Global Game Jam 2011 and Genos Logos

Genos Logos, not to be confused with Genius Loci which is a different story altogether, is our first game for Global Game Jam 2011. It's WP7 game about digital liferorms that move around, eat and breed until the species becomes extinct. A different species is generated in each game, varying in looks, in the sounds they make, and AI attributes such as speed or perception range. The species also evolves as the game progresses. Player's goal is to keep the species alive as long as possible as the conditions grow worse, but he or she also has the option to end their story prematurely.

Second project, The Last, can be found on our GGJ site, here. Both projects were created in a team of five, with Joni Paasikivi and Samuli Raninenaccompanying the core TJR. Though we brainstormed the ideas together and everybody contributed to both games, I ended up pretty much programming the Genos Logos. In addition to the simple tasks of basic movement and so forth, most of the programming was AI related, plus the randomly generated "genome" for looks and other attributes. Antti programmed everything sound related, though, and Teemu helped us along the way.

Though we had to leave out some features we planned in Genos Logos and The Last ended up as a card game instead of WP7 application, making two games in 48 hours (we even managed to get some sleep) is still quite an achievement.

Gameplay video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2LM0pnfIOM

More mobile: "Jump Game" (working title)

With any luck, Jump Game, as we call it at the moment, will become our second commercial title for WP7 in a week or two. The game is about a furry creature that the player bounces around by creating platforms, making the critter collect items and avoid enemies. Sounds very abstract, I know, but the game is very playable and easy to approach.

The idea is a result of an intense brainstorming session, and has developed quite a bit since we first came up with it. The core gameplay has remained the same, though. This time around Teemu made the code structure and we had an graphic artist from outside the team, so I was mostly occupied with various bits of coding like the menus and particle effects, plus design, some minor graphics editing and the familiar job of coordinating the rest of the team.

Break the Aliens! Now available in WP7 Marketplace near you

Break the Aliens! is an action game for Windows Phone 7, with retro graphics and awesome music. It's sort of a combination of two early games, Space Invaders and Breakout. Made with XNA and C#. It's also the first commercial game project that I've produced from start to finish with the rest of the team. The production started early into our practice period at Kajak Games, in August 2010, and was finished about a month later. I was pretty much the only person working in the project for the first two weeks though, while Teemu and Antti were still busy with Genius Loci. Break the Aliens! is based on a prototype I made for Kajak 3D classes earlier.

This project taught me a lot, as I took many roles: I made the basic code structure (with some advice from Teemu, our Lead Programmer), lots and lots of other coding including the simple particle effects, much of the graphics, and most of the game design. For most of the time I also worked as a coordinator for the team, appointing tasks, keeping people up-to-date on things and so on.

The awesome chip tune music in the game is by Multifaros, who kindly granted a permission to use three of his songs in the game.

Though the sales haven't been exactly booming (we blame bad marketing), Break the Aliens! is a milestone for me and the rest of TJR.

YouTube trailer here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coxFSP9hPxs

And a longer, less edited gameplay video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGoE3pAkv6c

World of Kajak 3D: Genius Loci

Image © Mika Karkinen

Genius Loci is a 3D mobile game project for iOS and Maemo, currently on hold. We started working on it during our summer studies in June 2010 under Mika Karkinen, lead designer and graphic artist of the project. Genius Loci is made with Kajak 3D, which is a multiplatform game engine developed in Kajaani university of Applied Sciences.

All the programming in this project is done in C++. Personally I got some valuable rehearsing and experience with the language itself, namely programming an A* pathfinder and AI in general. Other than programming, I did the level design for the game. Me and other TJR guys also discussed some other design aspects with the lead designer that ended up in the game.

More info/news to follow!

XNA experiment: Swarming Plasma

Finally something I can say I made entirely myself, though I'm grateful for the help I received from the rest of the team on the way.

This simple project is a result of me wanting to make something that would resemble a living thing, or in this case a bunch of them. The swarming AI is very crude, but it works just fine for something like this. Though I say it myself, the result is quite beautiful.

I have some future plans for this one, maybe making it into a screensaver if nothing else. I would like to develop the AI further and add more objects that could interact with eachother, and create some sort of creative enviroment for all those things to play in. :P

The video will hopefully give a better image of what this is about:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jW7IhrRLGBM

Tailbot technology demo

The Tailbot was supposed to be one of the stars of our grand game for Imagine Cup '10, but due some misunderstandings along the process we are not holding very high hopes for passing Round 1.

Teemu did practically all creative coding in this one, I merely programmed the menus and made some very hasty placeholder graphics. The whole team took part in designing the game however, and the Tailbot and the way its tail is programmed is a fruit of one late night brainstorming session. Oh yea, this one too is programmed in XNA 3.1.

We still have lots of ideas and even concrete plans in store, and given enough time we could very well turn this into a full game.

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psPt0mg90E4

SDL Artillery - C++ practise

This is just a simple artillery game made for C++ and Advanced Networking classes using SDL, but it works quite nicely and is fun to play from what I've heard from our small team of beta testers.

This time around I did about 1/2 of the coding, including random generation of the map, collision detection, destructable terrain... Well, basically everything that has something to do with the map, including graphics. Those features are fairly simple, but they work.

I also programmed practically the whole networking part together with Teemu; I can take pretty much all responsibility of designing and building the protocol of data being sent and received. Teemu helped me getting all those great ideas work. :P

Video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRg4SHe99vE

UPDATE:

SDL Artillery just became out first game with networking, and it works, too. :D

There were some issues using the networking on teacher's computer while we were getting the game evaluated, but we suspect that's either caused by firewall or the peculiar school networking.