curiosity blog!

bitworld & other collabs

Feb 8

Posted by Ben in Indie/Games, Just Bloggings | No Comments

being a follower of tigsource, i’ve been keeping up to date with their collab project that they started a good few months ago. it was basically a sort of collaberation between artists and musicians to create some original work and post it to be freely used by the programmers later on to create something out of it. i was always meaning to contribute in some way, but i don’t think i have enough artistic talent for that.

anyway, a couple of entries caught my eye. i’m pretty sure they were both created in flixl (the framework for project barry). the first one is actually the winner of the whole collab competition – bitworld.

bitworld!

bitworld!

bitworld is a rogue-like game but with a flashy pixel-cross-3D style. i love these crazy little characters, which were also used in the other entry i want to share with you – great dungeon in the sky. while i found the game a bit frustrating with the enemy speed and rate of attack, the sheer amount of characters (300) as well as presentation caught my eye.

_o/

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back from holidays!

Feb 3

Posted by Ben in Just Bloggings | No Comments

seems like it’s been forever since my last blog post, almost 3 months exactly. i hope everyone had a good new year and a chock-a-block-present-filled christmas!

im back at uni now and unfortunately the christmas holidays weren’t that prosperous in terms of getting any sort of project barry or archo work done. i guess i’ll have to go scout gamedev again. we are doing a course in java at my uni but its so incredibly basic. we’re working on how to make a 24 hour clock, which took all of 20 minutes to do.

in the meantime ill post up some more fun indie games very shortly. _o/

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project barry – title music

Nov 5

Posted by Ben in Project Barry | No Comments

hay peeps. have a nice halloween? im glad. anyway, i havn’t updated in about 5 days so i thought i may as well let you know i’m not dead by offering you another slice of project barry’s audio goodness. this time i present to you project barrys main theme – shareine ruins. beautifully composed by our talented and very-unpronouncable musician pete marquardt.

listen to shareine ruins and tell me what you think. check out his other pieces too – you’ll be able to hear some of the tracks in archo

“When I wrote this, I had in mind the capital of an empty, frozen kingdom as it was explored by a nameless, faceless adventurer. I’m not sure why this person was there, or what he, or she, was looking for.”

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project barry – new levels + new world

Oct 30

Posted by Ben in Project Barry | No Comments

t’s been a while since the last project barry update so i thought i’d share with you some of the levels we’ve been hard at work on for project barry as well as a preview of world 2. note that these levels aren’t in order and are just representative of the final levels, these might not actually make the cut. however, if you think some are really worthwhile then let me know so i know not to scrap them.

so yeh, it might be a bit confusing how to complete the levels without actually playing them. there are many hidden passages, fake spikes etc. as well as that the screen loops vertically so you can drop down from the bottom and come out the top ala lode runner. isn’t world 2 mysterious… ooohh…

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fathom /or/ more flixel

Oct 26

Posted by Ben in Indie/Games | No Comments

you who follow the indie game scene are probably very familiar with adam atomic’s work. i posted a link to one of his games (canabalt) on one of my earlier blog entries (the game can also now be bought on the ipod app store). a lot of you may also be familiar with this game but up until now i havn’t really felt a need to post it – fathom.

the game is made with it’s creators flixel framework and this shows off some of the cool shit it can do: screen shake, particle systems and a (somewhat basic albeit effective) lighting system. the game itself starts off pretty reminiscent of cave story in terms of graphics and gameplay: running and gunning through a cute pixelly robot world. shorlty though you fight a classic driller boss and soon realise that you suck at these kinda games.. or do you? you are then thrust into an underwater world where youre gun suddenly becomes your only way of traversing the depths. it starts to get a bit confusing which is why i never posted this before. however, once you realise that the fish that tag along are actually leading you to something then you can start properly progressing. its a short but wonderfully atmospheric game and the musical score is fantastic; nothing i wouldn’t expect from danny b.

so check out the game and see if you can complete it! it gets kinda freaky underwater when the seed is planted…

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caverns – underground lifeforms

Oct 24

Posted by Ben in Indie/Games | No Comments

in my quest for iternal indie-ness i’ve stumbled on a game by flan editor (multi-layered map editor for flixel) called caverns.

it’s a neat little flash game about an underground cavern in which random lifeforms appear and you are given the tools to shape the underground world. adding new materials and letting the lifeforms interact with them can change them into other lifeforms. i think the aim of the game is to see all the lifeforms (don’t worry yuou dont have to remember – there is an achievement counter which tracks how many you’ve uncovered). its a very atmospheric and relaxed game and the concept is really cool too. i’m really bad at the game though, ive managed to obtain about 4 lifeforms i think maximum. out of a possible 18 or so =[

check caverns out – the guy also does a bomberman style game. except you kick cats to explode the enemies…. yeh.

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failure to theme

Oct 23

Posted by Ben in Indie/Games, Just Bloggings, Project Barry | No Comments

hmm, as you might have noticed the layout has changed. im trying to work on a theme that works well with the main website and im just not feeling it.

i did like this theme however, thought it was kinda cute. and it does have bits of pink – which the main page has. facebook integration with the blog has been a big no-no as well. im not sure what exactly i can do to integrate it with facebook but its nice having the option so people dont have to sign up to wordpress to post comments. not that i have anything against wordpress (i am using it afterall), but i think more people have facebook. maybe.

this theme will do just now, im struggling to work on the main website, blog, uni work, learning actionscript3 as well as juggling a job too. why am i learning actionscript? well, i’d like to get project barry off the drawing board and get it into production. theres a framework for flixel that seems to work very well with retro style games. see canabalt, & gravity hook. you may as well check out the main flixel website. canabalt is a pretty popular flash game made by flixel producer adam atomic and danny b thats been ported to the iphone. i’d highly reccomend a download, its suprisingly atmospheric for a game that uses about 4 shades of grey.

canabalt

honestly, if anyones decent at actionscript & would like to bring the project barry idea to life then drop me a line. i’ve spent about a day following tutorials on as3 and managed to get a little flash program running where barry is running and jumping. ill upload it soon, probably tomorow.

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archo menu – refiddling

Oct 21

Posted by Ben in Archo | No Comments

after redesigning Archo, we then decided to start the whole project from scratch. have a look at what we’ve got working though for the menu:

download HD version

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project barry – level editor a-okay!

Sep 10

Posted by Ben in Project Barry | No Comments

alright, so we’ve managed to get a tile editor for project barry which will allow us to make levels with ease. on that note, i’ve gone and re-done level 1 to make it more fuller – as well as to make it seem more undergroundy (thank you pixeljoint ;] ). take a look, it’s still roughly the same as the last rendition of it – just looks awesomer!

Level 1-1

Level 1-1

quite nice methinks, more updates will be coming soon. sorry it took so long i’ve been busy juggling between work, university and this! peace out! x

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Project Barry – Gamescreen

Aug 26

Posted by Ben in Project Barry | No Comments

As you may have noticed we have had a mismash of resolutions for the different Barry screens. This was overcome by basically putting the actual game inside a border of sorts that is the same resolution as the title screen. Have a look at what the interface is like and feel free to suggests improvements or whatnot!

Project Barry Gamescreen

Project Barry Gamescreen

I bet you’re intruiged as to what is blurred out, and to what the 0/100 counter at the top right is! All will become clear soon.

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