Esi Jóhannes G.

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1GAM February, Orbs 01 Mar 2013

Screenshot from Orbs

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Download it for Linux!

The game for February’s One Game A Month challenge has been “finished”. It’s not a very practical game for you as a gamer as it’s more of a proof of concept, or a sketch perhaps. So if you decide to download it and play it, beware!

It was quite a trip though, and from the programming side of things you can read more about it from Kyle Halladay’s blog.

The idea was to make a basic first person puzzle game where the player would walk around with a recorder and “steal” audio sources and use those to power various items for clues or to progress in the game. For the audio part we were going to use Pure Data (libpd to be more exact) to drive the sound behind the game. This would had allowed me to play around with real time effects and procedural audio, but sadly, we ran into some problems with integrating Pure Data into the game engine so in the end, the good old sound sample method was used. Pure Data integration is still on the map though for this (March) month. We are going to keep on hitting that wall until we get through, and for March we will be revisiting the idea of Orbs. Like I said, the February game was more of a sketch, a preperation for March.

Therefor, there’s nothing mindblowing to be said concerning the sound apart from the fact that I purely used the DAW Reaper. I have been slowly switching out programs for a more cross-platform programs to prepare for a possible move to Linux in the near future, and for a DAW, Reaper has been my weapon of choice (even though there is no official Linux version, but it is supposed to run smoothly under Wine).

PS: Did I tell you how much I love One Game a Month, If you want to get your hands dirty in game design, I would highly recommend joining in on the fun. Go make one horrible game a month.

1GAM January, Haiku Roller 06 Feb 2013

Screenshot from Haiku Roller

I am currently in the middle of research work for my thesis which explains my silence lately. I was planning to write up a post-mortem concerning my first entry for the One Game a Month challenge (which is about releasing one game a month throughout 2013) but my thesis work has not allowed me to do so.

Instead I will be linking to the excellent post mortem written by Kyle Halladay who is behind the majority of the work behind the January entry, Haiku Roller. He is my partner in crime throughout at least the first months of One Game a Month (and hopefully the rest of the challenge!) and he did amazing job with the first game and I am looking forward to what we will be able to put together in february. (Spoiler: theme word is “Sound”)

To at least show some of my work, below is the music track I put together for Haiku Roller.

Hrím 24 Jan 2013

Hrím

Terence Hannum: Burning Impurities 23 Jan 2013

Terence Hannum: Burning Impurities, front photograph

Coffee Chess for New-Year Game Jam 02 Jan 2013

Coffee Chess During New Years Eve a frightening storm was hitting the west and north coast of Iceland which resulted in the best idea for the evening was to stay inside and take it easy. Thankfully, I still had electricity so I decided to participate in New-Year Game Jam which forces people to create a game in under 48 hours.

After some brainstorming coffee started to infiltrate my game idea and before I knew it I had my core idea fleshed out. “A boardgame about coffee, made from coffee”

I wanted to keep things simple so you don’t need to print out a game board or anything. The only thing you need are a regular 8x8 chess board and 50 coffee beans or other similar items. Coffee beans are recommended as they make your hands smell wonderful after the game.

Download the NYGJ version of the Coffee Chess rules here.
Download mirror from nygj.blechi.at.
The source/latest version from github.
Try out all the other New Years Game Jam games over here.

Feel free to contact me at esi@esi.is if you have any suggestions, feedback or tips concerning this board game.

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