Bonoboblogs

WARNING: This is a post, where I basically just rave on how awesome my car is. There may be some insight into games, but you have been warned.
So I bought myself my first car a couple of weeks ago. It’s a affordable, used Mazda MX-5 NC. I’m enjoying it a great deal.

My Mum approves.

It is a bit of [...]

A friend of mine recently bought the Japanese version of the ICO & Shadow of the Colossus HD Remix for me. I already had the western version. But the Japanese version has one great detail the western one has not: a beautiful, little behind-the-scenes booklet.

Good job, Sony. I’m sure that’s something the western audience wouldn’t have appreciated.

It’s [...]

Die Schwerkraft hat es nicht leicht im Minecraft-Universum, gilt sie doch im Wesentlichen nur für den Spieler selbst, nicht aber für die Bestandteile der Maps. Das führt im Idealfall zu absurden Bauwerken, die sorglos-lässig schwebend in der Luft rumhängen. Noch einen Schritt weiter ist das Minecraft-Wunderkind sethbling gegangen: Seine SkyGrid-Map besteht aus einzelnen Blöcken, dieWeiterlesen…

My recent article on Suikoden enjoyed some surprising popularity, so I thought I write a little about Suikoden 2, which I recently finished. Have a let’s play:

Even before I played Suikoden, I heard from a lot of sources that Suikoden 2 was in fact the masterpiece of the series. But it was difficult to get hold [...]

So TRAUMA recently won the German Computer Games Award. I wanted to write a bit about it because there was quite a bit of drama associated with the award. In fact, there were 3 separate pieces of drama.
Drama 1 – Crysis Crisis

Minister of culture Bernd Neumann having a speech at the ceremony. © Deutscher Computerspielpreis 2012 / Fabian Matzerath

Perhaps the [...]

So TRAUMA recently won the German Computer Games Award. I wanted to write a bit about it because there was quite a bit of drama associated with the award. In fact, there were 3 separate pieces of drama.
Drama 1 – Crysis Crisis

Minister of culture Bernd Neumann having a speech at the ceremony. © Deutscher Computerspielpreis 2012 / Fabian Matzerath

Perhaps the [...]

This time on the Monster Hunter Podcast: All Aboard the Krystian Train. Due to Shepard having a hardware malfunction, today’s footage is the result of a drunken Krystian fumbling absentmindedly with the controller. Also, there is Jazz.

Get the mp3 of the episode here.
The RSS Feed is here.
Get us in iTunes here.
Visit the new SocialDissonance Website!
Enjoy!

The 3d-visualizing-project at the Advanced Hackathon was successful. The LuaCrumbs-scripts now compile into a Processing file. The moving path can be previewed 3D with panning, rotation and autorotation. In parallel a html-file is generated. The contents of the processing-file can be watched in any modern webbrowser, that supports WebGL. I used the processingjs-libary for that purpose.

This hack enhances the fun of work with LuaCrumbs by nearly 100 percent – you can conveniently work on your lua-script while generating a 3D-preview at anytime, resulting in a much better “know-what-you-are-doing“-feel. As usual FabLab-machine-ready HPGL, .svg or G-Code (and other formats in the future) are generated as well. So “work home, fab later” is the new command!

The source is already available at github. In the next weeks I will prepare some more documentation, examples and a forum site for reaching BETA-stadium.

I just came back from Berlin and recovered from a hangover. Last Thursday, my game TRAUMA has won the “Deutscher Computerspielpreis 2012” – the German Computer Game Award 2012!

Yaaaaaaay!!!

TRAUMA was nominated in the category “Best Browser Game”. It didn’t win the main award in this category. However, it received a special jury award as a recognition of it’s [...]

The kickoff of the Advanced Hackathon 2012 was pretty amazing. Great people and high motivation to work on stuff. After various discussions with other participants I made the roadmap for this weekend. The focus will go to enhancing the LuaCrumbs-framework.

1. Work on the core-architecture and getting deeper into Lua
The Lua-language is very easy to learn, but not that easy to master. A take the opportunity to dig deeper into more advanced Lua-techniques. The blog at www.corsix.org got some very interesting writings about Lua.

2. Enhance the visualization-(preview)-module
Talking about enhancements of the core-architecture is not that thrilling to show-off to the other participants. That’s why I want to work on the html-(preview)-module of LuaCrumbs. Make it 3D and maybe animated. Processing.js or three.js could be my weapon of choice to archive the desired results.

PS: Feel free, to visit the Dingfabrik – it is located right next to the Advanced Hackathon.
PPS: Pastebin.com is still extremely useful for porting working code from one machine to the other.
PPPS: If there are some people interested in a “Lua user group” in Cologne and surroundings, feel free to contact me!

HiScore Pixeleditor is on SALE until Sunday – price is 0.99$/0.79€. Take the opportunity!

PS: You can also meet me this weekend at the Advanced Hackathon in Cologne.

This time on the Monster Hunter Podcast: Thanks For All the Fish. Somebody was making Dolphin noises. We deployed Smooth Jazz. Krystian is showing off his Vita. A toot flute?

Get the mp3 of the episode here.
The RSS Feed is here.
Get us in iTunes here.
Visit the new SocialDissonance Website!
Enjoy!

Lately I came across this already Kickstarter-funded project, called “Spriter”. It is an “easy to use animation tool”, especially suited for game-designers. The tools uses a modular method of animation – instead of each frame being a single complete image, the frame is constructed from many small, re-useable images (for example body parts). Each of these images that are used to construct the full frame can be scaled and rotated to further increase reuse of content.

The developers at Brash Monkey promise, that with Spriter you can create robustly animated game characters and effects with a workflow that’s “highly intuitive, visual, and efficient for not only time, but also for the final game’s file and memory usage”.

Let’s wait and see, if there will be also a version available for OSX at any later time.

The German indie-games-scene try to get more indie – a part of the puzzle could be the Amaze Indie Connect 2012 in Berlin. The organizers want to become an international Indie Games Festival and meeting-place of the europäischen Indie Games Scene in Germany. There are talks, visions and for the first time a indie-gamedev price.

The project still ongoing crowdfunded at the startnext-platform. The money should go directly into the price-money for the games-devs – so feel free to support!