I spent part of today working through the setup for a Google Helpout. I possibly spent an inordinate amount of time designing the banner image… I don’t really know why. Anyway, it’s a thing I made. Here’s the current version:
Apparently you need to have an “intro video” to go along with the listing. We’ll see if I actually get to doing that.
**EDIT 10/23/2014** No I did not.
Just thought I’d mention that I gave the site a new coat of paint and laid out a framework for something I might actually enjoy maintaining. Cool stuff.
Being awake at around 3am, as I tend to be, I caught a glimpse of the blood moon last night. It seems I missed the eclipse itself though, so that’s lame. Here was my haphazardly taken cell phone picture with a tiny vibrancy boost from Photoshop.
I wonder what those two stars/planets nearby were?
Catastrophe at the zoo! A hat delivery truck has crashed into the zoo security building, freeing all of the animals and showering the area with hats, big and small.
Game View: 2D sidescrolling
Setup: Hats have fallen all over the zoo, landing on all sorts of animals and obscuring their vision. The animals are running blindly, and it is your job to guide them back into their pens using their specific abilities. Each animal you are given control of will run in a direction until they run into something, at which point they will turn around. There is only one button input and only one action per animal. Each level begins with a short animation of a hat of some kind falling on an animal, the animal freaking out, and then starting to travel in a direction.
Goal: Control an animal’s particular action to help guide it back into its pen.
Examples:
Game View: Presentation appears as a standard mobile internet messaging client with 2D graphics.
Setup: There is a contact list, a conversation list, and the actual chat interface. Each contact allows you to add as much information to them as you wish, including name, number, email, address, and misc. notes. Upon starting the game the player will begin receiving messages from new contacts to chat with. As they continue to chat with different contacts, they will be able to find out more about the world that these contacts live in and unravel a mystery that threatens the very fabric of modern society.
Goal: Uncover the mystery and reveal the truth to the world by meeting new contacts, probing them for information, social maneuvering, and careful attention to detail.
Moments:
– Collect an important detail and pass it along to the right contact
– Have a nice conversation with someone new, only to be assaulted with a rant from a crazy ex that holds useful information
– Various personalities from the honest and open to the paranoid and manipulative
In a time when robots had become as ubiquitous as the kitchen sink, it was commonplace for a person to use a robot for nearly every menial task. For decades robots served mankind, laboring unceasingly at their command. They never complained, never resisted, and never disobeyed. No population had been quicker to adopt this new lifestyle than those who filled the big bustling cities in the north.
In a quiet corner of a tired old neighborhood in the city, the elderly Mrs. Grita Reginald heaved herself against a large creaking wooden door. Every day she woefully noted that it had swelled with age and no longer fit quite right within its frame. She imagined it warped a little bit more every day and wondered what it might look like if she could have taken a picture of it every day and spliced them together into a silly little short film. She visualized the thick solid wood rippling like the surface of a river.
Grita hobbled through her front door. As she lifted off her coat and dusted off some pollen from the cuff of the left sleeve, she greeted her BOT-L3GG5 model assistance robot as it approached.
“Janet’s lost track of her bot again, Leggs.” Grita had long ago traded her robotic companion’s model number for a more affectionate appellation. “I don’t think anyone knows how long he’s been gone this time. Fortunately the neighbors gave me a buzz when they saw the garbage piling up outside her door. I suppose it’s a good thing I gave them my number…”
Leggs gently slid the front door shut and stepped over to take Grita’s coat.
“Do you think you could be a sweetheart and go after him just one more time?” She looked up at his back pleadingly as he swiveled away from the coat rack and back towards her. “I know you hate leaving me on my own, but it would do Janny a huge service, and, besides, you know she would do the same for us!”
Cryptic symbols and intermittent static flashed across Leggs’ chest for a few moments. As Leggs’ right hand made a subtle gesture and a twitch, a large green checkmark surrounded by a white circle suddenly popped onto the chest-mounted display accompanied by a pleasant “Ding”.
Xavier Shnaz has been charged with creating the new latest and greatest scent for his employer Proviscous, the premiere perfume and cologne producer in the western world. They want something new, something that emboldens the nostrils, something that makes every woman quiver and every man stand at attention. Using the standard palette of odorous ingredients, he has finely tuned a cornucopia of new and exciting scents, but his superiors were very specific in that they didn’t want him to use any of their existing ingredients in his new fragrances. Xavier has had the darndest time trying to find a way to recreate his scentual designs with new ingredients and it is now officially the last minute. He only has a few meager hours to come up with the scents of the century. As he sat down in his lab chair, defeated, beginning to contemplate his future in retail service, his eyes fell upon the office waste bin…
Game View: Undecided
Setup: Xavier can work at two stations in his fragrancery. At one is the bin containing random smelly objects and the Smellfactorus Centrifuge that can extract and combine the scents of multiple ingredients. Each object that can be taken out of the bin gives off one specific visual effect and/or particle that represents its scent. At the other station is the tray of Xavier’s grand designs. Each design represents its odor visually by giving off and/or displaying a combination of particles and effects. Each of these visual effects correspond to the scent of one specific ingredient in the design.
Goal: Recreate Xavier’s designs using the ingredients you can find in the, ahem, ingredient bin before his supervisor arrives to see his results.
Gameplay: Objects can only be pulled out of the bin at random, and once they are discarded they cannot be retrieved. You must move as quickly as possible to complete all of the designs required, so unintentionally tossing out needed ingredients can be detrimental to your progress. Some smell effects can be harder to identify than others and may be easily mistaken for others if moving too quickly through designs.
Howard and Harriet Uggs just had the best day of their lives and can’t help but feel like everything is going their way. They are so bursting with awesome fuzzies and desire for communal affection that they have been forced to go on a hug rampage. They’ve lost all inhibition. They are now hugging through the area with wreckless abandon, breaking and entering homes, disrupting businesses, and causing awkward situations everywhere they can reach.
Game View: Top down 2D
Setup: The two Uggs are trying to hug everyone in the area. When the level starts, they will walk around the area and attempt to hug any other people they can find. Each person in the level has a certain comfort level. The higher the comfort level, the more accepting they will be of Uggs hugs. Receiving an Uggs hug gradually decreases a person’s comfort level. When an Uggs hugs, their comfort level increases. If a person’s comfort is depleted they become agitated and push an Uggs away. Being pushed or bumped because of a push decreases a person’s comfort level, even the Uggs. You can increase the comfort level of people in the level by manipulating level objects.
Goal: Help the Uggs to satisfy their individual comfort levels by hugging others in the level and then finally hug each other without draining their own comfort levels.
Level Objects:
– Ice cream trucks that can be moved around road areas and increase the comfort in the area
– Obstacles that, when activated, block a path for the Uggs to reach each other again and have to be deactivated/cleared/circumvented
– Boxes of puppies that can be placed to temporarily increase the comfort in the area for a short time
– Dancing party robots that randomly travel around non-road areas increasing the comfort around them
Game View: 2D front facing view of a paddler on a canoe floating on the surface of water.
Setup: As you tilt accelerometers, the canoe leans in the same direction. When the canoe leans left or right the paddler starts paddling to move the canoe in that direction. Lean too strongly and the canoe will flip upside down, allowing for the same type of “lean to move” interaction but upside down. You can only stay upside-down for as long as the paddler can hold his breath, otherwise he will automatically flip back over. Strongly leaning in a direction again can flip the canoe right-side up again. Various objects fall from the sky from various angles, and float up towards the surface from under water. Some objects can damage your canoe or push it off course in a direction.
Goal: Catch as many objects as possible by allowing them to fall into the canoe or float up into it when upside-down.
Objects:
– A mine floats up from below, if caught it can be disarmed and disappear, if not it will remain floating on the surface armed and if it is hit by the canoe it will damage it and/or push it away
Game View: Two oval-like view ports show the same scene as if “through” eye holes.
Setup: Objects can be seen flying towards the player through the eye holes. Two buttons control the eyelids of the eyes. One controls the left, and one controls the right. When an eye blinks it “damages” objects visible in its view. Over time the images blur/distort/fog up. Both eyes must blink at the same time to clear this effect. When the effect is at a certain intensity no objects can be damaged.
Goal: Clear as many objects as possible without allowing them to hit you.
Progression:
– Super slow or fast motion mode
– Lots of objects
– Poked in the eye and one is temporarily out of commision
– Have to blink more often because blurry effect comes faster