Game development and life.
Creation is the state of art.
Here’s another short Flash test I cooked up. What’s cool about this isn’t really what you see above. What’s cool is that it is only about 20 lines of code. It’s inspiring to see how it easy it is to make things in Flash. It’s great for creativity and prototyping small ideas.
I highly recommend learning it for game developers who want to experiment!
(Sorry, there is no button to stop the sound once it starts. You can refresh the page or navigate away to turn it off.)
I took the below photo at the Tokyo club ageHa a few weeks ago when I saw Q Entertainment produced Genki Rockets. There was this cool mesh LED screen in front of the DJ, who is dressed in a space suit, though you can’t see too well in my photo.
YouTube recently hosted a concert in Tokyo where Genki Rockets performed. Even if you don’t like upbeat house music I encourage you to check out the LED mesh. Being able to see through a screen was new to me and very cool. And who doesn’t love a spiffy astronaut suit?
I’ve been working with a local Tokyo-based artist, the awesome Kayo Hamada, on a secret Flash-based interactive project for a few months. It has been moving slowly but we recently hit a progress milestone and I wanted to share a tiny bit of teaser art work with you all.
The girl staring at you above is our main character. Her name is Violet.
I don’t want to reveal too much more at this point. Although we have plans drafted up for the theme and general layout of the story we’re taking a very creative and experimental approach to the development of the project. This is a labor of love – there is no money involved – which of course grants us that freedom.
This isn’t a videogame so I’m also taking this opportunity to use a different approach to fleshing out Violet’s story and world. My background in game development gives me the knowledge of how to produce a schedule of building out assets an code to finish the project on a specific time frame but I’m avoiding that in this early stage in the name of unlimited creative freedom.
Hamada-san and I just had a brainstorming meeting inside an Internet cafe in Shinjuku where we settled on a number of issues for the opening of the scenario.
I look forward to when we can share some more!
I’ve already discussed how much I like Wipeout’s graphic design and now the developers behind Wipeout HD have done an awesome job with the 3D design and technology for the recently released Wipeout HD. Not only does it look great, they’ve included a feature in the game that allows you to take “photos” of your favorite moments using many camera options such as simulated motion blur (see above).
Graphic design wise my favorite mode by far is called “zone”. It’s a gameplay mode that has been around in the Wipeout series for a while. The player’s ship gets faster and faster over time until it takes too much damage and eventually explodes. The player is scored based on how long they can survive.
The design aesthetic in the past for the zone mode was a sort of clean room filled with neon. It was definitely unique and visually pleasing. The new design for zone mode is even better though:
The colors and gradients of the world change as the player reaches new zones (i.e. faster speeds). I love how the entire look of the game is changed so drastically from a futuristic metropolis to an ultra-stylized world of gradients and silhouettes using the exact same level geometry. There aren’t many games that look like the screenshot above and it is refreshing to see Wipeout HD taking a new direction.
Just wanted to share a quick tip on how to use text based kaomoji on the iPhone (not the graphic based enmoji which still doesn’t work). If you type in “kaomoji” in hiragana, like so 「かおもじ」, and then press the “view more options” button you can see a list of face options to choose from.
I can’t confirm this for sure but after upgrading from 2.02 to 2.1 it seems that the list of built-in face options have increased significantly. Give it a shot!
Here’s a link to a great PC based kaomoji repository: kaomoji.com
And for my favorite kaomoji of all time (requires Japanese fonts to be installed):
且_（・_・ ）（ノ °０°）ノ～貝
I see this as a guy who receives a beer (face on left), drinks it, then goes bat shit insane and throws it in a drunken rage (face on right). We’ve all been there, right?
Recently I’ve received some e-mail about what the nuts and bolts are like when programming games in Japan. “Do you program in English? How are comments written? What are variable names like?” If you’ve ever wondered about this then read on.
Comments are written primarily in Japanese -well, of course! Most game programmers in Japan are Japanese so comments are written in their native tongue. That said, English does creep in from time to time especially because many technical words, function names, and abbreviations are based on English.
Variable names are not what an English speaker would choose – since variable names must be written in ASCII text there is a general inclination to write them using English words. That said, from what I’ve seen variable names are frequently in “Engrish” territory. Those variables usually aren’t too hard to understand though and can be a good laugh. Rarely I’ll see a variable name written in romanized Japanese. Something like “kirakira” in particle effect code. Kirakira is a Japanese sound word that means shiny or sparkling. The worst types are variable names that are based on Japanese acronyms written in English. They are pure gibberish to everyone but a native level Japanese speaker who also is accustomed to technical jargon. Luckily they have been fairly rare in my experience.
Communicating about complex technical challenges is hard for non-native speakers – my Japanese has improved significantly in the time I’ve been living in Tokyo. I can get through a lot of day to day conversations now, can read a respectable amount of frequently used Kanji, and do not feel like communicating about day-to-day tasks in a Japanese speaking environment is an insurmountable struggle. But describing something very technical is extremely difficult. Firstly because the vocabulary isn’t commonly used and secondly because it often involves a lot of math and descriptions of concepts that cannot be described well visually.
I was speaking to one of my foreign coworkers, a highly skilled artist, recently and described to him this challenge like so – “imagine trying to describe to one of your coworkers in Japanese what a normal map is and how to make one without being able to use a computer to visually show what you are explaining.” It is not easy.
If you want to succeed in the Japanese game industry working for a Japanese company I cannot stress enough that the most important thing is the ability to communicate effectively in Japanese.
For more general information on my experience of working at a Japanese game company please see my article at GameCareerGuide.
I’m starting a small project on my own time – more details at a later date – that is going to be Flash based. Since I don’t have previous Flash experience I’ve started digging into ActionScript programming a bit. I figured I might as well start posting some of the little toys I create during the learning process if they end up being at least remotely interesting. Expect these to get better over time!
First off I created a little mouse and rendering test. I saw a screenshot of something drawn with circles that was similar to this elsewhere on the web. I decided to copy it in Flash and unlike the black and white original image I saw I added a little flair by giving the surrounding circles a gradual gradient. Move the mouse around the window to move the gradient and circle rendering size.
Today I picked up a 16 GB Japanese iPhone. I wanted it for:
When I pulled it out of the box it is hard not to be wowed by the screen and interface. The pros of the iPhone are well documented on the web. Today I’m here to tell you what I’ve discovered, in less than 4 hours of owning an iPhone in Japan, what sucks about it. The hell of an iPhone in Japan:
I’m sure there are other hidden gems waiting for me to discover. I’m praying Apple will update their firmware to better serve the Japanese market. They also need to work with the other carriers besides SoftBank to treat e-mails that originate from the iPhone as cellphone e-mails. Honestly, most Japanese people I have spoken to who have an iPhone are bitching about more than singing its praises.
If anyone has any tips for getting around these messaging issues in particular please leave a comment!