Building Up the Gallery

I've finally made a small video about the indiecade exposition at the malt cross gallery.

You can see it here.

It was some work for me, because I am really not good at video production. I also have no idea, how to make sure that the compression doesn't ruin the quality. You'll see, its picture compression quality is abysmal. (For me this stuff takes ages to make, too).  In german we'd say "someboy has two left hands with video production". 

Well, sorry again for the long waiting, Megan and Alex..  ^_^

Anyway, what you see is the Malt Cross Gallery in Nottingham, where our exhibition took place. We had a fun time, even though we had problems getting everything to work. I really, really wanted to play Erik Svedäng's Blueberry Garden, but we didn't get past set-up. It needs some XNA environment, and I am pretty left-handed at setting stuff like that up. Whenever I set up some development environment, it often easily takes one full day, until everything works, the way I need it. (On rare occasions I am lucky and it'll take 10 minutes)

Special thanks to Alex, Megan and Alex and all the others from Leicester for helping with everything. Also to Yuey and John for helping.

And of course to Stephanie and Sam.

I'll be posting more material, I will not say soon :D

Otherwise I've started a 3 days per week job. But right now, they make me come in 5 days a week, because there are project deadlines, pending. So I had absolutely no time for 'Where is my Heart?'. Hopefully soon.

Platform Coverage on 'Where Is My Heart?'

Aaron Lee from platform magazine writes about some of the

fabulous Indiecade games at Game City 3.

Read what he thinks about them (and about 'Where is my Heart?')
at the platform blog.

not exactly a news rush

Hi everybody,

I think I need to apologize. I claimed to deliver these news about Game City 3, and it never really came. It's because I have been working on the IGF student contest demo, pretty much non-stop. Now, just on friday night I got that packaged and sent to the IGF. I'll also post the version soon, for download. It's the full first level, playable to the end ^_^

After sending that demo to the IGF, (it still has a couple of bugs, I'm sure), I felt like going out more than anything else. Not like sitting down, writing, at all. Also I thought I'd attach the 'news' to the video footage I made in Nottingham at GC3. Well I had problems getting the footage from the camera, because a piece of software and a cable was missing. Now I have it, so as soon as I get a free minute I'll be cutting this footage. And I'll be saying some things about Game City, people I've met and experiences. Sorry again for the long stretch of silence on that matter.

stuff on youtube

hi everybody,

I just found this lecture on game design by Will Wright on youtube. I haven't seen it yet but maybe it's good, who knows..

I'll have a look at it tomorrow.

Birthday Party Back in September

Hi everybody,

I have finally put together the birthday-video.

It's with a black cat and some roses and super mario.

No need to congratulate, the video is from september.

That's behind long enough. 

The song is called "golden apples" by Shirobon!

Sorry for the low quality of the video, even though it sais high quality in its title.

I first managed to compress a version that was even worse.

IGF Release (Demo Version 0.2)

The IGF demo of 'Where Is My Heart?' can be downloaded right here.

It definately works on Mac OS and Windows. Don't know about other OS's.

I submitted it to the contest, without too great hopes.

It's pretty much the same demo as the first IndieCade Release, but there is one new gameplay mechanism added. The 'metamorphosis'. So for all those who know the old release, you may try out the metamorphosis of Antler Ancestor. Also, of course I'd like to know what you think about it. Is it pleasing to ears and eyes?

I am currently polishing another version for the IGF student contest, in which I lay more hopes. It's due to the 15th November and you qualify as a student, if you were studying in Spring 2008, for all those who're interested in submitting their game.

Umm, yeah. What else? Oh yeah, I made this animation tool called Takakukei Animator  in case you always wanted to make "Eric Chahi"-style polygon animations, like in Chahi's amazing game "Another World". (How I LOVE this game.) It's in good working condition. If you want to use it and get stuck anywhere. let me know. Also if you want to continue programming on it, ask me for the (quite unpolished) sources.

Video Game Art

I have been thinking about finding ways how I can keep up the work on my game. I had the idea of selling unique art work. So if you would like to support me in making my game you could consider buying a piece of stamped art. Each piece will be unique. I'd send you one piece for 8 Dollar Australian. (Because I love Australia and I quite like the number 8.) 

In Euro that would be 4.23

In British Pound it would be 3.36

and in US Dollar it'd be 5.41

The price for postage would be depending on where you are located. But it wouldn't exceed 3 Euro I guess.

They will be pretty simple pieces, like the one above and you'd help me to keep working.

I'll also set up a paypal thingie soon. (I have to figure out how that works. Does anyone know, by the way?)

Screen Suck mentions Where-Is-My-Heart

There is a blog called 'Screen Suck' by William Kennard. He blogs about video games, manga, art and other cultural artefacts. He mentions that, what he liked about my game, was the music and the concept. William's blog entry on Indiecade@GameCity can be found here.

Well if you're interested in the music of 'Where-Is-My-Heart-?' then it's Shirobon!'s myspace you should have a look at. He creates wonderful chiptune on his old-school GameBoy. Give him some love.   ^_^

Game City 3

Hi everybody. Thanks for following this blog. I was at Game City 3 over the weekend. It's a game festival in Nottingham, UK. Thanks to Stephanie Barish and Sam Roberts from the Indiecade team, I was allowed to present my game in their gallery. It was great and inspiring to sum it up in one sentence. I will be posting lots of stuff over the next days. It's going to be a bit of my own coverage of the whole event. Showing the things that I liked and learned at the event. I hope this perspective will be interesting to you. The first thing I want to say is, thank you to all the people who encouraged me in carrying on developing my game. It's important to me to get that extra drive from you.  I am still travelling back to Germany right now, so no big post now. (I am sitting in a cafe, trying to spend my last british coins) Tomorrow will be the start of 'Where-Is-My-Heart@GameCity-News'.

I added a little slide presentation of the game to this post. I made it for Game City but didn't really need it there. It may still be interesting to you.