which I should know about as Lisa organises it. It was a smaller salon event this year but it was as interesting a celebration of all things technological as ever. I especially enjoyed meeting Yuri Suzuki as I really love his work.

TileToy @ Sauma @ Dansk Design Center

admin — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:57:40 +0000

TileToy is now in Copenhagen at the DDR as part of the continuing Sauma world tour. Sadly I couldn’t make it to the opening but Tuomo did make it. There are more details and some images on his blog.

mySQL the Game

admin — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:36:39 +0000

mySQLgame does away with fancy interfaces and hackneyed story lines and serves up it’s gameplay raw. As the developers put it “Are you tired of browser-based games that are thinly veiled interfaces for databases? Finally, there’s a game that just is a database!“. If you love points and who doesn’t, then this applications games for you. Mmmm points. Who thought SQL database queries could be so much fun.

World of PlayCraft

admin — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 22:16:12 +0000

We’ve come a long a long way from the days of SEUCK. While looking into weird and possibly wonderful world of Flex, I came across PlayCrafter. It’s only in Alpha at the moment but it is already looking interesting. It’s a browser based game creator where you can make, play and share games all from the comfort of your favourite browser Firefox. The editor is pretty limited and the games people have made so far aren’t up to much but it’s early days. Worth a look if you have fond memories from the heady days of the 8-bit game creator.

WoW without the Wow

admin — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 09:22:05 +0000

The excellent Progress Quest by Eric Fredricksen was originally released in 2002 as an EverQuest parody. Although it does a pretty good job of parodying pretty much every other MMORPG as well. The first time in a while that the game (well zero player game) rather than the players has made me LOL. Roll your character then just sit back and enjoy. You don’t even need to faceroll.

(Progress Quest via Indie Games)

Contraption Distraction

admin — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:07:07 +0000

I was pointed in the direction of a fun little physics game called Fantastic Contraption earlier (thanks Naseer). It’s pretty reminiscent of other sand box physics games, most notably Soda Constructor. It may not be the most original game but it is well executed and introduces goal based play through some nice level design. The catch being that you have to pay $10 to make levels or play the levels of others. Not allowing users to generate or share content seems like a strange business model, especially considering the established communities of other similar free games. The 20 free levels are definitely worth a look though.

UPDATE: There are some really nice videos on YouTube showing the variety and imagination of peoples solutions to the same levels.

You Know, For Kids!

admin — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 17:12:52 +0000

There’s a new craze in Town, well the playground anyway. GoGo’s Crazy Bones are part toy, part game and even part sticker collection. If you are lucky enough to find any for sale there are 3 plastic figures and 3 stickers in a 99p pack. The style of the figures borrows from that of vinyl toys. The main game borrows heavily from Schweinerei, aka ‘Pass the Pigs’ in that scoring is based on the positions figures land in. When playing there is the fight inducing option of the winner keeping one of the losers figures if they decided to gamble battle. Some schools have of course already banned them. A move which will have set the cava corks popping at Magic Box International HQ.

I managed to get hold of a couple of packs, the last two in the shop. I’m guessing from my meagre haul that yellow and blue are two of the more common colours.