Jordan Mechnar, creator of the classic Prince of Persia (which kick started the franchise), has published his old journals from back in the days when he was working on the original PoP game. They make for fantastic, nostalgic and insightful reading. Not only that, but he has also included original video footage which he shot of his brother running and diving around a park – footage which eventually became part of the digitised animations used in the game. Its incredibly strange after all these years to watch someone run around in real-life with those moves.

Reading these journals just makes me want to have some quality time to make a game.

(Thanks to Leila Johnston on Twitter (whose adventure book “Enemy of Chaos” I have just bought today) for tweeting about these journals, otherwise I might never have found them.)

Our game from over 3 years ago (wow) has been updated in the games page to now be compatible with Vista.  Still takes forever to load though, so be patient :)

Head on over to the Games download page to check it out.

“My God, its full of stars!”

Here’s a little screensaver I kind of accidentally made while coding a prototype game.  I’m still working on the game, I just thought this worked well as a nice serene screensaver.  I’ll hopefully update the screensaver in future to allow adjustable options.

A low quality preview is available at Youtube here.  Designed in the Microsoft XNA framework for Windows XP and Vista.

Requirements to run the screensaver:

.NET Framework 2.0
DirectX 9.0c (even if you have this, you may be missing files required for XNA)
XNA Runtimes 2.0

Download screensaver (.scr) here – Save to your Windows/System32 folder, then choose Stars as your active screensaver in Windows.  Enjoy :-)

“Because no one can save the universe…”

As I’m currently embarking on my literature review, I’ve been blazing through various conference and journal papers regarding different aspects of my PhD. Last night I came across a very enjoyable paper entitled “Game Over: Learning by Dying”, by Dimitri Grammenos, from the CHI 2008 proceedings. The paper presents “the world’s first universally inaccessible game (i.e. a game that can be played by no one)” and is intended as an educational tool for emphasising the importance of adhering to game design rules when designing and developing a game.

The game is designed around a reversal of the stereotypical Space Invaders scenario, whereby you assume the role of an alien at the top of the screen, defending the universe from the invaders at the bottom of the screen. Each level is designed to stress the importance of a fundamental game design guideline, with the guideline being displayed (along with some humourous quotes) at the end of each level.

The game has a very light hearted feel to it, but was evaluated by users to be a very useful educational tool for game designers. You can download the game at UA-Games and try it out for yourself. I found it to be pretty enjoyable, even though it was (not surprisingly) ridiculously unfair.

So I finally got around to putting a proper video up for Sky Surfer. It pretty much runs through most of the levels (except for the ones at the end which I can no longer finish since I’m rusty!). Check it out…

Edit: Just added a second shorter video.

Lostgarden.com has posted a great article entitled “How to bootstrap your indie art needs“. The article is rather inspiring, and gives some great points of advice:

• Build a game that fits your level of art skills – If you are a programmer and can only make squares, make a game that uses squares as graphics. It worked for Tetris and it can work for you.
• Use free graphics – There are thousands of game graphics out there on the web. Even if they aren’t the most attractive or original graphics, they can work for your game.
• Don’t hold your breath for an expert artist at no cost – No matter how much you ask or beg on forums for an artist to help you, this generally never works out.
• Pay for competent graphics – If you must have quality custom graphics, you are going to need to pay an artist real money to produce them. You can find some artists here: http://forums.indiegamer.com/forumdisplay.php?f=20

I particularly like the first point. There’s an increasing number of new games that don’t have traditionally fantastic graphics, and yet they still look amazing: Everyday Shooter, Geometry Wars and Every Extend Extra Extreme come to mind.

We all know (at least I hope so) that games aren’t just about the graphics, but they certainly do help improve the game’s appeal, as well as the player’s enjoyment of the game. Its a very interesting time for indie development, and with the right vision, your game can look fantastic, even if you aren’t the next Picasso.

Full article can be found here.