Videogame catch-up

May 13th, 2013

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:

Click of the Moth

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.

Breakanoid Ball

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.

Breaktroid

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.

Three Bullets Per Minute (3BPM)

play online

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.

Glorious Trainwrecks

play online

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.

I’ve uploaded a proper online version now.

I also made a a bunch of games for Pirate Kart V:

Gavin on Mars

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.

Make the Bed

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.

Fighting Pilot

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.

Racing Eightway

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?

Breakanoid RC

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.

Pololo Shodown

play online

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.

Being KK Slider

YOU ARE “KK SLIDER”!

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.

ryliejamesthomas.com

May 4th, 2013

ryliejamesthomas.com

Four years worth of videos

May 2nd, 2013
Image of a stack of printed video stills

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.

Melbourne Free University seminar on the state of the tertiary education system in Australia

April 18th, 2013

MFU Podcast 45: Uni-what? The state and future of the tertiary system in Australia.

This was an interesting, and timely, talk (timely for myself, at least). I haven’t listened to the recording yet, but hopefully it includes the audience discussion, too. It’s hard not to feel frustrated by the way education is being handled by these massive companies, and this was a good opportunity to share that, with both staff and other students. There was a protest yesterday about proposed funding cuts, but to me the problem (that too many don’t seem to even see) is not an economic one, but a philosophical one.

I have been working on a website to host my work, which is changing the way I think about using this blog. I imagine I will make more posts like this in the future; less explicitly output related.

April 12th, 2013

BLAME AND PUNISH THE INDIVIDUAL

April 4th, 2013

I have a new Youtube account

March 22nd, 2013

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.

Some drawings of dogs

February 28th, 2013

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:

Responding

November 18th, 2012

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.

Proposals for a Ritual

November 3rd, 2012

The introduction from a text I wrote for school on my latest work:

Proposals for a Ritual is a set of actions performed, in variations, over the last few months of this semester. Each action/performance is a meditation — an isolating act therapeutic to the artist — but also sometimes disconcerting to the viewer. A ritual, to paraphrase Evangelos Kyriakidis (2007), is a label given to an action that, in a sense, seems irrational or illogical to the non-participant; applied as classification by the onlooker, or as an acknowledgement of the potential to seem irrational or illogical to onlookers by the performer. Approaching the work from this perspective a ritual can be thought of as a language of gesture and material. Proposals for a Ritual offers these actions as suggestions for the viewer to carry out themselves, or at least contemplate.

I may add a little bit to this post later. I’m using it to wrap-up the project, at least for the time being.