A mechanical salmon as a symbol

Hello world!

It's been a while since the last time I did some pixel art... In the meanwhile I was concentrating on learning to use Unity and keep up with my schoolwork. However now ART is BACK (!) with the upcoming game jam organized by Le Monde (see http://playtime.blog.lemonde.fr/hits-playtime-3-continue/).
     I will be participating to this event together with my friends Boris (@Bobo_oh), Raymond (@SuperMouf), and my love, Glennie (@ORPH4NUS).

The story of the team and how we came up with its marvellous name is quite interesting... Raymond was the first to know about the event and immediately told Boris. They decided right away to make something for android, as we are all google fans around here.
     Then they eventually had an argument because Ray wanted to do something in 3D but Boris wanted to do something more oldschool, like, say, hardcoded in java and visually pixelated. They finally came up with the agreement that the game will be in pixelated 2D, at the price that there must be (a) salmon(s) in it. A pretty good deal if you ask me.
     Boris told me about the event and the salmon(s) during the next lesson. I was immediately integrating the team, as a coder and a pixel artist. Therefore I declared that if Raymond could have salmon(s) in the game project, well I wanted (a) robot(s)! If that's so, Boris also added a constraint: the game must end up fun but philosophical...
     A little while later, I told Glen about the game jam, and he decided to join the team as well. If he has to give any, he announced that his condition is "time"...


Why so many constraints before we even know the theme?

I actually don't think this kind of conditions are a restriction to imagination. I have two reasons:

•  First, they are not too precise. For example with the salmon thing, we can have just one salmon or a thousand, a salmon hero or just some random fish NPC in the background... In that case this is more of a suggestion that simulates imagination. It presents itself as a challenge: Can you integrate something that silly in your design and still make an awesome game out of it? Hell, yeah, I bet we can! Be prepared for something you never saw before ;p

•  Second, it gives everybody in the team a good hand on the end product. Maybe some of us are more imaginative than others, or some are better designers, or speak better... These little constraints give everybody the same great power to tell what is going to be in the game. Hence even if you didn't have that much inspiration on the moment or the other team members didn't adhere to your ideas, you can still be proud that the finished product integrates something you suggested!

After all these adventures, we eventually decided to marvellously name our team:

Salmons&&Robots

     The double '&' is there to reinforce the nerdiness of the entire team <3

Enough suspence, here are various stuff I created for our file:

Personalized avatars

Our team's avatar

   

Color study

Global Game Jam 2013 in Antwerp (Feedback)

Oookay! Before I forget everything about it, let's talk about this great experience i lived this weekend: the Global Game Jam 2013! (#GGJ2013)

The GGJ is happening all around the world at the same time, and I was myself in Antwerp, Belgium, to rock with my soulmate :D

Our game jam was organised by the game-making company GriN, who did an awesome job o/ We were around 70 and that's the coolest game jam I've participated in!

Note: Website of the game jam

1/ Cool people!

Find Boris

"This year was the biggest game jam we've made" say Wim Wouters, the CEO of GriN. It's not only about the number of people that were actually there, but also about the average skill and motivation of everybody.

There were a lot of pro, and I could even meet a teacher from DAE school, the famous Gamedev school in Belgium!

Anyway, I met a lot of cool people, and learned a lot. There was also people I begin to know well, like Boris Warembourg or Hannes Delbeke :-)

2/ Cool games!

You can check out the awesome games everybody made here!

Kingerdarten Killer Klub

Special mention for a few games that i like:
- The Living Game, a game that is evolving depending on how you like the auto-generated levels. I find the idea very cool, and also the old school 3/4 view sprites are awesome <3
- Ultimate Care Bear Love Rampage, which is just... wtf and epileptic-agressive. Another arcade game!
- Kindergarten Killer Klub, which team was full pro. A very well polished game with a fun concept and gameplay. The kind of game you would love to play online with your friends :)
- Flicker, an interesting game which plays with lights, made by these cool guys o/
- You Have One Minute To Save The World, as said, you have one minute to find and destroy the alien missile that will be launch in 1 minute to destroy the Earth... Intuitive gameplay!

3/ Cool tech!

During all weekend, there was cutting-edge devices in demonstration, like the IIID face scanner which makes a 3D model of your head when you stand inside for a few seconds. 

You can make crazy faces, print it with a 3D printer, and be proud of yourself

There was also homemade classy devices, like the 4-players coffee table (loved the design of the table (an old fashioned wooden table)) (video here), ooor the Winnitron!

THE Winnitron

It's a free Arcade that you can build yourself out of a computer and play cool games with! At least three of the game developed this weekend were playable on the Winnitron, including mine :D And it looks so good in its wooden cabin... Thanks Thomas and Hannes Deville for showing up this cool device!!!

Official website of Winnitron : http://winnitron.ca/

Website of Winnitron Belgium : http://www.winnitronbe.hannesdeville.be/

Video made during the game jam:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3gLDmCb7ias

4/ Cheerleaders!

Woohoo!

Oh did I mention? There were indeed cheerleaders giving a show in the middle of the game jam! And then they brought delicious muffins! It was really awesome and refreshing, nobody felt tired anymore after that :D  (And the muffins were really damn good) Thanks Wim!

[How to] Add your Twitter feed to your blog - Picture tutorial

Hello everyone!

As you may notice on the bottom right corner of the page, I added my Twitter feed to The rob Point ;-)
I spent quite a long time searching for a plugin, a lot of them didn't work for some reasons... Finally I discovered that I just had to use a plugin from my Twitter account, which is really easy to implement :D

So here you go, this is how we add a twitter feed to one's blog or website in three simple steps:
(note that this also works if you want to obtain the feed of a random other person on Twitter)


//1/ Create the widget in your Twitter account

To achieve that, just go to the "Edit profile" menu, and click on the "Widget" tab...

Then hit the "Create new" button!

//2/ Configuration

Enter the username of the person you want to follow the feed here, e.g. you if you want yours

If you want to add the widget to a banner or to the side of your page, I recommend you adjust its height. Note that the width is automatically adjusted

To suit your blog theme, it is a good idea to change the color of the links in the widget...

This step is a bit tricky if you're using a platform that adapt the url to the country of the reader (like me). In that case, you should put various urls like in the example, or the widget won't work in the excluded countries. I didn't found a better way to do it until now...

Don't forget to save. You will be able to edit these properties at anytime. ;-)

//3/ Add the widget to your blog or website!

This step varies depending on your editing interface. I'll show it in pictures for blogger, but i think the steps are almost the same on every platform ;-)

Click on the widget's html code below the preview panel to select it, and copy it

Create a blank widget in your blog administration panel

Note: If you use brute html to modify your blog model, you can always copy the code straight in your html file and it will work anyway

Add the html code from your Twitter widget in your blog's blank widget :-)

Note: You don't have to add a title, because the widget already includes one, so it will look weird...

                                                 

And there you go! :D

This widget can take any width, so if you want you can also easily use it on a dedicated page, or on top (or bottom) of your page as a banner. You'll just have to put in the correct height in Twitter.

Note that if you want to modify your widget, the only way to do it is via your twitter account. The html code is only to get the widget configuration from Twitter.

I hope these helps some of you!

And... a very happy new year 2013, to all of you! ;-)