To make your own Spore Apps start here. The quick reference sheet below lists all the web services and data available to you. Download our sample code and extend it to build your own apps.
They feature everything interesting possible: Flash, Processing, php, Mathematica, Python. Thanks for the hint.To get an idea of the applications able, look at the gallery. Somehow like social networking or web 2.0 for artificial creatures. More Spore on Digital Tools: experimental prototypes.
The NES-Emulator FCEUX got an interesting feature, that I did not seen anywhere else. With drag and drop you are able to move single objects and sprites where you want the to be. Oh lord! Never have to mess around with screaming nerves on that ugly unfair area, you are unable to solve – and you always loose all of your remaining lives. Want to get rid of this stinking enemy? Just throw that guy into the wall!
Somehow this feature also adds a layer of meta-gaming into the NES-games. Literally re-play your old and favourite games. Hm… like an level editor in the fly. Or new multiplayer-modes: one on mouse, the other on joypad/keyboard. Really interesting thing. Have to mess around with it.
via Superlevel, Retromag
UPDATE: Thanks Peter for putting the link to THAT one. The Open Emu looks like it wants to be the most sophisticated emulator around. Also with lots of experimental type of functionality, that will make exploring games fun. Just look at this screenie of the upcoming stuff:
Second reading tip on Wired today! An interesting about the Atari2600 hardware and hacking techniques, that the programmers used back in the days. Basically they had to use to the freely designed techniques, because the hardware had no frame-buffer. The programmers became “real-time riders of the videobeam”.
“The Atari VCS had a miniscule 128 bytes (that’s bytes) of RAM, not nearly enough for a frame buffer. So programmers had to generate graphics literally in real time, drawing on the screen as the television screen’s electron gun was passing over the tube.”
The article is wrapped around a new book from the MIT Media Lab, called “Racing the beam“, completely dedicated to the Atari 2600 hardware, written by media studies professors Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost.
More about this interesting technique and the book at Wired.
Done. Gave some credit to the designer of the “Twitter bird”. He sold this artwork via a stock-service (iStockphoto) for about 2 – 8 Dollars, Wired says. At least all legal.
Oxley at first did not even noticed, that his bird was used for Twitter – he got aware of it, as some staff member was asking him, if he can animate the bird. That was back in the days, when Twitter was not popular like today.
Oxley seems to be a fair kind of guy. He kindly asked, if they could gave him credit for the design at the webpage on Twitter. It did not happen. Still all is legal. He is fully aware of the things, that are happening. As asked, if he is happy with the situation or if he feels hurt, Simon Oxley said something beautiful:
“I believe a designer can only be ‘hurt’ when they stand in line – instead of constantly seeking new inspiration and producing new things with their ever-increasing experiences.”
And here is Simons Webpage: I do Kung Foo.
(via Wired)
Time to unveil some more of my activities, I am doing at the moment. Just right now I am planning with some upfront people a conference and festival for the “future of free licences”, called the Cologne Commons. Today we put up a first compilation of netmusic – just to give you a direction of what to expect (direct download .zip here). The festival will be held on the 12. – 13. June 2009 and feature speakers, panels and live-music as well. Website is in German (we work also on a little translation).
Well designed playfield in interesting colors.
Yesterday I found an old game, that I’ve played when I was a kid. In fact, it was the third computing-game I’ve ever played in my live. Back in the days I didn’t really got the gameplay, because the instructions were vague und the gameplay somehow complex (for the young boy, that I was). Nevertheless I remembered that ill colors and the cryptic gameplay years and years, but just could not remember the name of this game anymore. And since resources on the Commodore 16 are not that popular (all hail the C64), I had problems finding the name or asking someone, who could have known. Yesterday the day came. The name if the game is “Oblido” and the whole experience is just better than drugs. Game starts immediately.
Detail: This is you shooting and the enemies in the “Sin Bin”
You aim is to “sort tiles” into special fields. At the border enemies running around at random, some can shoot – you have to be careful with them. You can push the tiles against the enemies or shoot, in order to send them back to the “Sin Bin“. If you got hit by one enemy, you loose time. Precious time. Because you have to sort all tiles to the according place before time is running up. Most interestingly the game features various elements from different games, but mixes them all together in a great manner. You can sense elements from Pac Man (the enemies), Sokoban (pushing tiles around), even boardgames (the design of the play-field) or Boulderdash (your overall mission, time limit) etc…
I’ve played the game yesterday for hours (yes, the game is addictive, too) till I managed to finish the level. Well, and figured out, that there is more than only one level! This is where it gets really hard. Simply a great game, lost in the tunnel of time. If you got reading till here, I have something for you. Over at Commodore16.com you can play the game directly in the browser.
This game was published by Mastertronic, a company, that got lots of games on the market for cheap money. Most of the games from them were good, addictive, fair. No milestones, but just great small games. I recently took some inspiration from them for my own games I am writing at the moment over at scnclr.de. You can read more about the glory history of mastertronic at guter.
A fresh new Indie-Gamesstudio from Cologne (One More Games) released their first iPhone app, called Frankenface. It is more a toy than a game, and the idea is pretty simple, derived from childhood play-stuff: You take pictures of the people around you with you iPhone. Then you can mix the faces by changing eyes, nose and mouth of the individuals. Quite fun, especially your face will also be part of the game.
