//toolbox4u: games

Showing posts with label games. Show all posts

City In A Bottle

City In a Bottle is an interactive project bordering between art, science and games, a virtual ecosystem of plants and insects. The game world mechanics are based on the principles of emergence and evolution by natural selection. Complex social behaviour and new life forms will evolve by themselves as the game progresses. The game engine is an open source, cross-platform version of NodeBox optimized for hardware-accelerated image processing, "NodeBox for OpenGL" a NodeBox-spinoff.

It is a very interesting project developed in a small interdisciplinary team of artists, musicians and computer scientists:
Champ d'Action (Belgium-based ensemble for contemporary classical music). Scientific advisor is Johan Gielis (author of the superformula, first published in the March 2003 American Journal of Botany). People working on City In A Bottle: Nicolas Marinus (project manager), Ludivine Lechat (visual artist), Tim Vets (Champ d'Action, musician), Frederik De Bleser, Tom De Smedt. Via:Tim Vets

More about the project via Ludivine Lechat and some interesting parts from behind the scenes such as a background scenery trough the Procedural architecture.

A moodboard explaining the basic feel of the City In A Bottle environment.

The Portal 2 Underground Poster Kit

Beautiful artwork from the legendary game Portal 2 Underground as a poster kit includes one of each of the following posters: 1940s Aperture Signs, 1980s Boss Robot, 1980s Four Office, and 1870s Mannequin.
Available from est. 10/ 5 for $15 at Thinkgeek

7 ways games reward the brain

Tom Chatfield in TED talk proposes seven ideas for motivating and engaging people on the basis of observing many games’ stunning power as engines of human engagement. Games are perfectly tuned to dole out rewards that engage the brain and keep us questing for more.

Color Cycling with HTML5

2D pixel graphics of old are making a comeback thanks to mobile devices and web games. It is good time to reintroduce color cycling, using open web technologies like the HTML5 Canvas element. Joe Huckaby writes about his HTML5 rendered color cycling. Check the demo (Art by Mark Ferrari Code by Joseph Huckaby). It is an implementation of a full 8-bit color cycling engine, rendered into an HTML5 Canvas in real-time. Read also Josephs "Please, Somebody Make These Beautiful HTML5 Animations Into A Game" on gizmodo.com.au

Making Apps That Don’t Suck

"Mike Lee considers that a software engineer makes great applications not because he follows good rules but because he has a better way of looking at the world and he learns from experience", Via Qcon. Presented at the QCon London 2011 Conference.

GDC 2011's video talks

The GDC Vault service has debuted more free video talks from the 25th Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. You can find sponsored video lectures available in GDC 2011's 'free recordings' section. Photo: sesion: Video Games Turn 25: A Historical Perspective and Vision for the Future. Speaker: Satoru Iwata

3D API Molehill and Flash Player 11

On Sunday, February 27, Adobe provided general access to the beta-version of Molehill 3D API and Flash Player 11. Molehill uses GPU for rendering, allowing developers to achieve modern graphics in browser applications. You can download public builds, documentation, and Flex SDK from AIR and Flash Player Incubator on labs.adobe.com.

But to see the true value of these new technologies you need showcases. Alternativa LLC presents MAX Racer demo, built on proprietory Alternativa3D 8 graphics engine. First the video of this showcase was shown at Adobe MAX 2010. Info via: Flash and Flex Developer’s Magazine

Games and music

Saturday 19th February Mediamatic is organising the Opening Arcade Level 4: Handhelds, which introduces you to over 200 handhelds, and to a group of musicians who turned their Game Boys into musical instruments. See the source info at Mediamatic

Gaming the Classroom!

Lee Sheldon assistant professor of telecommunications at Indiana University format his multiplayer-game design course as a multiplayer-game, which increased significantly students level of engagement. According to Sheldon his students are "the gamer generation, they are the social-networking generation, so this class is couched in the terms that they understand." Lee Sheldon’s grading scheme is based on game scoring system; Experience Points, as in the World of Warcraft. I love the idea!
More info via: Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning

I have recently found an interesting contribution from Worcraft community regarding educational aspects of gaming on line: Gettin' Good Gear: Play, Pedagogy, and Engagement in World of Warcraft