I just had to quickly mentioned this game as I simply fell in love with it!
I was checking out Steam looking for a new game and i saw this: Aquaria. Its a brilliant action-adventure is based around a creature called Naija exploring a underwater world trying to find out the origin of her species. It has a very Castlevania/Metroid feel to it as you explore and discover new skills, which in turn opens up new areas.
Its highlights though are the visual and audio aspects of the game. All the art in the game has a very hand drawn style and just looks stunning. Along with this is a beautiful soundtrack and some really good voice acting.
It’s a bit on the pricey side on Steam so check out the demo first and see what you think. I definitely thought it was worth it ^_^
Chris xxx
Just found out about this today - 1st Annual Global Game Jam
For the weekend of 30th Jan - 1st Feb a 48 hours straight game jam is been held at various places all over the world. It’s sounding like its gonna be awesome 48 hours of game development and partying XD
Here is a link to the UK venue - Global Game Jam 2009 UK
I’m very tempted to go but i will have to see if I can get time to do it and have the money spare (Price to book - £25)
I might be swayed more if anyone else tempted to go? (plus if there’s anyone in London who be willing to let me crash for the couple of hours i will need to recharge during the event ^_~)
Chris xxx
UPDATE: Sorry can’t make it now. Had some personal stuff come up lately. Maybe next time! ^_^
/*****************************
* HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!! *
*****************************/
static void HappyNewYear(void)
{
Year& currentYear = getCurrentYear();
currentYear++;
}
/*****************************
* Have a good 2009 Everyone! *
*****************************/
So as was mentioned in the last post, me, Loki and Andy headed into London to take part in the Last.fm Hack Day. We had around 7 hours to write a app that somehow used the Last FM API to do something. So as game programmers we decided to something way over ambitious and make a desktop app that visually showed the links between bands. Our Idea was for the “Last FM Universe”, a visual app that would show similar bands to one that you selected and allow you to explore these similar bands by traveling round the universe.
Selecting a band would put it in the middle of the screen and display its info and also similar bands would orbit around it. Selecting one of those would bring it to the center and its similar bands would then orbit it. Through this you could explore the universe of band and find new bands to try.
To be honest this was a bit ambitious as:
- We had to create all the windows app code from scratch which slowed down our start
- We decided to use OpenGL for compatibility (We were thinking of leaving this open to port to a mac) and I didn’t have much experience in it and it was my job to do the graphics..
- There wasn’t a way available to access the last.fm web API via c++ so we had to write one on the day
But we went ahead anyway. We divided the work so that Andy was writing the App code and Creating a UI with CEGUI, I was setting up the graphics and writing some shaders and Loki was writing the library to let us interface with the web API using cURL.
We worked hard across the day not stopping and going into a mad rush right at the last 30 minuets. It was amazing what we managed to get working in that half a hour. Our ability to work under pressure is impressive. However like I said our project was a bit ambition and we couldn’t get a project to a fully working demo for the presentation. We presented what we had though and explained our idea to the crowds.
I wish we could have finished it but we needed more time to get it done. We have learnt from this and next time will be much better prepared not just in our ideas and organization, but making sure that we have access to all the resources we need. If there time in the future we may pick this up and finish it but for now its was definitely good fun and a good learning experience!
Here’s a quick picture of me and Loki and the day (Sorry Andy, couldn’t find a picture you were in >_< )
Loving the artistic black and white ^_^
And here’s a pic of our app at its current progress when the day ended
Last.fm Universe
(Also the official blog post from last.fm about the day is linked here if you wish to have a read)
Chris xXx
So quite randomly me, Loki and Andy are off to London tomorrow to enter the Last.fm Hack Day. Basically got about 7 and a half hours to code a app that uses the Last.fm API. We been batting a few ideas around and are probably going to make something really fun! ^_^. Hopefully it will go well and actually have a chance at grabbing the first price of £1000!
Wish us Luck!!! Will Report on how it goes and possibly link to the API if it gets online!
Chris xxx