Author: Anchel Labena

Categories
Stupid things University of North Texas

Don’t feed the squirrel! (Random blog post)

Sometimes random memories come back to my mind.

Today this funny (although worrying at first) situation passed through it.

I was in California with a group of Austrian students, on a trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco.

On our way to Santa Cruz we happened to find this spot to watch the sea lions, so we got out of the car… and we also saw some really cute squirrels!

Not the usual type of tree squirrel, but rather this kind that makes its home underground.

In any case, Peter, one of the Austrians, thought it would be fun to approach one of those. And so he did, he picked up a nut from the ground and went close to one:

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And he got closer….

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And then the squirrel decided that his finger might be tastier:

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Soon after we found the following sign. Wasn’t that ironic?

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Aaah… the cute little squirrels of California Smile

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Categories
Mr. Optimstic Videogames

Mr. Optimistic – Getting ready for primetime

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So it begins! The final two weeks before Mr. Optimistic is ready for showcasing!

And it’d better be ready, because by December 15th, at 3:00 PM we can have no excuses. The game MUST be finished by that time!

We’ve gone through lots of changes everywhere, we’ve had playtesters giving us their input (thanks to all of you for that!), added a lot of new graphics, new game mechanics, better level design…

We hope to be able to show you something very functional pretty soon!

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Categories
Mr. Optimstic Videogames

Playtest Mr. Optimistic!

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It’s all ready! The first level of our videogame Mr. Optimistic is good to go and you can now playtest it!

Don’t forget this is still a work in progress, so bugs might happen. We want you to try it out and give us feedback to improve the level (again, just the first level – the second one will play, but doesn’t fully work yet).

So give it a try and fill the survey afterwards! Thanks!

Categories
ITU Copenhagen Mr. Optimstic Videogames

Mr. Optimistic on video! Developer Diary

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Well, here’s my first attempt at making a video developer diary for Mr. Optimistic, the short videogame we are building among a group of four people for a university project and that has been explained previously. The video shows some very, very basic game mechanics (and a lot of physics problems that are shown on purpose in the video and are currently fixed).

Excuse me for my terrible English accent in the video (my accent gets worse when it’s late). Hope you enjoy it! Don’t forget the game will be available freely to download around December 15th!

Categories
ITU Copenhagen Mr. Optimstic Videogames

Mr. Optimistic Developer Diary – Level 1 takes shape

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Little by little our videogame Mr. Optimistic gets better! We now finally have the first level laid out in our game engine (we’re doing this with the free Unity Game Engine for those of you who want to know), and even though there’s lots of things to polish (both on the artistic side and on the physics and enemy behavior side) we’re happy with what we have so far.

But let me introduce the team first.

Mr. Optimistic is being made by four people working as a team. We liked to be called Games’Я’Us!

  • Casper Friis Farsøe is our main programmer in the group. He’s been working with the Unity Game Engine for a while now so he decided it would be best to work with it.
  • Isaac Lenhart is our artist. Most of the items you see in the picture above have been drawn by him, as well as the original Mr. Optimistic picture I posted here a few weeks ago.
  • Stine Hansen along with me, Anchel Labena, works as a level designer. We create the puzzles that will appear in the game as well as decide what each level will look like and how everything is laid out.

We will keep you updated with news on our little videogame!

Categories
ITU Copenhagen Videogames

Virtual ITU – my first short augmented reality game

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When our teacher Miguel Sicart asked all of our Game Design class to code each one of us our own videogame you could hear a general feeling of fright creeping into many of us.

Sure, we’re a game design class. We are meant to know at the very least the most simple basics of game programming. But then again a lot of us come from academic areas in which all we know about programming is that you have to type. A lot.

Now, taking all this into context and knowing that I had a month to A) Learn some very basics about programming, B) Learn how to use Adobe Flash CS5 (the language to use was optional) and C) Actually make the game, you will understand that my game is something incredibly small and, in my case, with little interactivity.

Instead I opted to make a game with a different kind of experience: you actually have to move around the IT University of Copenhagen physically in order to complete it.

For those of you who saw it back in May, you can think of Virtual ITU as the successor of my previous web-based game Código Pamplonix, with a much smaller scope but more interactivity.

In any case if you happen to be at the ITU right now you can give this game a try and provide some feedback.

 

LAUNCH VIRTUAL ITU