Global Game Jam 2011 - I Love Kakapo

We have participated in the game development marathon this year where you have to create a computer game in 48 hours. It's a great success for me that we made it in time to a fun to play result. We used the XNA framework and created a simple 2D platformer with 3D graphics.
This year's topic was extinction and we got this great idea for a game:
It's about saving the Kakapo parrots from extinction. These lovely parrots which live in New Zealand have never had any natural predators and with evolution gradually degraded (lost their ability to fly, got fatter and so on...). One day a new predator was brought to the island where they live and nearly all of them were eradicated. Today there's only about 150 of them. What's more, when mating, the male sits somewhere in the forest and makes these deep sounds trying to attract a female. Sadly, because the frequency of the sound is so low, it's very hard to tell where is it coming from - therefore the female hardly ever finds him.

In our game you have to guide the female to her future partner. If you succeed you control the next generation of the kakapo in the next level which is slower and can't fly as well.

We didn't manage to implement everything we wanted in the game so we sat down a few days after the event and added some graphics, a better head's up display, 3D sound effects(yay!) and corrected some bugs to make the game complete.
A couple of screenshots here:





And here is a video of the final version.

You can download the one we managed to do in 48 hours here, on the Global Game Jam's website. And the updated version can be downloaded here.

A couple of night photographs from Brno

I've been trying to take a nice picture for a small contest at 3DBuzz.com with the topic Winter Wonderland. Since I have my tripod with me I decided to go for a night picture with lots of lights and a more saturated color. Here are a few photos I Took:

this one is an attempt for an HDR photograph:

Ray's Brainy Quote v0.2

A new version of my little gadget. I had to fix a problem with reloading the quotes. It didn't reload properly because of the windows sidebar cache. So that's fixed now and quotes are loading properly. I have also added a new version of both styles. It's smaller now and doesn't take so much space. (screenshots are below, you can choose it in the settings) Let me know what you think. :)

How to update?

- download the new version

- unzip

- double click it and choose replace old version :)

Download:

Link 1

Link 2

Link 3 (windows live gallery)

Ray's Brainy Quote

I like reading quotes and I find it quite neat to have one written on my desktop. A nice feature would be if it updated automatically once a day and if you could choose the topic of it.

So there I was looking for something which would be at least close to what I wanted and found many things I didn't like at all. There was no other way than to create my own little application.

I chose the website Brainy Quote as a source of quotes and wrote a simple but sufficient widget for the windows sidebar which display a nice quote every day. You can choose from four topics (love / nature / art / fun) or simply go for one without a specified topic. It wouldn't be me If I didn't draw the icons and created at least two styles you could choose from.

So here it is, version 0.1, if you'd like to try it, I'd be more than happy. All you have to do is download it, unzip it and double click it. Done. Here are some screenshots and links for download:

Download:

Link 1

Link 2

My demonic head is back! [dhead 5]

More than two years ago I started modelling my first humanoid head that I took seriously and wanted to finish it on my own with my own imagination without any references or intentional influences. Because of lack of time and interest I've abandoned this project a long time ago. However I would like to get back to 3D modelling and this old head of mine seems like a good starting point.

So here it is. I made the proportions more realistic (hopefully) and added details as well shaped many features of this face more nicely. To add a little bit of nostalgia I compiled a set of all the old updates to see how have I progressed so far. I'm planning to create a texture, normal map, add some lighting and maybe even animate it in the end. We'll see.

Braid

Today I bought this game because it really deserves it and I wanted to support it's developers at least a little bit. Even though I've finished it before a few moths it still looks as beautiful and well done to me as back than. In spite of how simple and short this game is it might actually be one of the best games I've ever played. It manages to create something very timeless with it's unique style, gorgeous painted graphics, great musical soundtrack and above all the game-play itself.

While playing it it really hit me how simple it is to play and control the character and at the same time one has to really think about what he's doing. This way there are no difficulties what so ever as far as game controls are concerned and the player can truly focus on the game it self. I know it sounds a little exaggerated for a game that needs only 5 buttons but still not many games are so accessible for anyone. There are many puzzles and the difficulty increases as you progress but each problem no matter how difficult may seem always has quite simple solution once you find the right way to think about it. A few times I had a really hard time trying to get one puzzle piece which you collect it the game and then found out I could've done it in a so much simpler way. If only I though about it a little before doing it. Finally on top of all that you even have a little story and a few paragraphs to read throughout the game which have some nice thoughts and give the experience an even more unique taste.

Even if you don't play computer games I absolutely recommend this one because it's all a game should be. Fun to play. Ease to master yet difficult to complete. Nice visuals and music which all go together very well . It even doesn't need too much time be played.