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Welcome to getting started with HaxeFlixel. In 5 steps you will compile a "Hello World" project to flash.
If you are totally new to Haxe please go through the basics with the wonderful tutorials by Travis Faas at http://dustytome.net/haxeNmeIntro/intro.html.
Step 1. Install Haxe & NME
You can install Haxe & NME with native installers for Mac, Windows, and a bash script for Linux. We recommend you use the installers that are provided by HaxeNME.
When installing make sure you leave the defaults ticked to install all of Haxeflixel's dependencies.
Joshua Granick has created a Video of install NME from scratch on Linux, Mac and Windows.
Step 2. Install HaxeFlixel
The latest stable version HaxeFlixel is available on the official Haxelib system.
Using this tool to install Haxeflixel is a simple terminal command that works the same way on all platforms;
haxelib install flixel
Step 3. Create a Hello World Project
To create a Haxeflixel project Haxelib can help us here again. Make a new directory for your project and change into that new directory. Now you can type the following command to automatically generate all the files HaxeFlixel needs;
haxelib run flixel new -name "hello_world"
Notice all the template files for a new HaxeFlixel Project were automatically created in your folder.
Step 4. Write the Hello World Project
Inside the MenuState.hx file in the source folder you are going to add a FlxText object which will display the text "Hello World" by adding the following line in the create function;
add(new FlxText(0,0,100,"Hello World!"));
Your MenuState.hx create function should now look like this;
override public function create():Void { #if !neko FlxG.bgColor = 0xff131c1b; #else FlxG.bgColor = {rgb: 0x131c1b, a: 0xff}; #end FlxG.mouse.show(); //Say hello :) add(new FlxText(0,0,100,"Hello World!")); }override public function create():Void { #if !neko FlxG.bgColor = 0xff131c1b; #else FlxG.bgColor = {rgb: 0x131c1b, a: 0xff}; #end FlxG.mouse.show(); //Say hello :) add(new FlxText(0,0,100,"Hello World!")); }
Step 5. Compile Hello World
To compile Hello World run the following command from your project folder;
nme test flash
Haxe will now compile and you will get a nice "Hello World"
If you have any problems, please write a post in the help section of our forums.
One of the best things to do from here is to check out our Demos. All of the code for these demos and more is available on github at Beeblerox's Demo Repo.
If you are new to HaxePunk or just need some brushing up, this is the place to do it. Checkout the tutorials and example code to get a better idea of how HaxePunk works.
NME is an exciting cross-platform framework with support for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Flash and even HTML5.
External World Character Rigs. DOWNLOAD (20mb)
External World Character Rigs by David OReilly is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.Walt Disney 3d head (obj format). DOWNLOAD (4mb)
Walt Disney Heads by David OReilly is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Challenge: Can u create a video game about teen dating violence . . . without using violence ??? You have until June 1st, 2013 to show us that you can. How to Enter:
- Read the RULES.
- REGISTER online.
- ADD Jennifer Ann's Group's Google+ page for updates.
- SUBMIT your entry by June 1, 2013.
2013 Judges
Leigh Alexander is editor at large at industry news site Gamasutra, and is a regular columnist for Edge magazine, Vice Creators' Project, and Kotaku. She currently contributes features and cultural commentary on online culture and the interactive entertainment landscape to outlets including Polygon, Boing Boing and numerous others, and blogs infrequently at Sexy Videogameland. Dr. Erica Bowen is a Registered Forensic Psychologist with the Health Professions Council, a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society, and Reader in the Psychology of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) at Coventry University. Dr. Bowen is also the director of the Violence and Interpersonal Aggression (VIA) research group and the academic lead on the EU Daphne funded project "Changing Attitudes to Violence in Adolescence" (CAVA) which has developed "Green Acres High School," a video game used as part of a classroom curriculum to prevent violence in teenage relationships. Simon Carless is an EVP at UBM Tech, overseeing the Game Developers Conferences in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Germany, and China. He also oversees the double Webby award-winning Gamasutra website, and the Black Hat information security conferences. He has previously worked as a lead game designer at Kuju Entertainment, Eidos Interactive and Atari. Brian Crecente is a journalist and columnist, a founding editor and the News Editor for Polygon, he also writes Good Game, a weekly column internationally syndicated by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. The former Editor-In-Chief of Kotaku, Crecente was educated at the University of Maryland, College Park. He began his career as a journalist with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He covered crime and public safety for daily newspapers in Texas, Florida, and Colorado for 12 years before starting his career as a video game journalist. Crecente was named one of the 20 most influential people in the video game industry over the past 20 years by GamePro in 2009 and one of gaming's Top 50 journalists by Edge in 2006. He was featured in a 5280 biography. He has spoken at the Smithsonian, GDC, PAX and UCLA. Crecente is married and has one child. He is Jennifer Ann Crecente's uncle. Drew Crecente is founder and executive director of Jennifer Ann's Group. He is also the founder of L.I.V.E, an organization focusing on the impact of IPV (Intimate Partner Violence) on the practice of Law, and speaks about IPV, teen dating violence, and the use of video games for social change. His speaking engagements include the National Youth at Risk Conference, the Global Humanitarian Summit, Games for Health, and Games for Health Europe conferences. His efforts through Jennifer Ann's Group have been covered by NPR, HLN, Newsweek, APA Monitor, Gamasutra, and Wired. He is Jennifer Ann Crecente's father. Jane McGonigal, PhD is the New York Times bestselling author of Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World - and the inventor and co-founder of SuperBetter, a game that has helped more than 200,000 players tackle real-life health challenges such as depression, anxiety, chronic pain, and traumatic brain injury.
She has created and deployed award-winning games, sports, and secret missions in more than 30 countries on six continents. Some of the accolades she has received: "Top 100 Creative People in Business" (Fast Company), "20 Most Inspiring Women in the World" (Oprah Winfrey for O Magazine), "Top 35 innovators changing the world through technology" (MIT Technology Review), "Top 10 Innovators to Watch" (Business Week), and "Top 20 Breakthrough Ideas" (Harvard Business Review).Dr. Elizabeth L. Richeson is a Psychologist in El Paso, Texas, the head of the Advisory Board for Jennifer Ann's Group, and former president of the Texas Psychological Foundation. She is an expert on teen dating violence, appears regularly on news and talk shows, and lectures nationwide on a variety of issues related to teenagers, young adults, and relationships. She is Jennifer Ann Crecente's grandmother. Ben Sawyer is the co-founder of Digitalmill, a games consulting firm based in Portland, Maine. Since beginning his career in game development over ten years ago, he has pioneered major initiatives in the field of serious games and has become a nationally recognized leader within the games community. He is the co-founder of the Serious Games Initiative, a project of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and also co-founder of the Games for Health project which connects health professionals, researchers, and game developers in order to advance the development of health games and game technologies. The Games for Health project receives major funding from the Pioneer Portfolio, an initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Jo Sharpen is the manager of the Children and Young People's Project at AVA (Against Violence and Abuse) in the U.K. and wrote the national U.K. toolkit on children, young people and domestic violence for practitioners, Improving Safety, Reducing Harm, published by the Department of Health in 2009. She has also written numerous policy briefings, guidance and training packages on violence against women and girls; currently she is writing a book on domestic violence in teenage relationships. Elin Stebbins Waldal is a speaker; the award-winning author of Tornado Warning, A Memoir of Teen Dating Violence And Its Effect On A Woman's Life; and the founder of Girls kNOw More, an organization whose mission is to help build confidence in middle-school-age girls. She lives in Southern California with her husband, three children, and their family dog. What are the important dates for the video game design contest?
Who is eligible to compete?
At the time of entry you must be 13 years of age or older (void where prohibited). Officers, employees, and immediate family members of Jennifer Ann's Group are prohibited from entering the video game design contest.What technical requirements are there for the game?
All games must be designed and able to play using either Android 4.x or iOS 6.x.Judges include:
- Leigh Alexander, Gamasutra
- Dr. Erica Bowen, Coventry University
- Simon Carless, EVP, UBM Techweb's Game Network
- Brian Crecente, News Editor, Polygon
- Drew Crecente, Founder, Jennifer Ann's Group
- Jane McGonigal, PhD, Director of Game Research and Development, Institute for the Future
- Dr. E. L. Richeson, Clinical Psychologist
- Ben Sawyer, Co-founder Games for Health Project
- Jo Sharpen, Manager, Children and Young People's Project at AVA
- Elin Stebbins Waldal, Author, Tornado Warning, A Memoir of Teen Dating Violence And its Effect on a Woman's Life
Can I enter more than once?
Sorry, but no. Make sure and enter your best game because you only get one chance to enter each year!What criteria will be used for judging?
All games will be reviewed to ensure that they meet all contest requirements. Remember, the game must not involve any on-screen violence!Three (3) winning entries will then be chosen based on the following weighted criteria. (One (1) winning entry will be randomly drawn from the remaining non-winning entries for the "door prize" of $100.)
Education (40%)
The following are examples of educational value. How effective is the game at: increasing awareness about dating violence? communicating the prevalence of dating violence among non-married 11 through 24 year olds? providing examples of potentially abusive behavior? suggesting safety plans? offering advice to friends and family?
Entertainment (total of 60%)
Playability (20%) Re-Playability (15%) Ease of understanding game rules (5%) Innovative approach to game play design (10%) Graphics and music (10%)
What is the deadline to enter?
All entries must be received electronically by 11:59PM (Eastern), June 1st, 2013.Where can I learn more about Teen Dating Violence and discuss the contest?
Jennifer Ann's Group's Google+ page will keep you up to date on the latest news about the contest. Be sure to also check out our online resources about teen dating violence. Here are some links to more sites with info about dating violence.You may also want to play the winning video games from previous years:
How do I enter?
[return to top] Prizes
- Sign up via our 2013 game design challenge registration form.
- Follow Jennifer Ann's Group's Google+ page for up-to-date information about the contest.
- After registering, all entrants will receive a 400 x 200 image identifying Jennifer Ann's Group as the sponsor of the contest. This image must be placed on the game entry's splash screen with a link to Jennifer Ann's Group's video game page. [http://JenniferAnn.org/games.htm]
[return to top] Official Rules
- First Place: $5,000 $6,000
- Second Place: $500
- Third Place: $250
- Door Prize (selected at random from the non-winning entries): $100
- All entrants must be 13 years of age at the time of entry.
- Employees and representatives of Jennifer Ann's Group or any other sponsoring organizations are not eligible.
- Entries can only contain graphics or audio that the entrants have rights to use (e.g. works in the public domain; original creation by the entrant; rights granted by the rights owner).
- Entries cannot contain on-screen violent content or have a pervasive theme of violence and should be age-appropriate for ages 13 and up.
- Entries must be functionally error-free and ready to run "as-is."
- Entries cannot include branding for third-party organizations (text acknowledgements are acceptable). Jennifer Ann's Group will supply a 400x200 image that identifies them as the sponsor - this image will be placed on the entry's splash screen with a hyperlink to Jennifer Ann's Group's website at JenniferAnn.org/games.
- Entries must be playable using either:
— Android 4.x (Ice Cream Sandwich)
— iOS 6.x
— or HTML5 running in browsers compliant with these operating systems.- Jennifer Ann's Group and any other entity associated with this contest are not responsible for any lost or misdirected entries. All entries must be received by June 1, 2013 at 11:59PM (Eastern).
- As a condition of receiving their prize, winning entrants must assign non-exclusive, licensable but non-assignable rights to compiled, object, and source code, necessary media files and associated intellectual property rights of their winning entry to Jennifer Ann's Group for republishing, promotion, and internal use rights. The winning entrants will electronically provide these necessary rights and assets to be declared a winner and to facilitate Jennifer Ann Group's rights to publish, promote, and utilize their entry to promote and prevent Teen Dating Violence world wide.
- Winner Selection: Finalists will be chosen by the Selection Committee that will be comprised of a group of Video Game experts and Teen Dating Violence experts. Finalist selection will be based on the scoring criteria as set forth in the Scoring Criteria section (subject to change with public notice). Of the three finalists, one will be chosen by the Selection Committee as the First Place Prize Winner; one will be chosen as the Second Place Prize Winner; and one will be chosen as the Third Place Prize Winner. A "door prize" winner will then be randomly selected from those entries not chosen as winning entries.
- Scoring Criteria:
- Education (total of 40 pts)
- The following are examples of educational value. How effective is the game at:
- increasing awareness about dating violence?
- communicating the prevalence of dating violence among non-married 11 through 24 year olds?
- providing examples of potentially abusive behavior?
- suggesting safety plans?
- offering advice to friends and family?
- Entertainment (total of 60 pts)
- Playability (20 pts)
- Re-Playability (15 pts)
- Ease of understanding game rules (5 pts)
- Innovative approach to game play design (10 pts)
- Graphics and music (10 pts)
- BONUS (up to 20 pts):
- Interaction: up to 20 BONUS points will be added for the use of interactive elements (e.g. GPS; camera; motion sensors; voice; etc)
- In the event of a tie the game with the higher Education score will be declared the winning entry.
- Prizes: The First Place Winner will receive $5,000 $6,000 ("First Place Prize"). The Second Place Winner will receive $500 ("Second Place Prize"). The Third Place Winner will receive $250 ("Third Place Prize"). The "door prize" winner will receive the prize of $100. Entrants are responsible for any federal, state, and local tax consequences and for compliance with all governmental reporting and payment requirements. Winning funds will be sent in U.S. Dollars via cashier's check or via PayPal (at the option of the winners); please note that winners will be responsible for any fees assessed by PayPal if they prefer to receive their winnings via PayPal (there is no cost associated with receiving winnings via cashier's check). All entries must declare one recipient for funds in the registration process. Jennifer Ann's Group is not responsible for any prize rights that are claimed by those not listed as a recipient of funds during registration.
- General Rules: Prize winners will be required to sign and complete an Affidavit of Eligibility and a Liability and Publicity Release (where legally permissible) and return the signed documents within ten (10) days of receipt of attempted delivery, otherwise the Entrant may be forfeited and the Entrant with the next highest score will be selected.
In the event that a prize winner is under the age of 18, a parent or guardian will instead have to sign the Affidavit of Eligibility and the Liability and Publicity Release (where legally permissible). The prize winners will also electronically provide all source files and components necessary to re-create the winning game on another platform (e.g. tablet or phone) if Jennifer Ann's Group so decides. In addition, the prize winners give Jennifer Ann's Group the right to the Entrant's name, voice, picture, portrait and likeness for advertising and promotion purposes without further compensation, where permitted by law. These Official Rules and all matters related to the Contest will be governed by the laws of the State of Georgia, without regard to its conflict of laws principles.
- Limitation of liability:
The organization and its directors, officers, shareholders, employees, sponsors, affiliated partners, and promoting organizations involved in this contest shall have no liability and shall be held harmless by entrant, and any team members of entrant, for any damage, loss, or liability to person or property, due in whole or in part, directly or indirectly, by reason of entering the contest, the acceptance, possession, use, or misuse of any prize, or while preparing for, participating in, and/or, traveling to and from any contest-related activity.Any and all claims, judgments and awards shall be limited to actual out-of-pocket costs incurred, including costs associated with entering this Contest, but in no event, attorney's fees. Jennifer Ann's Group and its promotion and advertising agencies are not responsible for technical, hardware, software or telephone failures of any kind, lost or unavailable network connections, fraud, incomplete, garbled or delayed computer transmissions, whether caused by Jennifer Ann's Group, users or by any of the equipment or programming associated with or utilized in the Contest.
- Tampering:
[return to top]
If for any reason the Contest is not capable of running as planned, including infection by computer virus, bugs, tampering, unauthorized intervention, fraud, technical failures, or any other cause beyond the control of Jennifer Ann's Group that corrupts, impairs or affects the administration, security, fairness, integrity, or proper conduct of this Contest, Jennifer Ann's Group reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to cancel, terminate, modify, extend or suspend the Contest and/or prizes.Jennifer Ann's Group reserves the right to disqualify any individual who tampers with or in any way corrupts the entry process. Jennifer Ann's Group may prohibit an Entrant from participating in the Contest or winning a prize if, in Jennifer Ann's Group's sole discretion, they determine that said Entrant is attempting to undermine the legitimate operation of the Contest by cheating, hacking, deception, or other unfair practices or intending to annoy, abuse, threaten or harass any other entrants or Jennifer Ann's Group's representatives.
As game developers, we talk quite a bit about how we can build games that allow an author to express themselves more clearly. What about the flip side of the game equation? How can we build games that allow the player to express themselves in a rich and meaningful fashion?
Fifteen years before indie games gained traction, the buzzword for amateur game design, and PC games in general, was Shareware. In the early '90s, PCs were the realm of the tinkerer and the white-collar professional. Thanks to the crash of '84, they were also the only major outlet for North American game design.
Earlier this year, we brought you Neil de Grasse Tyson’s List of 8 (Free) Books Every Intelligent Person Should Read. The list generated a lot of buzz and debate. Indeed you, the readers, contributed 133 comments to the post, a record for us. Given your enthusiasm, you might want to check this out – a newly-discovered reading list from the man who mentored Tyson as a youth and laid the foundation for Tyson’s current role as public scientist/intellectual. Yes, we’re talking about Carl Sagan.
Last month, The Library of Congress acquired a collection of Carl Sagan’s papers, which included Sagan’s 1954 reading list from his undergrad days at The University of Chicago. There are some heady scientific texts here, to be sure. But also some great works from the Western philosophical and literary tradition. We’re talking Plato’s Republic, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, The Bible, Gide’s The Immoralist, and Huxley’s Young Archimedes. It’s just the kind of texts you’d expect a true humanist like Sagan — let alone a UChicago grad — to be fully immersed in.
If you want to participate in the same intellectual tradition, we suggest visiting our previous post, The Harvard Classics: A Free, Digital Collection, which puts 51 volumes of essential works right at your fingertips.
You can view Sagan’s list in a large format here.
via Brain Pickings
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Pixel Press is an iOS app that lets you draw your own video game (no code required!) and share it with others. Like what you see? Click here to learn more about our upcoming Kickstarter, where you will have the opportunity to pre-order Pixel Press. About Our Kickstarter Remember drawing video games as a kid?
The 11 games of the Competition of the 2nd Berlin International A MAZE. Indie Connect Festival is now complete. 11 games will be vying for the only category The Most Amazing Indie Game 2013. The following countries are participating in the Competition: Austria, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, Mexiko, the Netherlands and the USA.
Thatgamecompany co-founder Jenova Chen set out to create not only a new video game experience but a new emotional experience, with the multiple award-winning PlayStation hit Journey, he shared at GDC 2013.Courtesy of the GDC Vault, this free 60-minute lecture explored Chen's desire to make an online multiplayer different from his experiences with World of Warcraft. He wanted Journey to be genderless and ageless, with gameplay that was neither about achievements nor empowerment.
Prototyping for the emotional Journey actually began around its music. Chen said that he always does so because "music is the most effective and powerful medium that can create emotion."
Session Name: Designing Journey
Speaker(s): Jenova Chen
Company Name(s): thatgamecompany
Track / Format: Design
Overview: It took thatgamecompany three years to develop a two-hour long video game. Many high-level experimental ideas were tested and failed, and many lessons were learned during the design and production of the game. 12 months have passed since the game was launched, and we would like to share what we learned with you. This talk will give you the insight into the process thatgamecompany took to come up the original concept for Journey, how we polished and executed the design to realize an emotional arc, and most importantly, the difficult lessons we learned throughout the process.
About the GDC Vault In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent GDC events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers. Those who purchased All Access passes to events like GDC, GDC Europe, and GDC China already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscriptions via a GDC Vault inquiry form.Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company. More information on this option is available via an online demonstration, and interested parties can find out more here. In addition, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault admins.
Be sure to keep an eye on GDC Vault for even more new content, as GDC organizers will also archive videos, audio, and slides from other events like GDC China and GDC 2013. To stay abreast of all the latest updates to GDC Vault, be sure to check out the news feed on the official GDC website, or subscribe to updates via Twitter, Facebook, or RSS.
Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Tech.
Most of us would probably like to be citizen scientists, but we're too busy — and yet we sink billions of hours into social gaming. So some savvy researchers are harnessing our love of gaming, to help advance the goals of science, using thousands of brains to sort through data. Here are eight games you can play... for science.
Top image: The Robot Graveyard on Forgotten Island, via Citizen Sort
The idea of using games to conduct research is not new. One of the oldest research-oriented games, Foldit, has been online since 2008 — and has generated real, tangible results in the field of protein folding that could have applications in creating treatments for AIDS, cancer and Alzheimer’s Disease. The success of Foldit has spurred the development of a handful of other research-driven games.
It's actually surprising how few games have been developed — in comparison to the reams of academic publications on the idea, and the encouraging results from existing projects. You have to wonder where the bottleneck in production is occurring. Are scientists and game developers not linking up? Is the funding not there? Is using games for research stigmatized? Maybe we are just now getting to the point of having mature, social gaming platforms and the associated buy-in by researchers and the public. One good sign is that more universities are adding programs and curricula that marry science and gaming. This — along with two new games slated for release this year, Brain Flight and GeneRun — bring hope that games for scientific research might be picking up traction.
But while we're waiting for the next wave of games that blend science, technology and culture, here are some games you can play now to help advance scientific research. The projects in this list contain some identifiable element of gameplay, and don't include other crowd-sourced projects like Planet Hunters — which might be interesting, but aren't necessarily games.
Foldit is the granddaddy of crowd-sourced research games and has proven that games are a viable way to get results. Players were able to discover the structure of a monkey HIV virus, a problem that had stumped scientists for over ten years, in just ten days. The game itself is a 3D folding puzzle. Players are challenged to fold proteins into compact designs and are scored on various criteria like size and whether hydrophobic side chains are buried inside the structure. Players can work alone or with teams, to compete in puzzles and challenges.
In EteRNA, the goal is to coax RNA molecules into specified shapes. The player is presented a chain of circles representing nucleotides and has to swap their colors. Each color represents one of the four nucleobases that are the building blocks of RNA. Different bases create different bonds which dictate the shape of the RNA. To clear a level, the player has to recreate a given shape. Once the player has reached certain mastery they can play in the lab section of the game, where researchers challenge players mimic all new RNA shapes. These are shapes the researchers would like to learn to make in reality. The best designs are then synthesized in the lab and scored. EteRNA is a really slick game that is rewarding enough as a puzzle — but it's further enhanced with achievements and friendly competition.
EyeWire is attempting to map the brain, starting with the connections between retinal neurons. The actual gameplay is a cross between a hidden objects puzzle game and MS paint. An AI picks a neuron, and the player fills in the spots it could not identify. A 3D model of the player’s work is generated on the fly, as an additional tool for identifying neural paths.
If you like gem-swapping games, Phylo is for you. The science is well masked by its cool abstracted interface and swinging music. A player might not identify Phylo as anything more than a casual game. In actuality, though, the different colored squares represent DNA nucleotides, and the game is using human pattern recognition to perform multiple sequence alignment. The data used in the game has already been run through computer algorithms, so the human players are actually optimizing the computer's results.
The Cure is not a game to be taken lightly. It seems to require a great deal of time, research and effort. The user interface is also unintuitive. The game is working on developing a genomics-driven predictor of breast cancer prognosis. The mechanics are represented as a card game, in which the player tries to create the best hand. The hand is created by selecting cards that represent different genes. The hand is scored “by using the genes that you select to train machine learning algorithms to classify real biological samples. The better the genes reflect the phenotype, the better you will score in the game.”
The Citizen Sort website is a collection of three different games that are used to classify and characterize different animal species. The players are asked to determine various characteristics of animals in photos. Players don't need to know anything about each animal or what it is called, just use their powers of observation. This sorting allows researchers to identify and name the animals. These games are perfect for the budding naturalist. The interface and art style skew pretty young.
This website is a showcase for different games that were developed for the study of AIs. Playing the games doesn't let you participate directly in research, but the games are either creating large data sets for research or generating recommendations that inform the next iteration of the game and the subsequently improved AI. A disturbing thought when it comes to the game NERO, which is about training networked robotic armies.
This intriguing game isn’t out yet, but is set to launch in Spring 2013. Brain Flight is another game with the ambition of mapping the brain. Details about the actual gameplay are scant, but it does seem to involve soaring through a 3D model of a mouse brain. It is worth keeping an eye on.
Bonus
This game isn’t about science per se, but it's worth mentioning as a research game. The project has several rapid-fire games, that center around tagging pieces of art and ultimately creating metadata for the objects. Potentially fun and interesting for the art lover.
Top Image Neurons Traced by Daniel Berger of Seung Lab
Twine
Create your own interactive stories with Twine, the same tool used to produce the stories on this Web site.
Think Visually
Twine lets you organize your story graphically with a map that you can re-arrange as you work. Links automatically appear on the map as you add them to your passages, and passages with broken links are apparent at a glance. As you write, focus on your text with a fullscreen editing mode like Dark Room. Rapidly switch between a published version of your story and the editable one as you work.Free As In Free
Stories you create with Twine can be used however you'd like. Because the final output is a single, small Web page, you can easily email a story to friends, post it on your Web site, or even distribute it on a CD-ROM. (You could use a floppy disk just as easily — stories take up that little space.) You can also use your stories for commercial purposes without restriction.Twine is free to download and use, and you can share it with anyone you like. You can even modify the Twine, provided you release your own version under the GNU Public License.
Propellerheads Welcome
If you like working with a command prompt, you can also use twee, the command-line version of Twine. It's easy to incorporate into the toolchain you know and love, and syntax modes are available for some common text editors.Seeing Is Believing
The screencasts below show how easy it is to create a story in Twine.
Technology is enabling play across multiple new platforms, but what do they become when we want more from them than entertainment? Dr. Mary Flanagan, author of 2009's Critical Play, believes creative ways of looking at design can lead to games that not only express values, but can convey them to others -- while still maintaining their sense of fun and genuine playfulness.Her lab, Tiltfactor, is now in its ten-year anniversary, and focuses on games as agents of meaning and intervention -- and investigates how they may lead to a more equitable and just society. At the Different Games conference at NYU Polytechnic this weekend, she shared examples from her work she hopes artists and designers alike can learn from.
"It's really about cultural engagement, for me," she explains of the lab's work, which includes roleplaying, sports, board games and "game-related things" as well as traditional digital games. She's fascinated by the balance between play as whimsy, and play as introspective or analytical experience -- and in particular, how games can be used to deconstruct the social structures that often privilege some at the expense of others.
Is the game industry ready for "inclusive design"? More than ever, Flanagan suggests, citing the culture shift she's observed since the 1980s industry: Almost half the audience for home consoles were women, and women were some of the early innovators in the arcade age.
Yet by the 1990s, the first person shooter genre arrived. "It dominated, and I daresay robbed gamers of innovative and exciting and different games," she says. But the idea that first person-shooters represent the quintessential definition of "game" is surely fading, a relic of "a particular time I think we can finally shake our way out of."
Feminist inquiry, according to a quote from Donna Haraway, is about how to "love each other less violently." How can a game keep people accountable to one another in meaningful way, Flanagan wonders?
Her work is built on the idea that games carry beliefs in their systems and representations. For example, Settlers of Catan is on one hand about commodities, competition and a complicated degree of cooperation and negotiation. Variables can equalize the playing field -- but in Catan, a game about colonialism, the robber character that creates that equalization represents the "conquered" people, and its playing piece is always brown or black.
This is just one example of how games express beliefs inherently, she says. And fans of an individual game might not like when questions about their values are raised, but Flanagan believes it's important nonetheless. "We need to look a little bit deeper when we're designing things... at the values we're designing into our games," she suggests. "I don't think we can afford not to address the very human world of emotions. What do we care about? If crafted well, these can become core principles in a game."
Values, whether community-specific or philosophical, can fit into an iterative design model so they're continuously expressed both in the work and in the creation of it. They can appear in the reward structures, in the point of view, the narrative premise, player rewards and strategies, and in any other aspect including community of play and the context of the experience.
Truly listening to diverse players isn't easy; "One of the things you need to do if you want to be an inclusive designer is have people play the game who aren't like you," she says. "Most people make games for themselves."
"We know we can speak to certain audiences, but I'm really excited about how we can expand what we do," Flanagan adds.
What does playful change look like? Investigating prejudice against vaccinations, Flanagan's team made a game called Pox -- as well as a zombie version -- followed by a study that eventually brought a full-time social psychologist to the Tiltfactor team.
Studies of players of the games tested for systems thinking, players' understanding about vaccination, and social perspectives on disease and ill people in particular. Groups that played the "zombie" version of the game had the best result, even though it was mechanically alike to the non-zombie version: "People's sentiments on vaccinations changed even when faced with a ficticious disease, and people playing zombie Pox ... had significant gains in systems thinking, and understood vaccinations the most."
In other words, the zombie fiction was the only factor proven to enhance players' interest in the game; audiences couldn't relate to the danger of 50 year-old diseases, but understood the drama of popular zombie stories.
This is an important takeaway for designers wanting players to engage with information or experience empathy for others. "The further away a story is from one's own lived reality, the more we can open up and identify with that person or that situation," Flanagan says. "It seems counterintuitive, but the more outlandish the story is, the more open the player can be [to] actually absorb it."
Tiltfactor's card game Buffalo gives descriptors like "Tall world leader" or "Asian-American athlete" and prompts players to name world figures who fit the descriptors. But the names people do and don't think of in conjunction with certain descriptors is telling; Flanagan says never in her presence has a Buffalo player called out any other name for "woman scientist" besides Marie Curie.
The game is intended to prompt people to reflect on their internalized stereotypes and to study the complexity of one's own social identity. Flanagan's studies have shown that players' realizations from playing the game go beyond the embarrassment of being unable to name, say, a Hispanic lawyer -- that in fact the game can positively affect the way people view others.
"The game can cause a statistically-significant shift in players' attitudes about questions of diversity," Flanagan says.
In the card game Awkward Moment, situations like finding a T-shirt for girls that says "Math Is Hard!" are mingled with other situations that may embarrass young people, and encourages them to select a reaction.
In the game, Flanagan mixed cards about situational bias in with cards about garden-variety embarrassment. This encourages players to see prejudice as a situation that requires empathy just as much as, say, having gum stuck in one's hair. It also has the material takeaway of reducing young people's trained biases. Playing the game actually tripled the likelihood that a player studied would associate the career of "scientist" with a picture of a woman. The game won Meaningful Play's best non-digital game award in 2012 (Pox won that year's best digital game award, incidentally).
"Games may not serve as some kind of 'quick fix' to any social issue -- they can just be systems for self expression," Flanagan says. "But it is interesting if we think of games as also able to have that power... as games are so ubiquitous."
And designers can use existing systems subversively to leverage that power: "I can make these games that look exactly like party games... I have never wanted to make a party game in my entire life," she says. Yet once she realized what might be possible by using the party card-game format, she decided to try it out.
"I'm in a space where I'm doing a lot of analog games, but I'm also trying to work in this situation, where this game might reach a lot more people than my art practice has, and that's interesting to me as an artist and a designer."
Why should anybody care about your game? Ask the seasoned game designer this, and he'll describe an enticing feature set, an innovative game mechanic or some other combination of reasons why players would be interested. Playtesting the game in question, you find yourself lost to the point of asking for help.
How does Rival Theory's free development tool RAIN{indie} stack up? Here's the rundown by Dave Mark from the April issue of Game Developer magazine.
When the Unity engine came on the scene, it opened up the world of game development to a significantly wider audience. Unity allowed people to sidestep the knowledge, time, and frustration of the complicated process of creating their own rendering engine, lighting effects, physics modeling, and more. Instead, they could get straight to the process of creating worlds, levels, and ultimately games (which is, in and of itself, a complicated process). However, as tickled as people were to be able to dive into Unity and "make things," one question kept coming up: How do I make AI?
Much like the other systems listed above, creating even simple game AI often takes a lot of investment in infrastructure. Even armed with Mexican food metaphors (see my AI Primer in the August 2012 issue of Game Developer), creating AI architectures is not an easy task. Unity users would simply be better off if there was a tool that allowed them to bypass the messy work of creating the underlying infrastructure and get right to the task of creating the actual behaviors. After all, isn't that what Unity is all about? Well, that's what Rival Theory set out to do with RAIN{indie}.
AI for free I was originally introduced to Rival Theory a year ago when they showed me a brief demo of their initial product, RAIN{one}. Its successor, RAIN{indie}, has subtle differences, with a tightened feature set that focuses more on what the smaller developer needs the most access to. More importantly, while the original was a purchased product, RAIN{indie} is available as a free download. That's a huge bonus to the small developer who may not have the budget for tools.At the time of this writing, the tutorials and documentation of RAIN{indie} were still evolving, so I was given a tour of the new product's features by Rival Theory founder and CEO, William Klein. I had already downloaded the product from their site, installed it, and taken a walk through their demo applications. These showed, in varying degrees of fidelity, the end result of what their behavioral engine could do. William's explanation showed me how the tools are used to achieve those end results. I actually felt a little guilty for taking up his time - once I found out how simple many of the processes were, I realized I probably could have done it myself in short order.
RAIN{indie} is actually a number of different AI products in one. Included in the package are support for creating pathfinding assets, the actual pathfinding code, behavior trees, and a sensory system. The systems are fully separate and can be included individually as desired. Adding them to your project is similar to adding any other sort of Unity add-in. More importantly, once added to your projects, the modules themselves are accessible. This means that you can use them "as is" or in some modified fashion - even combining them with Unity's default tech or that of another add-in. This flexibility, in and of itself, is something that should allow users to feel comfortable about incorporating RAIN{indie} into their projects without the chains, cages, or soul-selling that often comes with middleware packages.
Pathfinding with RAIN{indie} The pathfinding components in RAIN{indie} include a voxel-based navmesh generator. Auto-generating a navmesh is as simple as adding a RAIN Recast object to your Unity scene, setting parameters for options such as the desired cell size and maximum traversable angle (e.g., 45°), and clicking Refresh Recast. Depending on your region size, you have a generated navmesh in seconds or minutes. Oddly, the generated navmeshes are grid-based rather than the typical "odd-shaped polygon" ones that many of us are accustomed to. At a cell size of 1, this makes for many cells - even in large open areas. The result looks more like an odd hybrid of a very dense nav graph rather than a true nav mesh. You can reduce the number of cells by specifying a larger size, but as with any resolution change, the fidelity of the auto-created walkable areas suffers. Regardless, the solution is certainly workable (see Figure 1). ** Figure 1: A RAIN{indie}-generated navmesh overlaid onto a level. (Note that semi-transparency is mine for clarity.)On top of your navmesh, you can add waypoints to your environment, connect them to each other, and hook them up as paths to assign to your agents. Using the "waypoint gizmo," navigation nodes can be dragged and dropped into the environment and automatically connected to each other based on raycast-based line-of-sight checks (see Figure 2).
** Figure 2: Editing waypoints to the scene with the "waypoint gizmo."In addition to pathfinding, RAIN{indie} has built-in collision avoidance and steering behaviors. It uses a form of "look ahead" steering that responds to terrain, static, and dynamic obstacles. I played with some of the samples in the steering demo (really just capsules gliding through an environment), and they performed respectably even when there was more than one dynamic obstacle. There was one agent in the demo who would get a little hung up on a combination of terrain and an obstacle, but managed to muddle through. To his credit, he was using steering only where a navmesh would have helped out the situation.
While not necessarily as robust in complex situations as more-involved, custom solutions, the steering in RAIN{indie} performed well enough to create intelligent avoidance in simple dynamic environments.
Sensory system and behavior tree editor RAIN{indie} also includes easy-to-attach sensors that help streamline the setup of the agent's detection of objects in the world. In essence, these amount to colliders that are looking for intersections with specified objects or types of objects. You can actually specify sensors for not only vision, but also for touch, sound, smell, and yes... taste. Really, there isn't much difference between them - a collider of a specified size and shape, and some tags to define what it is attempting to sense. Theoretically, you could define the sense as anything you wanted: ghosts, tachyon fields, teenage angst, whatever. It is amusing, however, to hook up a "taste sensor" to your agent - if only conceptually.While all of the above features are nice, the behavior tree component in RAIN{indie} is something that really caught my eye. For those that don't know, behavior trees are becoming increasingly popular as the go-to architecture for crafting AI. They are both easy to understand and powerful - so much so that many of the triple-A games today are using some form of behavior tree architecture. Thankfully, because of how they are constructed, they also lend themselves to being constructed and manipulated with visual design tools such as the one included with RAIN{indie}.
Again, as with the other components in RAIN{indie}, attaching a behavior tree to a character only involves a few mouse clicks. Once that "mind" is in place, adding, moving, and editing nodes of the tree are fairly straightforward. Not only can you insert typical node types such as sequencers and selectors right from the tree interface, you can also assign animations, sound events, and more (see Figure 3).
** Figure 3: The behavior tree editor with the dialog for adding nodes to the tree showing the selection of possible actions.Editing the entire tree graphically is as easy as dragging and dropping. This is important, of course, because, as with any AI development, constructing behavior trees is often a very iterative process. To not have to worry about xml braces, tags, indenting, etc. is very relieving. Also the graphical tree structure is easy to read and helps you visualize the overall structure of your AI. Key parameters for the selected node are exposed right in the tree editor so that browsing the tree is simple and intuitive (see Figure 4).
** Figure 4: A larger behavior tree expanded in the editor. Note that some of the parameters are editable from the properties screen.Naturally the nodes themselves are not the end of the journey. If you want, RAIN will do a lot of the heavy lifting for you; the editor will create the scripts for you in JavaScript, C#, or Boo. However, depending on what your behaviors do or what decision logic you need to leverage, you may still have to write some code on your own. This is a very key point, though. The fact that the BT editor is writing code for you means that you can edit that code. Many middleware solutions are closed, black box systems; you do it their way whether you want to or not. With RAIN{indie}, you can lean on the system to do most of it on its own, or you can utilize only the framework and write the bulk of the code on your own. This is a huge boon that allows the product to scale gracefully from the casual interloper [is that the right word?] to the more advanced user.
Making it RAIN All told, RAIN{indie} brings a lot to the table. I feel somewhat remiss as a reviewer since there is no way that I have completely kicked all the proverbial tires on the product. That means there might be more for me to discover - both positive and negative, of course. As they flesh out the documentation and tutorial videos, getting to know the ins and outs of the different features will certainly be easier.Rival Theory seems to have accomplished what it set out to do, however: Make creating AI for Unity characters simple yet powerful. Another thing it certainly did right is the price. Regardless of any of the features, benefits, and caveats that RAIN{indie} provides, there is really no risk in giving it a test run.
Data box: Product name: RAIN{indie} Company Name: Rival Theory URL: rivaltheory.com/rainindie Price: Free System Requirements: Any computer capable of running Unity (Mac/PC)Pros:
Cons:
- Components are usable and editable directly in Unity
- Graphical behavior tree structure editor
- Hellooo? It's FREE?
Author Bio: Dave Mark is the president and lead designer of Intrinsic Algorithm, an independent game development studio and AI consulting company in Omaha, Nebraska. He is the author of the book Behavioral Mathematics for Game AI and is a contributor to the AI Game Programming Wisdom and Game Programming Gems book series from Charles River Media. Dave is also a founding member of the AI Game Programmers Guild, has spoken at numerous conferences, and was a co-advisor for the previous AI Summits at GDC.
- Still only a framework - not a magic bullet
- Documentation and tutorials still "in process"
- Nonstandard, grid-based navmeshes
[This article originally appeared on sister site Gamasutra]
By Scott Popma and James Barney Update and Expand EULAs Some in the gaming industry are already using EULAs to protect elements such as characters, artwork, and storylines, but this is a strategy all developers should employ.To maximize protection, EULAs should include express prohibitions on the export of protected IP
I want to express the weird headspace I've gotten from this overwhelming argument on the definition of games. First: Defining "game" is a fascinating and impossible task. My girlfriend is a linguist and could tell you how impossible it is to assign a universal definition to anything in language.
"It was a six-week project. It was going to be an Xbox Live Indie Games release."
But top-down stealth game Monaco: What's Yours is Mine was not a six-week project, nor is it coming to Xbox Live Indie Games. Three and a half years later, with multiple IGF awards and game show exhibits under his belt, Andy Schatz is finally ready to show the world how he rolls -- and he's feeling the pressure.
"I'm feeling completely terrified," he says. "This GDC was racked with nerves. It's an online game, so there's always the potential for major technical issues at launch. If it happens, we're prepared to fix anything that comes up. But yeah, I am utterly terrified right now."
It hasn't been an easy journey for Schatz and his baby. The last few years have thrown plenty of obstacles his way, ranging from publisher issues, to engine porting, to family health. But it's a fascinating tale, especially the years that came before Monaco in its current form even existed.
TKOedTo get a real feel for we have to go back to the turn of the millennium. Schatz was one of the lead programmers at the Santa Cruz-based TKO Software, where he had a hand in titles like Goldeneye: Rogue Agent and DLC pack Medal of Honor: Allied Assault: Breakthrough. However, the team suddenly found itself without work.
"We had been working on another project that got cancelled," Schatz tells me. "We were working on a game for that movie Sahara, the one with Matthew McConaughey, and it was a trainwreck.
"To be honest, the whole company was a bit of a trainwreck. But while the biz dev people were scrambling to find us more work, I was thinking, 'We've got a bunch of people just sitting around doing nothing.' So I went into my boss and said 'If I bring in some game concepts of mine, would you mind if we prototyped them?'"
His boss said sure, why not, and the team began piecing multiple different ideas together, including one in particular that had the name Monaco. "The original version of Monaco was actually very similar to Jason Rohrer's Castle Doctrine," notes Schatz. "In fact the tagline of my game 'What's Yours Is Mine' was really inspired by the idea that you were literally stealing from other people."
He continues, "Back then I used to describe it as 'The Sims meets Diablo meets Hitman,' in that a good third of the game was in building your mansion, to defend it from other people who were trying to steal things from you, and then you would then go out and meet other thieves and steal things from other people's mansions. Which I think is still a real awesome concept! I still haven't played Castle Doctrine unfortunately, but it just sounds so cool, so I'm really happy that someone had a similar idea."
TKO worked on the concept for Monaco for around three weeks, until paying work was found. At that point the game was shelved until a later date -- although that later date never came, as TKO was shut down in 2005.
Fortunately, Schatz had the common sense to set up his contract so that he retained the rights to all of his concepts, including that of Monaco. Schatz left TKO to found his own independent company, PocketWatch Games, at the start of 2005, but his idea for Monaco was forgotten in favor of a string of simulation games.
His Next VentureWildlife Tycoon: Venture Africa came first, a sim game about animal life on the African plains, with plenty of focus on balancing the ecosystem. The game was released in October 2005, and was a huge success for Schatz. Besides the IGF nomination and the streams of press he received, the game sold nearly 100,000 copies online and at retail.
But it was a short-lived success story. In Schatz's words, "it all sort of petered out."
"I made Venture Africa, which did pretty well at first," he says, "then I made Venture Arctic, which flopped horribly. With Venture Africa, I felt like I had found a way to appeal to people, and with Venture Arctic, I figured out how to make an interesting game, without making it all that fun."
Venture Dinosauria followed, and with this next in the series, Schatz attempted what he couldn't achieve with Venture Arctic -- to create a game that was both interesting and fun. "But I worked on it for like a year, and I never discovered it," he admits.
"I think sim games in general are like the Quadruple Lutz in ice-skating, or whatever the most difficult move is," he laughs. "They're incredibly difficult to design, because at their heart they are defined by what the game does, and not what the interaction with the player is. In almost every other genre, things are defined by the interaction with the player, and it's a lot easier to find the fun in a game that focuses on the relationship with the player."
But the real problem with building simulation games, says Schatz, is that they're never any fun until well into the project, making it difficult to assess whether you've actually got a good game until months and years into development.
"Part of the interestingness of many sim games is that the underlying systems are complex enough that they're not instantly deterministic to the player, and they do things that you don't expect," he adds. "I heard an anecdote that The Sims wasn't actually fun until around four months before it shipped, and Will Wright was trying to get that thing made for about 10 or 15 years, or something like that."
Schatz goes on, "So sim games are really difficult to work on, because there's just no defined goal. And you know, when there are defined goals, that's sometimes the least fun part of the game. Sim games are often just a toy that the player can poke at, and they're not easy to design."
And yet despite all this, the PocketWatch founder spent so long on Venture Dinosauria because he believed that he had found the right mixture of appeal and marketability to make it a hit. Unfortunately, as he looks back on it now, he realizes that he just never managed to figure out the game's design, such that it would actually be any fun.
"I just never found a way to make it both fun and open-ended, but also a small, self-contained experience at the same time," he says. "With Dinosauria, I wanted to make the defining piece on what the world looked like when it was just dinosaurs. What did an actual dinosaur ecosystem look like? How did dinosaurs sleep, how did they pee -- but we don't think about them that way. We think about them as ancient monsters, and I wanted to portray them as animals."
"But I never discovered that game," he sighs.
Love game-breaking glitches? Interested in a career in QA? Utrecht School of the Arts student Joram Wolters tells you how to mangle your favorite games for fun and profit.] " Ik ben Joram, en het moet kapot" - a phrase coined by a couple of friends of mine - roughly translates to " My name is Joram, and it has to break".
This was originally posted on the Flat Earth Games blog. For background, the company is run by myself and my brother Rohan, and our first game is being co-developed by a Sydney-based studio called Epiphany Games. They and about ten other contributors have been working in their spare time, to be paid in a percentage of the profits from the game.
On the verge of releasing Absurd Interactive's first title This is Not a Ball Game (TINABG) on iOS, I felt it was time to reflect on what TINABG means to us. In retrospect, the road was long and unpredictable yet not without moments of wonder and priceless insights.
In the last week my article "How to Make it as a Professional Indie Game Developer" or "8 keys to indie success" caused quite a stir. How to Make it as a Professional Indie Game Developer I wanted to take some time and address a lot of the comments and questions that people have raised in one concise place for everyone to see.