WASD: move
mouse: look
scroll: zoom
Space: Jump
n: next scene
p: previous scene

A mashup of 100 Free Assets by Blueberrysoft and Noisy Beetle by clyde.

I really enjoyed reading about the process of Noisy Beetle, that of making a series of
very deliberate and thoughtful formal experiments to see how the different
elements of the game interact with each other to form a whole. I went to school
for digital media art, but where I felt like the classes for more traditional
forms of media had exercises that let you practice these formal interactions
really closely, the program I was in didn't really have that level of rigor and
experience when it came to game development.

The unity asset store is a treasure trove, and I feel a particular
materialistic allure from the funny meeting of the val-u-store marketing and
toylike nature of individual assets on the asset store (Fantasy SFX Sample Pak
w/ 10 FREE WEAPONS). Importing and playing with free assets is fundamentally
satisfying, but if you arrange and select your assets in the way they want to
be arranged, you end up with a game that's, at best, as milquetoast as the
individual assets. 100 Free Assets felt like a very good experiment in
reappropriating and recontextualizing those assets in a way that resolved* them
somewhat. So I wanted to try doing that, but with more of a compartmental,
Noisy Beetle kind of way.

The scenes are presented in the order they were made. I think there's a sense
of progression among them. The car and mushroom skeleton, particularly, feel
clean and purposeful and intentional, although with the skeleton particularly
it feels like I found a few asset packs that fit together tonally and
thematically and made a scene with them, rather than working towards a more complete
resolution to the problem of assets, in general. But the idea of climbing on a big skeleton overgrown with mushrooms
was too delightful, and when I found that wonderful space within his ribs,
well, I couldn't resist. I'm not sorry, but I do think there's a lot more work to be done before I feel really comfortable using assets.

* By resolved, I'm referring to the process of removing the various tensions that one feels from these assets:
On a formal level, they have the quality of images cut out of a magazine: a skeleton with an attack animation
wants to have something to attack, a photorealistic rock wants to nestle alongside a HD river with bloom lighting.
There's a context that gets conspicuously cut when the assets live on their own.
And this also gives the assets a certain awkwardness, since they often
aren't created to live in any world in particular, or they're made with reference to some kind of amalgam of random artistic styles
the artist wanted to mimic, but they don't land in any in particular.

There's also a political dimension to this tension, since the ostensible
purpose of the asset store is to serve up *professional* assets. Assets that
look as if a professional made them, and they belong in a AAA game. The deal being, if you
use these assets your game can look like it's a professional game too. And
the games that are born out of this faustian bargain - you know the type, with
a 10,000 poly Dark Knight stomping around an empty field with cartoon goblins -
reveal, by turns, the optimistic dreams of some kid who Wants To Make Games
When He Grows Up, or the cynicism of someone taking a pre-built infinite runner
and hacking in a different player model, or the narcissism of a
3-idea-guy-and-one-programmer team's kickstarter ($10 pledged of $500,000)
who've got the next big MMORPG in the making. So this particular aesthetic
becomes a synecdoche for the whole fucked up relationship between individual gamers and
the multi billion dollar video game industry, with all the implications that that conjures up.

So, I know of two strategies to resolve this tension. The first is to simply
find the right assets that go together, polish up the gameplay, and make a
convincing fantasy that can hide the political dimensions of the relationship
between the game maker, the asset store, and the games industry. The other is
the strategy of the collage artist: to combine the elements in such a way that
their original purpose is subverted or obliterated. And there's a lot of ways
of achieving that: through punning recontextualization of the images, or
intentionally ruining the high quality assets, or using the objects such that
they're reduced to their formal qualities, or using the objects in such a way
that you create an aesthetic of ugliness, or whatever. 100 Free Assets makes
some good moves in that direction, THE ARCHICTECTURAL BODY AUTOMOBILISATION KIT
is another good one, and oikospiel looks promising, though I haven't played it
yet, but I think for the true masters you have to look back to Hannah Hoch or
Rauschenberg, and go from there.

Hey guys, it's been a (big) while since i was gone due to a mass of projects i had to do.
After i know the success of Mr. Cat 3, i planned yet another sequel of the series, and it's going to be more tense than you think.
The sequel will be named: Metal Gear Meow: The Mices of Fate...no it won't be another spin-off.
As i was going to say, it's based off Metal Gear Solid, and i might be going to add text to speech voices, just to feel like it.

For now, here's a screenshot above.

So there’s been some interesting things going on in GT recently. There’s been a good handful of new people, most of which have already submitted some interesting games. It’s quite a nice thing to see GT look really alive and popular but then again it’s sort of disheartening when you realize that its mainly just the new users that are submitting things for the most part. As well as the new users we also have a lovely new influx of spambots coming in, with some interesting messages. (SpamJam The Secondth time methinks...)

I think the one user that’s been the most interesting so far has to be DrBlowhole20. They’ve recently submitted The Super Mozart Adventure Game which is possibly the longest game that’s ever been uploaded here (then again, I don’t know.) And already, just a few days later, They’re making a bunch of blog posts about the sequel, sharing details about what’s gonna be in it and such. While they aren’t doing that, he’s cooking up an idea for a sister site to GT, called Glorious Planewrecks. According to DB20, it’s meant as a site for music, sprites and other misc. game things like that. I’m personally against the idea of it really, as it just seems like it’d be a waste of money more than anything because of the existence of places like OpenGameArt.

They’ve also created a couple of events on the site, one being a collaborative one and the other just being a kind of generic one. The collaborative event relates to a new game they seem to be working on, entitled “The Player Aventur”. The base idea for it is that everyone submits a level of sorts for it and then they compile them all together. The main rule being that you have to use a specific character as the PC. The other (to be truthful, restrictive) rule is that it has to be made in a Clickteam product. Primarily so DB can actually shove all the levels together in one big game. I’m not entirely too sure about the user base of this site but I’m pretty sure that a good chunk have moved on from Clickteam things, or they’re migrating to something else. Even so, it seems like a neat thing and I wish them the best of luck with it all.

The other event is another “Video Game Generator” type event, but this time the one he posted with was actually with a different generator. I honestly have not seen this one before so it seems pretty interesting. As well as those two events, we have the upcoming KOTM, where we’ll hopefully see a new game from good ol’ sergiocornaga.

Back to the interesting games that I mentioned earlier – Reha Soft, a new fellow to join up. They’ve pretty much submitted their entire Clickteam game catalogue, including stuff they made when they were young. I’ve only played one of the quadrazillion games they’ve uploaded, Zombie Town. It’s a simple little game where you control a man with the mouse, and “killing” all the zombies by putting t he man over the zombies. Level 2 mixes it up a bit by making you not touch the zombies. The problem is that you can literally just go up to the top of the screen and win easily. It’s only about four levels long and ridiculously simple and easy, yet, in true kid fashion, it was apparently made by a “company” and they asked for a donation for it if they liked it due to the fact that it supposedly took a long time to make. Bless. Oh, and before you go off to try it out, be warned that it’s packaged in a KNP Installer.

So yeah, everything in GT is going pretty nicely at the moment. It’s pretty active, thanks to the sudden influx of new users (where the heck did you guys come from anyway). I’d also like to bring up an idea that I had a little while back, GTVP. It’s slowly getting more and more unrealistic by the second, so I’m just thinking – if we’re gonna do it, we better do it now.

In other news, I’m currently (half sort of) working with mno on a new game. It’s totes gonna blow your mind (maybe). As well as that I’m looking into learning DarkBasic Pro cos that seems pretty damn neat (I’m annoyed by the lack of offline tutorials though). Well, considering I’ve pretty much covered everything that I’ve wanted to cover, I think that just about wraps it all up.

I’ll leave you with one word of advice: If I tell you that I might/will submit something to your event, don’t hold me to that.

Oh balls, that was more than one word.

If you've played Lesbian Spider Queens of Mars by Anna Anthropy, you might have wondered: what happens to the captured slaves when our dear Queen walks over them? The obvious answer is that they are abstracted away into a cage offscreen, instantaneously, in the manner of many videogames. The disobvious answer, I decided, is that the Queen uses her spider-venom to shrink them down to a portable size, so she can carry them around freely, as if they were mere diamond gems. This game is based on this assertion to some extent.

This was made under Ludum Dare conditions. I might submit this to that competition.

Also, this is based on a tweet.

Apparently I was up until about 2:00am whipping my code into shape just so I could share the introductory portions of Alien Zit 2000. I've been having a blast drawing and singing and playing the jaw harp.

Download the Alien Zit 2000 teaser! You may also want to peek inside the data directory for a special MP3 surprise.

Amazing WIZARD must collect POWER GEMS
To DEFEAT the dreadful
COUNT DVORAKLA and TROLLEN.

What DANGERS await you?
Ages 7+ and UP...

YOU HAVE TWO MORE WEEKS!

Almost nobody got anything done in time for this event, so I've moved the deadline up another two weeks. August 11th is the new deadline. Come on, I know you can do it! We are also looking to gauge interest in a "Warioware DIY" category.

Welcome to Action Point 2012! Action Point is the world's leading Klik & Play Online Demoscene Party.

[ Download the Invitation Demo! ]

For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, Action Point is a (semi-)yearly online demoparty in which we make Demos and Intros and Cracktros and anything else that involves pretty effects and ridiculous non-interactive visual absurdity in the medium of Klik & Play.

While the Demoscene's primary interest is technical ability with a high-gloss sheen of visual design and musical talent, take note that this is still Glorious Trainwrecks. Action Point is more than simply a celebration of elaborate event writing. It is also about creating unusual and unique visual/auditory art as well. What I'm trying to say is that while simulated 3D lighting effects in KnP are expected, waves of wiggling wizard clipart is also a desirable outcome.

OFFICIAL DEADLINES AND SUCH
This is an APPROXIMATELY-TWO-WEEK EVENT. That means you should start making a demo TODAY, and be here on SATURDAY JULY 28th, exactly one week to-the-second after this month's KOTM. Submit your demo(s) to this page at that time (or earlier if you can't make it). Also let's meet up on IRC and the MUMBLE SERVER because this is the release party. (Does anybody want to livestream the demos as they are posted? That would be pretty cool.)

One week later, at the same time of day, will be the AWARDS CEREMONY. Awards in a .gif format will (probably) be given to winners in a variety of mostly made-up categories. It's a silly tradition!

If you're looking for inspiration, take a look on Youtube for Atari ST, MSX, Amiga, and C64 demos, or check out the demos from previous years. And here's a demo made in PowerPoint! Yes, it was actually released at BreakPoint 2010. For real. And the prevalence of 64-bit Windows has officially made running Klik & Play demos just as difficult as running C64 demos. Yeah, just think about that for a while...

Good luck and make something crazy!

Attachment	Size
ActionPoint2012Intro.zip	669.43 KB

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Games made for Action Point 2012: Abort Retry Fail

GRUNCH your way through several levels of deadly spike.

Will Blue Man save the children

Use the sliders to change the shape's color to match the background. Color as many shapes as possible in three minutes!

Made for 1HGJ #225: Colors

Sources:
https://freesound.org/people/timgormly/sounds/181859/
https://freesound.org/people/timgormly/sounds/181858/