“Yes!” – I shouted when a metal joist cut the head of a princess. Finally, I completed the last level. The birds are singing. The grasshoppers are chirping. That’s romantics.
If you are lazy to press keys on the keyboard this weekend, “Crush the Castle” will be the perfect choice for you. The game is controlled by the left mouse button or a space key. You can eat chips using one hand and attack castles by catapult using the other one. You don’t even need to move the mouse unless you decide to change the thrown stones.
I totally don’t support wars and aggression, but “Crush the Castle” is no more cruel than chess. Just it is not strategic, but physics-based. One or three stones are thrown by some direction to a castle depending on a chosen moment. The castle itself is nothing else than a framework built out of three types of bricks. The wooden joists are easiest to throw down, stone-based ones are heavier, and the metal joists are the most stable and it’s most difficult to move them.
The game consists of 24 levels. The purpose of each of them is to throw down all the figures of people in the castle. The completions of levels are saved in the servers of the game by IP or other computer parameters. So the next time you open the game, you can continue playing. When you complete all the levels prepared by the game creators, you can crush the castles of other players. For example, you can copy the following noodle, go to BUILD YOUR OWN -> LOAD, paste, and try to crush my building in one or more shots:
If you feel emptiness in your imagination and are hungry for inspiration, you should certainly try playing Scarygirl tonight before sleep. Lively and vivid psychedelic world of Scarygirl carries you to an alternative reality with its own truths and rules like in a lucid dream. But when you look deeper, you’ll notice that you are experiencing the reflection of the world we live in.
The game was programmed by the company “Touch My Pixel” whereas the characters of Scarygirl and her world were created by an illustrator and a designer of collectible souvenir toys Nathan Jurevicius from Australia. He was also the art director while developing the game. I’ve memorized his Lithuanian name since Pictopia festival. Being curious I contacted him to ask some questions about the game and his Baltic heritage.
Archatas: I noticed your name among the participants in Pictopia Festival in Berlin. Were you visiting the festival?
Nathan: I spoke at the previous festival in Berlin and was invited back to speak at the most recent Pictopia but had to pull out due to last minute issues. I very much enjoyed the time I spent there a couple of years ago.
Archatas: You presented animation for Canadian MTV called MTV Fauna there. Are there any links on the web where visitors of my blog could watch that?
Archatas:How come your name is Lithuanian although you yourself are from Australia?
Nathan: My father is Lithuanian and his parents were Latvian and Lithuanian (but my father only speaks Latvian). Unfortunately I can only speak English.
Archatas: How did you start your interesting work with character design, vinyl toys, and animation?
Nathan: I graduated from University in 1995 and went straight into freelance illustration. I was mainly an editorial illustrator for books and magazines. I was lucky enough to get into multimedia after winning a design competition and started producing mini games and tiny animated flash spots (but I don’t do any animation now). About 8 years ago I was contacted by a Hong Kong design firm and asked if I wanted to design toys with them – it was all very quick and exciting.
Archatas: So how old are you now?
Nathan: I just turned 36.
Archatas: What inspired you? I see some East Asian influence in your works. Is it Manga?
Nathan: I’m very inspired by travel, my kids, Lithuanian/Latvian folklore, museums.
Archatas: Have you been in Lithuania or Latvia yourself?
Nathan: Unfortunately not. One day I’d like to visit and maybe do a museum show or something big.
Archatas: Do you have a blog?
Nathan: No – currently I’m redesigning my personal site though my www.scarygirl.com site keeps me busy.
Archatas: I tried the game recently. And it looks wonderful. At the first sight, Scarygirl looks like an easy game for small kids. But some parts of it are really difficult to manage. I got stuck at the sixth level at jumping on mushrooms. Have you completed (playing) the game yourself?
Nathan: It’s meant to be a simple game in the sense of the structure but it gets more challenging as the game continues. It’s for all ages. I have completed it a few times but it took a long while!
Archatas: How old is Scarygirl as a project/brand? How long did it take to create the game?
Nathan: The concept goes back to 2000 with the brand first emerging on a small scale in 2001. It really took off in about 2003. The game took about 1 and half years part time to make (I was the only illustrator and there were just 2 programmers, one animator and a producer to keep us all in check).
Archatas: Do you create both 2D and 3D works, or are there some technical drawers in your team who create 3D models out of hand-drawn characters?
Nathan: I just do 2D work but design a lot of characters to work in 3D by creating the turnarounds for the 3D modelers.
Archatas: I’ve heard there is an illustrated novel about Scarygirl. Will the book also be published in Lithuanian?
Nathan: There will be a graphic novel released in October 2009 (over 100 pages). It’s all wordless except for an interview in the middle of the book. I’m sure it will get to Lithuania. The Australia publisher is Allen and Unwin.
Archatas: What video games did you play when you were a child? Do you still like gaming? What’s your favorite genre?
Nathan: When I was really young the only games we had were Pong. But as I got older I enjoyed playing Mario Bros. I enjoying gaming a lot but don’t have a lot of time. I own a copy of Fallout 3 and have just bought Little Big Planet which I’m really loving. I suppose I like games where there’s a lot to investigate like Warcraft – but I’m also a fan of platformers.
Archatas: What software do you use? Do you draw on paper at first and then scan it, or do you use a computer drawing tablets?
Nathan: I always draw on paper first. If I’m doing an art show it’s watercolour, ink and paint but if it’s for multimedia I’ll scan the pencil in and use illustrator and photoshop. I use a mouse for everything!
Archatas: I’ve read that you are working on a new project called Pelėda. Is it a sequel of Scarygirl or a completely different brand?
Nathan: Actually, Peleda is a series of plastic windup owls I created for a company in the US. I wanted to do something that related back to my fathers culture.
Archatas: Now I remembered. I saw those Peleda figures in “Haus der Kulturen der Welt” and that made me really surprised.
Archatas: What I really like is that each of your characters has his/her background story and character features. They are kinda psychological. Do you imagine real people when creating animal characters? There is one character in MTV Fauna called Nathn. Is it somehow related to you?
Nathan: Yes, often I create characters with my friends or people I know in mind. All the MTV Fauna characters were named after various people who worked on the project (just jumbled their names). In relation to the Scarygirl characters I see myself as being a bit like Blister (the giant octopus).
Archatas: Thanks for the interview. It was nice to talk to you. I’ll put your novel on my wish list
Those who are interested in the process of character creation by Nathan Jurevicius might check the video, I found on Youtube. And those who want to experience varying gameplays, minigames, rich and imaginative graphics, and mysterious music, can play Scarygirl at the official site.
Suddenly after one travel, I went with Tomas almost spontaneously to Hannover to look around at “CeBIT” – the fair of information technologies. The technologies didn’t go much further than I saw two years ago. But I took a chance to find how things work.
It was not that amazing to see phlegmatic robots recognizing objects and putting them into boxes as well as others talking with the spectators about the objects. The direction of technologies is clear – robots will help us in daily life some day in the future. A lot of science fiction movies have already shown that as well as different possible drawbacks of robotization. Actually, I don’t expect robots to be used massively in daily life in the next five years, because their current speed is kinda bad joke. Robots associate with Bender.
“T-Mobile” have been surprising me for a while by using multi-touch-screen systems in their stands. Once I saw a long black wall at “IFA” in Berlin, where white texts of different sizes as well as windows with images were flowing from right to left and reacted to the touches of the passers. You could read some advertising texts, watch music videos, or subscribe for newsletters in the windows. Using two fingers, you could move, rotate, zoom-in till one meter diagonal and -out till shrinking and disappearing. This time the multi-touch screen in “CeBIT” was integrated on a table and imitated a lake. Each touch on the screen raised waves and frightened fishes swimming in the illusional water. The zoomable windows with advertising information were floating in the screen too. It was a nice effect perfect for advertising. I hope I’ll see more similar magic in the nearest future. They associate with “Easyweb” projections.
The company “Get Into the Game” let me try a 3D monitoriZ3D viewed through polarized glasses. The effect was the same as in the “3D Max” Cinema in Potsdamer Platz – the characters of a movie or a game as well as all other objects were seen in a space in front and behind the screen plane. The monitor is attached to NVidia or ATI graphic card by two cables. After installing special drivers, any modern game using DirectX might be played in three-dimensional space. The drivers split the camera point of view into two points for each eye. The 3D depth which is the distance from the view for the left eye and for the right eye, can be adjusted in configuration. Incorrect settings not fitting to the distance at which you are sitting from the monitor, makes the effect of flat bas-relief. The linear polarization (thin straight scratches on the glasses and the monitor) ensures that you’ll see horizontally produced view only by one eye whereas the vertically produced view by the other. The price of 3D monitor is about half thousand Euros. Additional glasses might be purchased for a couple of Euros. 3D monitors associate with “Unity” – the tool for game development.
The representatives of “Tobii” told me something about monitors with integrated sight detection system which are still not released for mass production. The similarity of costs was illustrated saying: “If you bought a car, you would spend as much money as for such a monitor”. The system is mostly devoted to disabled people. They could move a mouse just by eyes. Holding sight at a button for a few seconds triggers a pie showing progress which activates the button when completed. You can do some arithmetical calculations, browse the web, send emails, or play simple games using special applications with large buttons. The monitor is calibrated for each user in seconds. During the demonstration of functionality, a half-naked woman is shown to a spectator. In a few seconds the areas where it was watched mostly, are colored on a new layer. You can’t hide anything from computers anymore.. The primitively intuitive controls associate with the “Don’t Click” website.
Finally, here is the filmed material from Hannover:
Liudas induced. I thought a little bit. Just a little. And decided that I need. I need to publish the present progress of the game. When I am rich and famous, I will send a link to my grandchildren by telepathone as a joke so that they knew how everything had started. They’ll say: “Wooow, Grandpa! That’s a greatozer! Haven’t you really got any 4D games those times!?”
So I am producing an online Halma à la Chinese Checkers. Everything looks like this at the moment:
That pink wallpaper is not a design element, but a layout grid and all elements of the page should be aligned to it. The star of the original version of the game is like in this image (the row of the corner of the star consists of four balls), but the star of my game can theoretically be of any size.
The amount of boards will be limited. So:
The probability of several people playing at a board will be larger than of two players.
The system won’t use too many resources.
The player will feel like in an own inner circle.
I am just programming at the moment, but later I will need to integrate some design. I have an idea. Listen! Every board will be in a planet which is called the same as a capital of Europe, and you will see unique elements which identify the capital in the background, i.e.: Brandenburg Gate, Gediminas’ Castle, Eiffel Tower, Thames Gateway Bridge, and others. For example, the boards shown above will be presented as the planets of Madrid and Vatican respectively. The players will have avatars wearing cloths of the same color as their playing pieces. The avatars will stand in different sides of the planet. So the funny logical game will get the feature of identifying yourself as an avatar and also it will spread information about the identity of the city (and also country). I see a perfect medium for in-game advertising in my visions (i.e., posters in the city of the planet, special tees for avatars, or logos integrated into the background of the site).
Look, what prototype I scribbled:
I haven’t decided yet what is better – photorealism or symbolism. Do you have any ideas? Or would you like to create a professional page layout for the game site? Whereas I myself will devote all my power to the stability of functionality (with and without Javascript), the standards of semantics, the technical implementation of the graphical design, and additional features.
The tips by Juuso Hietalahti how to finish a game as soon as possible, made me feel guilty. I have been developing, finishing, and then reworking a simple online game already for a few years. And I still can’t make an end of it. But then it appears you should only follow 21 points to achieve the target. Damn! Instead of reading such lists, I should rather go programming..
Neverending Light is probably my first ever-played Flash adventure game of that high quality. It’s short, but worthy of great praise. There is a tour in dark dungeons. Suddenly excursionists are attacked by monsters.
I like a lot that player’s emotions are manipulated. In the beginning the main character is a part of community in a friendly atmosphere which is created by comic dialogues spiced by intimacy (the game was sound-recorded by 4 professional voice actors). Suddenly the main character is left alone in an unknown place, where monsters are getting out of dark corners. Fear, panic, and helplessness are created by twilight, limited visibility, and interjections. The mood is strengthened by lively animation and mysterious music with a tragic nuance. A little later while rescuing a friend, her moan creates pity, care, and determination. The script is well written. The control of intensity is well balanced.
The area of the game is seen from above. The movement of the avatar is controlled by arrow or AWSD keys. One can aim by the mouse cursor. While wandering in the dungeons, one can collect sprites of light for which biographies of the characters and a special deleted scene will be uncovered when the game is finished. After checking all the corners, I found just 44 sprites out of 49 what might mean that there are some hideouts. In addition, I like the menu function “Be Awesome!” very much!
The are some minuses too. The plot is lineal and the possibilities of web are not used at all, therefore you won’t want to replay the game when you complete it once.
Neverending Light is the first part of a trillogy. I’ll wait for the other ones.
Tonight after breakfast and dish washing for the whole last week, we are solving “Fantastic Contraption“.
This game reminds me programming as there is a problem for which one should create a solution using previous experience, imagination, and a limited set of components. You have to construct a machine in the light blue zone. The machine will carry a pink circle or rectangular to the pink goal zone. You can use three types of wheels (right, left, and unsure) and two types of sticks (tolerant and rigid) for constructions.
But then there is a level called “Four Balls” where you have to move even four pink balls where most of them even don’t get into the light blue zone for construction.
At first, I try to make a car which will collect the balls into a bucket and drag them to the final point.
But as that case didn’t work, I looked at the problem from a different angle and constructed a conveyor which carried the balls where they had to get.
Players can save their vehicles and send links to their friends, like here or there. It’s very interesting to analyze how simply or difficult the problems are solved by other people. Sometimes you can learn smart practices. That’s the same as learning from open-source code in programming.
The game has Web2.0 features. They are user-generated content and sharing with each other. In spite of sharing the solutions of the puzzles, players can also create their own levels and play levels created by others for 10 US dollars. By default there are 21 free levels where I still haven’t solved only the “Tube”.
The background music is somewhat simplified IDM. The graphics are like simplified Worms. So that’s nothing special. But the gameplay is unreal. Do it.
Tree years ago I wrote about thin games as a concept of web2.0 for games. Nowadays one of the most popular games of that type among my friends is Car Madness. That’s a racing game made by the Apps-o-rama company in the Facebook social network. The game uses no plugins, but the standard browser possibilities.
If you want to play “Car Madness”, you have to be a member of Facebook. The game is MMOG. Instead of forming a new social network from scratch, the creators use already existing communities of friends at Facebook. That’s useful for the both parties: the value of the social network is enhanced, and it’s easier to promote the project using the existing connections than in a separate website.
In the beginning a player gets some virtual money to purchase a car. Every car has three main parameters except the price. They are the power, traction, and aerodynamics. One can improve those parameters buying different upgrades for the car or a new car itself for the won money. While playing, racer’s level is increased and that influences the amount of the money you can get for the winning which you can spend for better and better car. The more you play, the more madness points you get. You can exchange the madness points for virtual money, an ability to race more than 25 times per day, or other goodies.
The one wins whose car parameters are higher. If they are about the same, the result will depend on randomness. Sometimes it’s worthy to use bad boys services like a potato to the opponent’s exhaust pipe, nails on the track, oil on the road, or a smoke bomb.
What is the business plan of the creators? They just make use of some percent of fanatics who buy madness units for real money (3 units for 2 US dollars; 150 units for 100 dollars) which can be later exchanged for game goodies.
If you are interested, here you are. And I am going out to Giedrius for some cocktails.
There is a story of the architect who designed a very spacious city park but did not put in any sidewalks. He was totally sure that they weren’t necessary. After a few months, people who used the park had worn down the grass, creating a number of distinct walking trails. The architect then proceeded to build sidewalks where the others had stepped.
Iteratively developed web projects are constantly updated. Sometimes the file structure has to be changed. Sometimes a new table is added to the database schema. Sometimes the data has to be massively changed. In a simpler case, HTML templates and style is changed. Usually, a more complex upgrade takes half an hour or even an hour, and the visitors should see “Under Construction” page instead of the normal site during the process, because the nobody should see broken view or corrupt data by accident while writing something to the database at that time.
A good practice for Apache web server users is to have a couple of configuration files which would be activated alternately, depending on whether the website is accessible to everyone, or is in the upgrade state. Once Tomas gave me an idea to create such configuration for the upgrade cases that others saw “Under Construction” page and I could browse the content and test if everything looks alright. So did I.
Apache lets you set the web server configuration on the directory level using .htaccess files. For the important projects I have files .htaccess_live and .htaccess_under_construction containing different settings in the root directory of the website. When I need to change the state, I copy the appropriate configuration to the .htaccess file:
cp .htaccess_under_construction .htaccess
or
cp .htaccess_live .htaccess
The content of the Apache configuration file .htaccess_live is something like this:
# index.html and index.php represents the directory by default
DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
# If the page was accessed by example.com, then redirect the request to www.example.com
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com$1 [R=301,L]
</ifmodule>
Whereas the content of .htaccess_under_construction is this:
# index.html and index.php represents the directory by default
DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
# If the page was accessed by example.com, then redirect the request to www.example.com
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com$1 [R=301,L]
# if the IP address of the visitor is not 1.2.3.4 and the requested directory is not media,
# then redirect the request to the file temporarily-offline.html
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_HOST} !^1\.2\.3\.4
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/temporary-offline\.html$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/media
RewriteRule .* /temporary-offline.html [R=302,L]
</ifmodule>
These configurations use the mod_rewrite module. RewriteCond defines the conditions which should be met to execute the redirect of request set by RewriteRule. The parameters in the brackets have the following meaning:
NC (no case) – use case insensitive comparison.
R=301 – redirect the request with code 301 “Moved Permanently”.
R=302 – redirect the request with code 302 “Moved Temporarily”.
L (last rule) – this is the last rule, so don’t execute the rest.
Now it’s clear how to technically set the temporary “Under Construction” view. The next thing, which seems quite important to me, is to show an appropriate temporary page. I personally like such error and system-message pages which describe the problem in a non-technical and visual way like twitter.com does, or the ones showing a video or something interactive to make me busy while the upgrade is being done.
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