Gameport
SPACEMAZERACE
A while back I was repping noumenon at a game jam at BTH, a local university. Memory is getting fuzzy but the time frame were 24 hours and the theme was a free interpretation of an image of space printed on a piece of paper. The next day, after about 13 hours of work, I called it done and didn’t touch it again. I actually wrote a blog post about the event, containing a download link to the game and detailing the development of it and some stuff around it, but apparently forgot to post it, heh.
Anyway, some month ago we started building a new website for noumenon and thought it would be cool to launch it together with a small game. So I fixed up the jam game.
We named it SPACEMAZERACE and it sort of plays like asteroids on a race track with simple side objectives (shoot and loot). The game is only seven short levels long, so consider it a bite sized mini-game or prototype. It’s made in GameMaker 8.1 (an excellent tool for rapid prototyping) so I have little knowledge about how well it works on platforms other than windows. Probably not at all unless you hack around with bootcamp or whatever, sorry guys.
SPACEMAZERACE.zip (windows) 4.76mb
Jukio Kallio, a good friend of mine made the music for it and the sound effects were made with bfxr.
So what about that website that was supposed to go live with the game? Well something broke and sebastian, who codes around here, had to leave for a trip over the weekend before he had the time to fix it. It’s up on monday instead, probably.
Article source: http://blog.noumenongames.com/?p=257
Jag vet vad du gjorde förra fredagen!
I fredags var vi högst vetenskapliga och konstaterade att det är skillnad mellan en liten kopp (till vänster i bild) och en stor kopp (till höger i bild) i volym, däremot verkar det som att en liten stark kopp är starkare än en stor stark kopp. Det godaste kaffet är alltså en liten stark kopp.
Det var sista dagen för vår prao Oliver och han var den första som låst upp achievementen “GamePort PRAO” som den mycket kompetenta PRAO han var så stog det härliga till med kladdkaka och glass till 16:00 fikat!
Vi var även ute på äventyr och gjorde oss av med cirka 25 stycken CTR-skärmar och massa kartonger som har stått runt och skräpat i olika vrår på kontoret.
Alla på kontoret hjälptes åt att lasta släpet fullt sendan var vi fyra tappra kämpar som tog oss till mitt ute i skogen och Mörrums återvinningscentral för att bli av med gårdagens framtid.
Ahoy! Flaskpost!
3 months ago
by Coastalbyte
in Gameport
Captains log, earth date: 3/2 – 2012
So here we are again. It’s Friday, Marcus and Mario is playing around in 3D modeling programs trying to learn a thing or two. I’m playing around in Unity trying to create a thing or two.
On Monday me and Marcus boarded a train in Denmark and went back to our small peaceful town of Karlshamn after a weekend of jamming with awesome people.
The rest of the week has mostly been spent on consult work but we actually managed to get in some work on Mailstorm too. We taught Mario how to create map blocks with our system and he made some sweet stuff. Some bugs have been found and written down as well and are now waiting to be exterminated.
Since most of the tech stuff on the consult job is done I’ll probably be able to work a bit on Mailstorm next week.
Fredrik out.
Article source: http://www.coastalbyte.com/wordpress/?p=579
Reporting back from Copenhagen!
3 months ago
by Coastalbyte
in Gameport
Ahoy!
As we promised, here is a small chronicle of our trip to Copenhagen this weekend!
Nordic Game Jam is part of a larger international event known as the Global Game Jam. The Nordic Game Jam is the single biggest Jam with 290 registered developers in 2012.
Me and Fredrik took the train on Thursday, one day before the event started. Aboard, we met up with our friends Olle Lunddahl, Simon Gustafsson and Niklas Ström from Redgrim. It just happened to be Olle’s birthday so we made the entire train ride into a birthday party, complete with balloons, Champis, party hats and cake. We were off to a good start!
Despite of living less than three hours away, I’ve almost never been to Copenhagen before. The coolest thing we discovered almost immediately: Robots in the metro system. There are no humans operating the trains from a cockpit, it really gives the impression of a semi-intelligent master system. Very cool and a little creepy, it makes Stockholm’ metro system feel like that of a a third world country.
We installed ourselves at our hostel and proceeded to the IT-University of Copenhagen, where an introduction party was being held. We met several Danish developers as well as other former swedish students from BTH. It was all good fun and the eveneing ended up in one of the muskiest bars in all of Copenhagen – “The Moose”. Suffice to say, it was quite the feat to get out of bed the next morning, especially if your name was Olle.
Friday was filled with inspirational talks in the university, we listened to Petri Purho talk about making games with highly stylized and simple graphics. We also sat in on a talk about rapid prototyping in Unity, something that will come in handy this summer since I’m probably going to hold a course on the subject on BTH.
Article source: http://www.coastalbyte.com/wordpress/?p=553
Third Flaskpost
3 months ago
by Coastalbyte
in Gameport
This flaskpost is a bit early for the simple reason that Nordic game jam starts tomorrow and Coastalbyte will be there. This afternoon we will board a train to Denmark and traverse the Swedish forests, villages and finally cross a gigantic bridge to the legendary land of Denmark.
We might make a small update from the jam, if nothing else we’ll make an article to sum up our experience once it over.
In other news so have we been working on a consulting job. It’s going steadily forward and next sprint we will probably start working parallel with Mailstorm so we make some progress on that too. Mario have been learning some Unity as well. He made a Skyrim clone where you shoot golf balls and climb mountains.
Oh yeah, and Rasmus made that sweet flaskpost image.
-Fredrik
Article source: http://www.coastalbyte.com/wordpress/?p=533
Gameport Tournament – Arkadstickor
Femton tappra kämpar från södra Sverige, vissa så långt bort ifrån som Ängelholm, anslöt sig i Gameports gamelab för att se vem som skulle koras som fightingspelens mästare.Nu är stickorna invigda på riktigt!
Efter lite småmissar i tidsplaneringen var alla på plats och tävlingen kunde sätta igång.
Spelen som spelades Super Street Fighter IV – Arcade Edition och Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 i samma turnering!
Winner bracket körde SSFIV medan Loser bracket körde Marvel vs. Capcom.
Innovativa Blekinge fick vara med på ett hörn då projektkorten användes för skriva upp namnen på deltagarna till dragning om vem som ska möta vem.
När tävlingen började närma sig sitt slut var förra turningens finalister, Mario Gryth och Felix Eliasson, i kamp om finalplatsen mot Rickard Remelin som gått obesegrad genom Winner Bracket.
Efter en tung strid blev det ett tungt fall för Zangief och Felix när Mario landade segern och gick vidare till finalen.
Så i final, Rickard Remelin mot Mario Gryth, Blå Ryu mot Vita Ryu!
Det var en hård strid med många Hadoukens och Shuriukens från båda parter!
Med två vunna matcher så var det avgjort, Rickard Remelin är inte bara en hejjare på att odla skägg, han är även vinnaren av Gameport Tournament #2! Stort grattis till Rickard!
The First Flaskpost!
3 months ago
by Coastalbyte
in Gameport
Hey, Fredrik here.
Marcus and I have been pretty bad at updating the blog lately. So we figured we would do weekly progress reports on how the projects are going and just plain awesome stuff that have happened.
Week 2, 2012
Last week ended with my laptop deciding to die on me. Luckily, the hard drive survived and no work was lost. Though it meant I had to work from home for a couple of days.
Mailstorm have stood still this week, instead I’ve been focusing on a consult job we’re doing. There isn’t much to say about it, it’s a small flash game. We decided to work in the Flashpunk library. So I’ve been spending my time reading through the documentation and started with the basics of the game.
Meanwhile on Marcus side of life:
Marcus have been writing a business plan and been off on a CEO-workshop in Malmö with other people from the Swedish Game Incubator Network. Both sharing and gaining knowledge, tips and tricks. When he got back we started setting up a plan on how to optimize our work process, which we will start using next week.
So while work on Mailstorm Express was put on hold for this week it feels like we got a lot of important things done and learned a lot.
Article source: http://www.coastalbyte.com/wordpress/?p=513
Flaskpost Update
3 months ago
by Coastalbyte
in Gameport
This is the second flaskpost update and much have happened since our last post.
First off, we have redesigned our office here at Gameport. We may have intruded a tiny bit on our fellow studio Forgotten Key’s space, but they so far they haven’t complained.
Second, we took the beginning of this week to actually sit down and hammer out a new way of organizing our work. We have really adopted and integrated google docs into everything we do, even for cloud storage. But that isn’t really fun to read about now, is it? In that case I’ll continue with announcing something completely different – we have a new addition to the team!
We at Coastalbyte warmly welcome Mario Gryth into our little troupe. Mario has worked with us with Mailstorm Express, composing the games music and sound effects. He is most known for hiss efforts as a sound- and game designer over at 2Play Studios working with their flagship title Bloody Trapland. Needless to say, we are very happy to have him!
Finally – this is the last update before Nordic Game Jam, which we will attend in Copenhagen January 27. Me and Fredrik plan to keep record and document the experience and share it later, who knows, we might even actually have a game to show for our efforts!
Be good and live well!
/Marcus
Article source: http://www.coastalbyte.com/wordpress/?p=522
TGIN Workshop i Malmö
The Game Incubator Network, TGIN, är ett nätverk mellan inkubatorer med spelinriktning i Sverige. I tisdags anordnade TGIN och Media Evolution en workshop för spelföretag i startfas där det disskuterades kring designprocessen och marknadsföring.
De bolag som var på plats var följande:
12 O’clock Studios, Coastalbyte, Coilworks, Digimundi, Junebud, Noumenon Games, Planeto, Redgrim, Stunlock Studios, Triolith Entertainment.
Andra på plats var Per Strömbäck från dataspelsbranschen, speljournalisten Orvar Säfström, Martin Walfisz grundaren av Massive, Sebastian Badylak från GSP/TGIN, Olle från Gameport, Sten Selander och Sara Ponnert från Media Evolution och såklart vår prao Oliver.
Nu när du vet vilka vi var på plats är det lika bra att Martin Walfisz får ut sitt största tips om man ska starta och driva en spelstudio: Läs The Lean Startup av Eric Ries. Bokens undertitel “How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses” låter ju inget annat än spot on!
På fronten med The Lean Startup så berättade Ola från Junebud om vikten av metrics och hur viktigt det är att mäta sitt spel när man erbjuder ett spel som en tjänst, till exempel hur man räknar på om ens spel växer organsikt.
Att om X*Y*Z är större än 1 växer spelet organiskt där:
X = Procent av personer som hittar spelet och stannar, ex 10% (0.1).
Y = Personer de bjuder in, ex 42 stycken.
Z = Procent av de inbjudna som stannar kvar, ex 25% (0.25).
0.1*42*0.25 = 1,05.
Vi hade en disskution om passionerad utveckling vs. data-/lärandedriven utveckling och kom snabbt på att de två inte är motsatser, man måste ha både passion och data att lära sig från för att utveckla spelet i rätt riktning. Samla in data, utvärdera och bygg efter det.
Orvar Säfström om tips när man kontaktar speljurnalister
- Tvisten är död, ingen blir längre positivt överraskad när det är ett standard FPS 1A, och så kan man lite påklistrat sakta ner tiden.
- Ett spel är ett spel, ingen bryr sig om teamstorlek, folk bryr sig om hur mycket de betalar. Det här betyder att du aldrig kan skylla på att spelet kostar 150 sek för att ni var många som utvecklade om ni endå bara har lyckats utveckla ett spel som är värt 50.
- Kan man få publicitet, ta den!
- Ha rätt pr-människor.
- Prata med journalister, får de den info de behöver (Bilder, beskrivningar osv. osv.)
- Mailbomba inte, ring istället.
- Förhandstittar gillas vid månadstidningar.
- Helheten är asviktig.
- Första fem minuterna.
Weekly Update #1
4 months ago
by Coastalbyte
in Gameport
Hey, Fredrik here.
Marcus and me have been pretty bad at updating the blog lately. So we figured we would do weekly progress reports on how the projects are going and just plain awesome stuff that have happened.
Week 2, 2012
Last week ended with my laptop deciding to die on me. Luckily, the hard drive survived and no work was lost. Though it meant I had to work from home for a couple of days.
Mailstorm have stood still this week, instead I’ve been focusing on a consult job we’re doing. There isn’t much to say about it, it’s a small flash game. We decided to work in the Flashpunk library. So I’ve been spending my time reading through the documentation and started with the basics of the game.
Meanwhile on Marcus side of life:
Marcus been writing a business plan and been off on a VD-workshop in Malmö with other people from the games industry. Both sharing and gaining knowledge, tips and tricks. When he got back we started setting up a plan on how to optimize our work process, which we will start using next week.
So even though Mailstorm stood still this week it feels like we got a lot of things done and learned a bunch of new stuff.
Article source: http://www.coastalbyte.com/wordpress/?p=513
