Happy New Year!

Post author By Anchel Labena
Post date December 31, 2010

It’s that time of the year again!

Champagne! Delicious meals! A never ending night!

Yes, it’s the beginning of a new year! 2010 is almost finished!

From here I want to wish you all a happy new 2011.

Some of you might have already seen me either in Madrid or in my hometown Ejea, visiting old friends (like Sarah Friedman and Javier Sanz) and family (hey, it’s Christmas, you gotta visit your family, right?).

Now however I’ll be spending the rest of these days in Jaca (in the North of Spain, for skiing) where I’ll also be doing, you guessed right, more visiting. And have fun, of course. I’m getting used to this routine of visiting, visiting and more visiting every end-of-year holidays. It comes with studying abroad I guess.

For those in Copenhagen I will be back on January 11th, getting ready for my Game Design oral exam.

Quite a busy schedule as you can see, but having fun nonetheless.

Once again, have a good start for the upcoming 2011 and make sure you keep your new year’s resolutions Smile

Oh, and thanks to my cousin Laura (on my left) for the cool cousin’s picture from last Christmas Eve Open-mouthed smile

Mr. Optimistic is released!

Post author By Anchel Labena
Post date December 20, 2010

Well, it was actually finished about five days ago, but to tell the truth I had been busy with several other things until now that I’m finally home.

In any case, here it is! Our first group videogame at the IT University of Copenhagen, coming from Games’R’Us with Casper, Stine, Isaac and me!

Mr. Optimistic is an action-puzzle game in which the main character always walks forward. It is your job, as the player, to make sure that nothing gets in his way, removing harmful obstacles and covering gaps.

Go ahead and give it a try! Also don’t forget that the original purpose of this game is to fulfill the requirements needed for our Game Design course, which although they weren’t too strict, they needed to be met in a short time limit.

I would like to thank once more the entire Games’R’Us group, as well as all the testers who gave us their feedback (and helped improve many of the levels on time), and of course our partner group RoboMonkey, whose main character also makes a cameo appearance in our game.

Some weird bugs aside (which software developers will surely find from the get go) the game turned out fairly good, and we had some fun ourselves while making it (it’s funny how some of the most crazy ideas actually made it into the game).

So I will simply leave you all to try the game for yourselves.

You can play it online as long as you install the Unity Web Player (it’s a fast, quick and easy installation that doesn’t require much from the user) or download the install version. But for my blog I’m just going to leave the web version for the sake of simplicity.

Go ahead, give it a try!

Play Mr. Optimistic

General

Goodbye Copenhagen… until January

Post author By Anchel Labena
Post date December 17, 2010

It’s been a great semester full of surprises, amazing people and fun classes. But it’s time to go back home for the Christmas break, visit the family and party with friends from Spain.

And of course, visiting my friend Sarah from Los Angeles, who has spent an entire semester studying in Madrid and travelling all across Europe!

It’s going to be a busy schedule once in Spain with so many people I want to visit though…

Here’s hoping that the comeback to Copenhagen will be as great as the first!

Posted from WordPress for Windows Phone

General

Blogging… from the phone!

Post author By Anchel Labena
Post date December 16, 2010

Some of you already know how happy I am with my current phone (Samsung Omnia 7), and well, now I am even much more happy!

Starting today I have access to a new wonderful WordPress application for Windows Phone 7 that I hope will help me maintain the blog more frequently updated (something that is sorely needed).

This post is still nothing more than a test of this functionality, but later on I expect to be able to expand upon the idea of the “now playing at ITU” section through it.

What I plan on doing is to periodically add my personal comments on videogames I have been playing recently, both new and old, even some classics, with some… let’s say proffesional insights about them (taking into consideration that I do, after all, study videogame design).

Without further ado, I finish here my first post from a phone

More to come later, back in Spain for the Christmas holidays.

Posted from WordPress for Windows Phone

General blogging Internet and technology Me Stupid things

The amazing story of a weird UPS package

Post author By Anchel Labena
Post date December 14, 2010

Well… this is…. unexpected. And crazy. I’m utterly confused.

Let me explain this weird story in this entry. And please, read all of it to get the full effect.

A couple of days ago I received a small card from UPS in my mailbox. A letter that was, of course, in Danish (you can’t imagine how tired I get of this Danish mail). Good thing my friend (and Mr. Optimistic programmer) Casper was around to translate the letter for me.

Put simply, they had tried to deliver a package for me, but I wasn’t at home when they brought it and they needed me to sign the delivery form (mind the statement in bold). It asked me to phone them to schedule a new delivery.

My first reaction was of surprise. I wasn’t expecting any packages at all. Even more weird, who the heck knew my address in Denmark? I mean, I moved here not too long ago and it’s not like I have been giving out my home address away!

And so I phoned UPS Denmark. The guy who picked up took over 5 minutes to understand that I simply wanted to receive my package. He said it could be delivered the next day, but he couldn’t tell me an approximate time at all. Only that the package might arrive between 9 am and 7 pm. Great. So I would have to stay at home until they came to my house, not being able to go to university (then again I only had to polish some individual projects and I could do that at home).

Well, today I have been waiting for the package to arrive. So when at 2:30 pm I still hadn’t got anything, I decided to go to the UPS website and input the tracking number that came in the letter.

A couple of new surprises here:

1. The package was coming from the US (again, how the heck did anyone in the US get my mail address?)

2. The package was marked as…. ALREADY DELIVERED!

Alright, this is it. I’ve been waiting all morning for a package to arrive, only to find out that it has already been delivered to someone else? So if my signature was needed… how the heck did anyone else receive it?

I phoned UPS again. Gave them the tracking number. And the woman on the phone said… that it had been delivered to one of my neighbors.

Perfect. Just perfect. I started to knock on everyone’s doors around my building, looking like a fool asking for a package they had no idea about.

Until finally the girl living in front of my apartment told me she had it.

Please UPS, how can you deliver a package and give it to the wrong door! I mean, there’s only two doors per floor. Didn’t you even try to check if the name on the door was the right one?

Anyway, let’s check the package. I was all excited now with all it was taking me to get this unknown mystery package!

Here we go. The package is here. Doesn’t say who it is from in the box, it’s all neatly kept hidden under 7 layers of plastic. I don’t care right now. I just want to get the contents once and for all.

Trying to open it… What will there be inside? I swear, these packages are harder to open than a safe box! Almost cut myself with the scissors!

Here it is… I touch something soft inside. I grab and pull it out and I see…..

A t-shirt.

A grey, plain t-shirt. Nothing in the back, nothing in the front. Just that. One L-sized t-shirt (too big for me too!).

Okay… this has to be a joke. All this… FOR A T-SHIRT? And who the heck is sending me a t-shirt all the way from the United States?

Once again I return to the package and I try to tear out the 7 layers of plastic, trying to pull out the letter in which, I hope, it explains all this craziness.

And guess what? It got even more weird. Look at it yourself.

Microsoft.

Microsoft is sending me a plan grey oversized t-shirt all the way from the United States. In a package. Really?

More surprising even, the letter says that the item is to be sent to Anchel Labena…. in Texas!

Then I look at the item order on the bottom. “Bing gray V neck T-Shirt” it reads.

Bing? Really?

I immediately go back to the t-shirt and yes, effectively there it is, the Bing logo on the bottom.

I seriously want to bump my head against something hard. Something that tells me that this is just my imagination going wild.

Why Microsoft? Please, explain to me in some way or another why I am receiving a t-shirt too big for me all of a sudden, with no previous notice.

And how the heck did this t-shirt find its way all over from the US to Copenhagen? Especially when the letter inside says it was sent to Texas!

I mean, don’t take me wrong. Thank you Microsoft for sending me a free t-shirt.

But can you please give me an explanation for this?

I am baffled.

Mr. Optimstic Videogames

The Mr. Optimistic tutorial is out!

Post author By Anchel Labena
Post date December 7, 2010

So while you still cannot try the full game (patience, my friends), you can toy around with our tutorial, which will already let you get the feel of our grabbing mechanics.

Our tutorial is presented in-game as the introductory screen, along with the game’s title. That way we ensure that all players are able to understand the controls without having to go through lengthy explanations or delaying the fun for the player, since we designed this tutorial to be a place where players can spend several minutes having fun on their own.

In any case give us your feedback in the comments section. Soon you’ll get to see the entire game! Sit tight!