Posted by Zach at March 20th, 2009
Did I mention my new game, “Toaster Bro”? Play Toaster Bro alpha version 1!
(You will need Flash Player 10.)
Ten days have elapsed since I shared this version with friends (who are unwittingly being used as play testers). It’s time for a “wrap-up” meeting, because I want to examine what went wrong/right, and instead of a meeting it’s a blog post:
Posted by Zach at March 15th, 2009
By request, here’s a quick ‘n dirty test harness, and sample code, for NTSC artifacts in the style of the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System (NES):
Click the animation to change scale & scroll speed.
Source code & .fla: nes_ntsc.zip
The .pbk code is not optimized yet. The code is fairly explicit, I tried to explain how it works in the comments. Blargg’s pages have better explanations tho.
The test harness lets you select two flavors of the effect. The numbers 8 and 12 denote the width of the lowpass window used for applying crosstalk. 12 is more processor-intensive, but will look “smoother”, which may not be what you want. The mathematics can be reduced to a few (long) lines, which should reduce processor overhead; I want to do this in the future. unic0rn left some nice comments suggesting more routes to optimization.
The filter still needs some tuning. Areas of solid (non-black) color have diagonal stripes in them. I believe that normalizing the strengths of the filters will fix this.
To be continued…
Posted by Zach at March 13th, 2009
Hooray, I’m a runner-up in the first Tweetcoding contest. My entry “Ghost Marquee” placed in the top 4. The code extracts certain bits from a string of jibberish, 6 bits at a time; when arranged on a grid, the bits form a message.
Also I had 2 notable mentions with Sea Sphere and 3D Sketch. I figured my entry The w00t Quilt would have placed, but perhaps I’m just easily hypnotized…
I think the strongest entry was Diagonal Snake by @tomee6, which is (not coincidentally) also one of the winners. Move the mouse to attract the snake; you lose when the snake crosses itself or touches you. There’s even a death animation. Amazing.
Here’s looking forward to round 2…
Posted by Zach at March 2nd, 2009
The challenge was steep: Build something interesting in Flash, using 140 characters or less.
Check out the rules, and the results. Oh man, I was hooked.
(more…)
Posted by Zach at January 5th, 2009
In 1998, the Yamaha Corporation unleashed a product that was convoluted and bizarre like no other: The FS1R Synthesizer.
Like the era-defining DX7, the FS1R is an FM Synthesizer, but it boasts a massive 8 operators per voice, compared to 6 in the DX. And the FS1R sports a new toy, Formant Synthesis, capable of mimicking voices, human and otherwise! Waves and formants can modulate each other in 88 different configurations. Top that off with LFOs, filters, on-board effects… It’s so flexible, and so complicated. So much power.
Posted by Zach at December 29th, 2008
I made a Pixel Bender filter that performs Julia Set transformations on images. It looks great when it animates, the colors morph and twist like mathematical slime. Try it (Flash Player 10 required): JuliaTile.swf
Source code: julia_tile_src.zip. Pixel Bender code is in src/shader/.
The default image is Seattle’s Space Needle. You can upload custom images. Very large images may set your processor on fire.
Posted by Zach at November 4th, 2008
My tile engine is getting a facelift, I’m scrapping the Atari 2600 palette, and switching to the glorious 56 colors of the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Eventually I want to add NTSC artifacts using Pixel Bender. For now, I have to produce a small miracle of art assets, and use the tiny palette effectively. I never thought I’d study old Nintendo games, but that’s exactly how I spent my evening.
According to Tsugomo, the eye perceives brighter colors as being closer. Most games with decent art have solid blocks brighter than the background.
Mega Man 3 - Needle Man
Posted by Zach at October 31st, 2008
You dag-blasted crazy apes!!!
The Braindead Monkeys: Space Donut
After a 4-year hiatus, Space Donut arrives! It’s their strongest album to date. Lots of head-nodding jams, and lots of smiles.
Recommended tracks:
Grab a banana and an electric drill, and enjoy!
Posted by Zach at October 6th, 2008
Spotlight has a glut of nice features, but it still doesn’t satisfy me. I have nearly 2 million files on my hard drive. Depending on what I’m working on (and my caffeine-to-blood ratio), hundreds of files may be updated every minute. Then Spotlight tries to index the drive at inopportune moments, then Ableton Live can’t access files because the drive is busy, and the music grinds to a halt, and …. well, I had to take Spotlight behind the shed, and put it down.
There are many ways to disable Spotlight. I don’t remember which combination worked for me, but the end result is that mdutil doesn’t run on this machine anymore, and my menu bar is devoid of a Spotlight icon. (Also I disabled Quick Look, since its indexing also caused problems.)
But I still want to search my files. My solution was to create an automated job that runs once a day, and saves the path of every file into a big text document. Then I created a little command-line alias called search, which prints any file paths that match a search term. Here’s how to do it:
Posted by Zach at July 19th, 2008
OpenMoko is a flavor of Linux for cell phones. It’s also a UI nightmare for end users. Witness these videos:
OpenMoko Train Wreck from Dave Fayram on Vimeo.
More OpenMoko Train Wrecking (Now with Qt!) from Dave Fayram on Vimeo.
There’s a ton of literature describing best development practices out there. But I think case studies of failure, or good intentions gone horribly awry, are just as important. It’s essential to recognize what not to do. I still regard The Daily WTF as a learning resource, full of cautionary (and hilarious) case studies.
Also, there are no “________-killers,” but that’s a subject for a different day.
Posted by Zach at July 12th, 2008
Make sure you grab a weapon in room #2, so you can shoot the orcs. Currently, there are 9 rooms for romping.
Not one pixel of the art should be considered “final”. Most sprites & tiles have a ColorMatrixFilter that “skins” them with four particular colors (see my post detailing this technique). In some respects, this is wonderful, as the colors can be randomized, and it’s easy to change the palette of an entire room. Unfortunately, to maintain retro look & feel, I chose the Atari 2600 palette. The dark colors are over-saturated, the pastels are unexciting, and the hue distribution is completely wrong (nearly half the colors could be considered “green”). This will be dealt with.
An earlier screenshot shows some vector art. Unfortunately, the vectors currently require Flash 10. I’ve disabled this feature… for now.
Posted by Zach at July 3rd, 2008
Pixen is poised to become the reigning champ of OS X pixel editors. It supports layers, tablet pressure, and animation. But Pixen has a bug that interrupts my creative flow — if I tap a palette color using my Wacom tablet, it always highlights the color, but usually fails to apply the color. What the…?!
Fortunately, the developers made the source code available. I had almost zero Cocoa experience before opening the source, yet the code was well-organized, and I was able to fix the bug!
Posted by Zach at June 15th, 2008
Due to factors beyond our control, FashionBuddha and myself have removed the “glitch” effects from horaciosalinas.net. It’s sad, but these things do happen. It’s still a great site.
You can see the glitch-enabled version here: http://www.fashionbuddha.com/horaciosalinas/
Posted by Zach at June 1st, 2008
AI for Game Developers has a chapter on flocking, and I thought I’d try it:
Click to play! It’s not polished, but it lets you explore different flocking behaviors. Here’s what the controls do:
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