Just stumbled upon this animated version of the still great book / project “How to survive a robot uprising by Daniel H. Wilson. It explains in shot, how to act on robots, if they get really hostile and out of control.
File-size still matters. Even in 2012. The JS1K is a demo-competition for doing amazing stuff in web browsers with JavaScript just under 1k in size. There is basically nothing more to say, but better just visit the site and browse the submissions! You can study the submissions-code as well.
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!
The Revision Eastern Party 2012 is over. The Demosceners once again made it happen to fantastically re-invent themselves. Look at some of the contributions to the party – fresh and innovative styles ahead!
Enso made two lovely videoclips for the Chip-Bloppers Cheap Dinosaurs. The first video “Gnip Gnop” deals about let’s say computer graphics, while the second “Train Hop” is more about “physical presence”. Enjoy!
In case you missed the Make Pixel Art tool, listen up. It is one of the more interesting pixel-tools, that is somehow available for a variety of platforms. And it has a sort of innovative concept as well. Make Pixel Art is basically a pixel-editor with 3 editing-layers, a bunch of pixel-tools like draw pixels, lines, circles etc. There are more special tools, like “isometric drawing” or “lighten or darken colors“. But maybe the most interesting feature of Make Pixel Art is the embedded shop-concept. You can save, share, download and use your own creations or download and use some “pixel-packs” that other artist made for sharing. The UI of the tool gets you instantly in a blocky retro-mode. Well made. At the same time really Make Pixel Art is available at an affordable price (AppStore-Link). Just go for it!
PS: If you are in editing pixels, you will love to have a look at my own iPhone pixel-editor HiScore.
