I’m working on an online version of my video archive. I’ve only uploaded about 100 videos so far, and the website is still in development, but it’s already fun to play around with. Currently you can play 1–3 sequences of videos simultaneously, selecting them by tags.
Things I would like to add include:
Make videos autoplay on selection
Remove the Youtube ‘chrome’ but still have to remove that Youtube logo
Maybe remove ‘related videos’ at the end of the sequences they loop now
Allow order of videos to be randomised
Allow rearrangement of videos on the screen
And, ideally, make the whole thing more dynamic: generate the list of tags and playlists with code, to save myself some work.
Like I said, I’ve made a preliminary catalogue of all my video work, from when I started making it in 2009. I’m going to do it properly when it’s Winter hols, but this is good enough for now. I’ve been using tags to label aspects of the sources, and then creating compilations based on those tags.
I’d been intended to write a post to summarise 2012, but I think that idea’s time has passed. I do still want to highlight the games I’ve made since the last time I mentioned them—which was all the way back in July 2011—though, so here goes:
Made for the 50th Klik of the Month Klub, the game is a 50 screen stupid pun. Probably way too long, and way to hard! It plays like a few other games I’ve made, where each separate screen has a different win condition.
A breakanoid game where you control the ball instead of the paddle. You influence how much you turn the ball by hitting the correlating button more frequently, which is a fun mechanic.
A clunky adventure game, racing game, and breakanoid that doesn’t really work. It probably could, but I would probably need to use something that wasn’t Klik and Play to do that.
This one is pretty good! An action game where you can only fire a few shots before your gun has to regenerate. The early levels are a bit tedious, but it gets nice and tricky by the end. The level design is all based round the game’s logo, which actually worked, and I had a lot of fun making the graphics, and experimenting with enemy placement. It’s probably the most resolved game I’ve done. It was featured as a ‘Freeware Game Pick’ on indiegames.com, which was a nice surprise. I should make a Flash version of this, too.
The most recent thing I’ve done, made for Glorious Trainwrecks’ sixth birthday. It’s pretty simple: the aim is to crash trains, but it’s fun to try and complete as fast as you can.
You can play it online, but you may have to have a Newgrounds account. Don’t make a Newgrounds account just to play it.
A monkey named Gavin has to ride a horse or a unicorn into a castle. Gavin lives on Mars and wears a crown. He is playing games and stuff in the castle. The name of the game is “Gavin on Mars.”
(Courtesy Eric, age 4)
Pirate Kart V was made to show at the Game Developers Conference, and the funding to get it there was raised mostly through Kickstarter. One of the rewards for donating a certain amount was to have a game made based on a title and description suggested by the donator. I chose to make a few games based on suggested titles, this being the first one that caught my attention. Eric turned out to be the son of the founder of Glorious Trainwrecks, Jeremy Penner, and they both worked on an expansion of the game you can download here.
Another game suggested by a Kickstarter person, this time only a title was provided. It’s an obtuse adventure game, where the goal is to make a bed. I doubt anyone’s finished it. I’m not sure I remember how to finish it.
In this game you control a helicopter with a big, muscley, arm. The helicopter is vulnerable, but the arm can be used to destroy harm causing things. Problem is it’s kind of awkward to position the arm where you want it to be. But that’s not actually a problem. This is pretty good, and I will make a Flash version soon.
A 2-player racing game where the way the car is controlled is changed each lap—sometimes. The control methods are dictated by what is built into Klik and Play; so sometimes it’s like a racing game, sometimes like an overhead game, sometimes like a platformer, etc. It doesn’t work very well! I’ve made a few games exploring ‘wrong controls‘, which I’ve maybe mentioned before?
A Breakout!-like game where the paddle is controlled like it’s a race car—if that makes sense. So you press ‘up’ to go forward, and use ‘left’ and ‘right’ to turn, instead of being able to only move left and right.
I think this is a really fun 2-player competitive game. Or, I assume so, because I think I’ve only played it against myself. Each player controls a paddle, Breakout!-style, and use that to deflect the bouncing ball into the other player’s goal. I intend to do a Flash version of this, too.
KK Slider is a character from the videogame series Animal Crossing. In those games he appears every Saturday night to play his guitar, and give the player a new song to listen to in their house. In this game you find yourself inside his head, able to, with great will power, control him to a small degree. I mostly just made this because I wanted to make the cover image.
I also worked for a while on a 3-D game, using Unity. Not so much a game, I guess, more of a toy. The environments were made out of bad 3-D models generated from video content I recorded. I may get back to it next Summer holidays.
This is a stack of stills taken from all the videos I’ve ever made. I am creating a catalogue of the individual clips—both this physical one, and a tagged digital one—to aid in creating new work. There are, probably, another 200 images from the Youtube Responses that I don’t need to print yet.
I’ve been planning on doing this for a while, but some recent copyright/fair use numbskullery has led me to make myself a new Youtube account. There’s quite a bit of hoop jumping involved in setting up one if you want a sensible URL and not to join Google+.
These are videos of drawings made with a piece of artificial charcoal I’ve been holding on to for about a year. Watching them, and the way they are moved by the newly installed ceiling fans, has been a good prompt for the video project I am forming.
I’ve been drawing these quick, line-based drawings off-and-on for a few months now. If I am remembering correctly they began with a Google search for ‘dogs on rugs’, mostly as a fun drawing exercise while working on more serious things. Here’s a selection:
As a simple way to keep myself working while I’m studioless over the holidays I’ve set myself the goal of making one response per day. You can follow the project at antiphons.tumblr.com (gone), though it’s only early days yet—day two!
It’s changed the way I engage with my days: I find I am looking at things more; thinking about them; trying to take something from them.
