Critical Hit 2015: (un)done

Critical Hit 2015, the incubator for experimental wearable games that I’m currently taking part in, is still going strong. After Fruit Fever, we formed new teams to do our second big prototype. This time we wanted to do a theatrical experience with a non-linear story.

After the brainstorming, we came up with (un)done, a story about love and break-up. Two players face each other, wearing ponchos with strings dangling from them. When they tie a string together, they hear a positive memory from the couple’s relationship, like the first date or kiss, moving in together or getting a pet. When they open a knot instead, a sad memory will play: a fight, a thing they hate about each other or just drifting apart. By players tying und untying different strings (and with the help of a little randomness), the story that unfolds is always different.

Additionally, a woven screen on which generative art is projected separates the players from an audience. The more strings are tied, the more colorful and intricate the projected art becomes; when knots are opened, the projection is slowly erased again. In the end, the projection is blank again and nothing remains but the memory of what once was there.

This project was a lot of fun and very interesting. I never made a theatrical experience before – and additionally, I wanted to learn how to deal with electronics and soldering and expand my knowledge about the Arduino. Thanks to my team and all the helpful other participants and mentors at Critical Hit that was a big success!

And now I proudly present:

FullSizeRender2_400x313

Step in the shoes of a couple as they meet,
fall in love, fight, and fall apart again.

Embody a relationship as you tie and
untie yourself with the other player, in:

(un)done, an intimate non-linear audio game
made at Critical Hit 2015!

(un)done, an intimate non-linear audio game (Critical Hit 2015)

 

Credits:

This project was made possible through the Technoculture, Art and Games Research Center’s Critical Hit: Games Collaboratory and the support of Concordia University and Dawson College and financial contribution of the Ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur, de la Recherche, de la Science et de la Technologie.

Chimera Maker: What Has Science Done?!

After doing dailies a few weeks back, I’ve started working on my first bigger generative art project: A chimera generator which fits slices and parts of animals together collage-style. And now I’m finally done! I proudly present:

#031: Chimera Maker

Chimera Maker

Remember all those times when you
really needed a weird animal generated?

Now there’s an app for that!

Get it in the Android Play store for free!

Download it for Windows/Mac/Linux!

All generated pictures are licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Original picture credits:

031_chimera_maker_01     031_chimera_maker_02     031_chimera_maker_03

031_chimera_maker_04     031_chimera_maker_05     031_chimera_maker_06

031_chimera_maker_07     031_chimera_maker_08     031_chimera_maker_09

031_chimera_maker_10     031_chimera_maker_11     031_chimera_maker_12

031_chimera_maker_13     031_chimera_maker_14     031_chimera_maker_15

031_chimera_maker_16     031_chimera_maker_17     031_chimera_maker_18

031_chimera_maker_19     031_chimera_maker_20     031_chimera_maker_21

031_chimera_maker_22     031_chimera_maker_23     031_chimera_maker_24

Generative Art – Week 4

Four weeks ago, I started doing daily generative art Processing sketches – and now I am at the end of this fourth week. I’m glad I held on to the “do one sketch every day” mantra, even when I wasn’t feeling inspired – I made some pretty fun stuff this week. Alright, let’s dive right in!

#022: Tentapus Generator

That’s right – it has 10 legs, not 8! I really like how the legs always look so different. While generating, sometimes it almost looked like it was dancing. I might actually use this in a game one day – it certainly looks like it would be fun to play with.

s15_03_22_tentapus_generator_01      s15_03_22_tentapus_generator_02      s15_03_22_tentapus_generator_03

s15_03_22_tentapus_generator_04      s15_03_22_tentapus_generator_05      s15_03_22_tentapus_generator_06

Generative Art – Week 3

And thus, the third week ended. It had its hits and misses, but I learnt new stuff and I’m especially content with the three dailies at the end! And now, without any further ado:

#015: Probably a Metaphor for Something

On the other hand, maybe it isn’t. Let’s… let’s just skip this one, okay? I guess it’s safe to say that it didn’t go where I wanted it to go.

s15_03_15_probably_a_metapher_for_something_01

Generative Art – Week 2

And the second week is over! I had some interesting and diverse results this week. I’m especially fond of the Silk/LightWeaver and some of the results of Stormy Weather look very dynamic.

#008 – Silky Smoke

A variant of #006 (CircleTrails), inspired by this video where Casey Reas talks about the circle collision thing that #006 also uses, but with drawing lines between them. Silky Smoke works in a similar way, but isn’t about drawing a persistent picture and more about the movement created. It looks okay, but I have to admit that I was hoping for more.

s15_03_08_silky_smoke_1      s15_03_08_silky_smoke_2

s15_03_08_silky_smoke_3      s15_03_08_silky_smoke_4

Generative Art – Week 1

Hey! If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, by now you’ve probably noticed that (true to my tagline) I mostly post games that I make – but sometimes, it’s also other stuff. The “other stuff” might get a bit more company from now on! I’ve been getting into generative art, and I’ve decided to make one generative art sketch per day until I get bored with it. Every Sunday I’ll post the results of the week with screenshots, videos, executables for Windows and the processing source files. And if you’d rather see me making games, don’t worry – making interesting and potentially beautiful things with code will only help making my games look better. And now without further ado, I present to you week 1!

#001 – ShardSphere

First one in my daily series! Mostly inspired by Generative Art Chapter 5. I really like the beginning when it comes to life out of nowhere.

s15_03_01_shardsphere_1      s15_03_01_shardsphere_2

s15_03_01_shardsphere_3      s15_03_01_shardsphere_4

Master’s Thesis: Evaluating the Advantages of Physical and Digital Elements in Hybrid Tabletop Games

Preface

A few weeks ago, I finished my studies at the HTW Berlin in International Media and Computing with the defense following my master’s thesis. I thought that its content might be interesting to others on the internet too, but I understand that not everyone wants to read 100+ pages. For that reason, I am now writing this “too long; didn’t read” summary. It is also a lot more informally written. If you like what you read, you are quite welcome to read the longer version too! Here are the links:

Master’s Thesis

Source Code (open source, MIT license), Screenshots, Photos, Videos etc.

You can also read this summary as a PDF, but you would miss out on the videos.

Is it already too late? Nope. Time for a Best Of Ludum Dare 29!

Woah! Look at all those games!

Hey folks! So, this time I’ve only rated 82 games. Shame on my, I know – I’m busy with my Master’s Thesis, but apart from that, I really have no excuses. I didn’t think I’d actually get around to do a Best Of list this time, but since those games are just so incredibly great I’ve made one anyway now!

So here’s a list of the best and/or most interesting games I’ve played – and so should you, in my opinion! But hey, I know it’s only three days left, so just pick the cherries. (Hint: They are all cherries.)

press c to cat

A few weeks ago I visited the A MAZE./Berlin Festival. Apart from showing Catcher and talking to lots of other indie devs, I also visited the #weirdkids workshop on digital improvisation and made a weird glitch art thing with the base projects they gave us. Proudly presenting:

press c to cat

press c to cat screenshot

press c to cat
press d to dance
press f to frenzy!

(If you have epilepsy, don’t click on the following links!)

Start it right in your browser!

Download for
Windows / Linux / OS/X

press e to exhibit

When Fernando and Christoffer told me to give them a build after the workshop, I thought it would be shown in a presentation for a few seconds. Instead, I later found out that it was shown in the cellar exhibition. So cool!

press c to cat at the cellar exhibition!
press c to cat at the cellar exhibition!
A cute little explaination sign
A cute little explaination sign

press c to cat wasn’t made for long exhibitions at all though – the cats spawned automatically, but never despawned! So soon, it looked like this, with no cats recognizable anymore, haha.

Despawn? Ha! Nope.
Despawn? Ha! Nope.

press r to react

When I entered the exhibition space, there were lots of people sitting in a circle in front of the exhibits – and it turns out they all had wondered about this strange cat game that seemingly contained no cats, only glitchy geometry. I restarted it – and finally they saw the cat and went “Ooooh”, haha. It was awesome!

After the festival, I got some reviews on Twitter too:

Casual catting was epic!!- Ida Marie Toft

great stuff. i couldn’t stop catting…- Sabine Harrer

hold f for fanfiction!

Also, lying next to the monitor, I found the BEST THING EVER – a short fanfiction!

Fanfiction!
Fanfiction!

Responsible for this lovely work of poetry are Titouan Millet, Max Cahill and Michal Marcinkowski. The first piece of fanfiction I ever received! Thanks a lot, guys!

hold c to credit

  • Idea and messing with stuff: Tobias Wehrum
  • Music: Moritz Ufer
  • Aaaall of the other assets (and a lot of the code) is from the weirdkids workshop!

I’ve rated 140 games over at Ludum Dare 27. Time for a Best Of! (Part 3)

I’ve previously done two “Best of” lists of the games I enjoyed the most so far – you can find them here and here. I always planned to do this third part, but then life happened – and now at last, with one day of judging left, I present to you this final part!

So one last time, in no particular order, here are some more entries that I think nobody should miss out on!