However, for the latest compo I made a game called llab. It is a little bit inspired by the beginning of Wizball where you could only bounce. I also used Unity3D for the engine this time, which was a nice choice since it meant a lot less coding and more time for other kinds of pondering.

Fun fact: The sort-of-music you hear in the menu is made by making sounds to a voice-changing toy megaphone and then editing it slightly afterwards in Audacity.

Check the game out from its page in the Ludum Dare website, especially if you took part in the compo so that you can perhaps add a rating to it!

Click here to play it right now in web browser (requires Unity plugin).

Here’s also links for downloadable versions: Windows / OSX / Linux.

Playthrough video in YouTube:

Shumpless
Shooter without enemies.

This is not much of a game, just a minimal test about a shooter where only your own bullets are the dangerous thing. Control ship with arrow keys, shoot bullets with Left Ctrl key.
Play Shmupless (you need the Unity3D web plugin)

There’s a new “One Game A Month” project which has just started at January, with aim for developers to make game each month for a year (or more). Although it’s February already, there’s still time to start and submit for January as well, the first month being a special case where you can submit late entries.

I didn’t do anything new for the January and thought about skipping that month already, but then I decided I could just add some older thing for the January entry, and here it is…

For the 1GaM I’m submitting my original try for taking part in the 19th IOCCC. The game is called IOCCC19 Billiards. The source code was too big for the rules set in the IOCCC contest (6 years ago!). Even in obfuscated and minified version, which is why it never took part in it. But now it gets to be in the One Game a Month. And since the C code is included, both in somewhat original and obfuscated form, maybe somebody will get a bit of joy out of it, even if the game itself isn’t much to show.

Click to download (Executable for Windows, source code included)

Note that I actually have mentioned an early iteration of this thing already in this Google+ post. That post links to the 1st iteration, made with Processing, if you want to check that version out and compare. The C version is better since it has a hole in the middle where you can drop the balls into. :)

There’s really no projects yet to speak about, so the only thing you can check out for now is the WWW page, complete with a logo effect, and perhaps visit or follow the related social media pages.

WWW: Strobotnik.com

Twitter: @Strobotnik

Facebook: Strobotnik page

Google+: +Strobotnik

Page about the original 4k demo: http://jet.ro/visuals/4k-intros/san-angeles-observation/

Here’s direct download link to runnable binary: Download .tar.gz – Tested to be runnable with the Raspbian wheezy distribution (2012-08-16 build).

Edit: As noted in the comments, if you can’t run it, try to change your memory split to 192/64 or 128/128 using raspi-config.

YouTube clip showing it running on the Raspberry Pi:

Here’s list of some stuff from Assembly 2012 summer, the annual computer festival!

Together with stRana we made a little demo for the Assembly 2012 event’s demo competition. Like last year’s Grandma demo, this is also bit of an experiment, this time with real-time rendering of drawn line art/sketch data. Music is created by our friend Crud, embedding also bit of beat-boxing sounds by Ion. You can read a bit more about the demo in this page. Click to download (Windows), or watch the YouTube video.

New in this year was the 1 KB intro compo category. I made an entry called “Synxiety Attack – Tahdistuskohtaus”. Click to download (Windows), or watch a video in YouTube.

I also helped Jere “XMunkki” Sanisalo, who made a 4 KB intro called “Confusphere”. I created the music for that production using the 4Klang softsynth. Download (Windows) / YouTube video.

And top of it all + little bit help from others, we slapped together content from some old demos to have some sort of celebratory production since the tAAt joke group is now roughly 20 years old (YouTube).

And be sure not to miss the Shortfilm competition winner created by bunch of my friends I caught on video when they walked to the stage for receiving the prize

Here’s also links to bunch of other YouTube clips. These are videos of some of the best productions participating in the event: Traceless by TBC (1KB compo), Fireflies by Blobtrox (4KB compo), Introducing the iLisa by cmucc (real wild compo).

Lastly, there is of course the prototype game called K2, which I already posted about, with its own page here, and now also a YouTube preview video shown in the compo.

I’m taking part in the game development competition of Assembly 2012 event. I sent a little prototype game named “K2“. Click here for the game web page.

This year the event is also having “1KB intro” competition. I’m a big fan of little 4KB demo things, having made a few myself as well. Those can have surprisingly lot of stuff in them. But doing something interesting in just one kilobyte is a hard challenge. For example, an executable which simply opens a window and does nothing else, and works on Windows 7, will take maybe about half of the 1 KB (when compressed with Crinkler, de facto compressor for small executables nowadays). Anyway, I have already made a little try for a production in that size category, which you will be able to see in two weeks when the event takes place.

I don’t actually think there will be much difference from having a degree or not. It has just been sort of nagging thing because it was just almost there, so maybe it was sort of mentally easier to get done with that than keep it lingering forever. So I don’t have any current plans to continue towards M.Sc., even if I’m actually already halfway there (basically only thesis missing and a few other bits).

But that’s not all of things making this spring different for me. I decided it was time for me to leave Secret Exit, the company I co-founded over 5 years ago. I’m planning to continue as an “indie developer”, but I don’t really have anything announce-worthy to say about that yet.

I have actually already mentioned about these things in Twitter and Google+ already a while ago, so this post is sort of old news, but I figured I could write an update here as well.

22nd Ludum Dare contest was held late last year. Now that it’s going to be held 23rd time next weekend, I thought maybe it’s finally time to add a page and posting about my entry to the last one!

So, for the #22 theme was “Alone”, weirdly somewhat close to theme used for 20th LD48. I made a wannabe-artsy-moody game called LIFELONE which tries to convey feelings of loneliness. Or something. Check it out.