I have made this blog look different from how it looked yesterday. It is also used somewhat different. I pressed many keys during several days to make this happen.
The design is a relic from 2010 which I never finished implementing, because back then I didn’t know much PHP. Now I decided to finish it, for the large part eschewing WordPress’s redundant, confusing, ill-documented and inflexible functions, which made me give up that time, and rolling my own code. Also for the first time I’ve tasted what it’s like not pulling so many hairs in the process of getting letters and boxes where you want them to appear on the screen, thanks to Less, an alternative to plain CSS.
Below is a picture of how this blog no longer looks. And here is the whole, long first page.
The game I posted last about, Ascension, was made by talented game author Jonathan Whiting.
I will ramble. Please forgive.
One day, on a whim, I contacted a few fellow game makers to see if they would be interested in taking part in a little experiment. Following up on my whims has been my modus operandi since I started making games, so this just seemed appropriate. A few caught on, and what we set out to do was make a game each, and then switch around the credits, so each of us would release a game that was not of our respective creation. […]
When agj.cl first went live, the only thing that was there was my old portfolio website, made in Flash. It was my first experience with actionscript, back in 2007. I took it down a while ago because it had grown too outdated, and since it was so hackishly conceived, I wasn’t planning on updating it. Well, I’ve finally made my new portfolio page. Things have changed enough that only two of the works I selected for it remain from the old Flash portfolio.
I’ve archived the older one (in Spanish) for posterity.
I forgot to report back then, but my game, Viewpoints, got tenth place in the competition it was created for, TIGSource’s Cockpit Competition. Considering that there were 41 entries, that’s not too bad.
More surprising is that Sheets, the game I entered in TIGSource’s latest, the Adult/Educational Competition, also got me in tenth place. This is so surprising due to my making the game in a rush to get something in at all, and it being mostly just a ‘choose your own adventure’ interactive story. More so, because there were a few very good games that didn’t even make it into the top ten, such as Gregory Weir’s Silent Conversation. All I can say is that I got lucky, this time.
I had the opportunity to hear Jem Cohen talk three times in the past three days. The first was a supposed ‘master class’, which was really just a talk, where he was accompanied by Guy Picciotto (of Fugazi) and Todd Griffin, both musicians. The talk was called Another kind of music, and it was about the way he approaches filmmaking in relation to sound and music. One of his insights was that making films can be a bit like making music; there’s rhythm, texture, and other sensory elements in the mix, beside the more evident aspect of narrative that is most films’ core. He also said that the way he shoots his footage is akin to a musician’s improvisation.
He showed some of his short films/videos, or fragments of them. One of those was Little flags, which will give you an idea of what he does. The truth is, I went to this talk not knowing anything about this man, other than him being a filmmaker, and his link to music. For, you see, he seems to often work with musicians, or simply make sound a vital part of his work. The day before that talk, I was seeing Avi Mograbi’s Z32 while one of Jem’s works was being screened elsewhere, called Ciudad de México por azar, with simultaneous live music by the aforementioned musicians, plus DJ Rupture and Andy Moor. I didn’t know this event was taking place, or I would have been there, especially after seeing Chain the evening after the talk, which was already a day too late anyway. Chain is a feature-length, sharp, documentary-like view on the culture of consumerism. After the screening of that movie, he was there to answer questions and talk a bit about it.
He’s here in Chile because of Sanfic, the Santiago International Film Festival, which has been my chance to see some new films, and also hear the directors talk about them, which is quite an interesting experience. The final time I saw Jem was after a showing of a few of his shorts, including Lost book found, most likely the highlight among the bunch. In this short, he tells his story of what it was like being a push cart vendor in the city, and his discovery of a notebook that was filled with a strictly categorized, but seemingly nonsensical, list of numbers, places, things, situations related to the city. I asked him whether the story was real, to which he said it partially was. He refused to say if the book ever existed.
The past five weeks I have been ‘attending’ an online course on game design, generously offered by Ian Schreiber, and named Game Design Concepts. His only condition was that one purchase the book he co-wrote with Brenda Brathwaite, precisely for the purpose of teaching, which turned out to be a very good acquisition in itself, and which I might review at some point in the future. The course itself involves a blog, a forum, and a wiki. In the blog, Ian posts, every monday and thursday, a ‘lecture’, and lists a couple of extra readings; plus, he leaves a ‘homeplay’ (as he calls it) assignment that usually consists of designing a game under certain limitations, or to make changes to an existing one. That’s when the forum comes into play, as everyone is expected to post their game and comment on a few of their peers’, to generate some inter-feedback. The wiki is mostly just an aside that has served no significant purpose other than as a space to offer translations of the different lessons.
I’ve had lots of fun reading the varied essays on games, some of which I would not have read otherwise, as they are about aspects that don’t particularly call for my attention. For instance, I’m not very inclined to reading on game systems, even though it’s pretty much the core of what constitutes a game, so it’s been very useful. The practical work has been stimulating; since I graduated from university, I’d missed that feeling of rushing things to get them in time for class, which ultimately helps to keep me active and on my toes. The course may not be the equivalent of an in-class course, but given the price of admission, it’s been fantastic.
I’ll be sharing the most noteworthy of my ‘homeplays’ in more posts to come. They’ll certainly be improved over the rather rushed state they’re at right now before I post them, though.
In the tradition of writing a new post for every new front page design I make, I guess I need to write this. My late feline friend, Cleo, passed away yesterday. I spent half my life with her at my side. So, I made a simple new design in her memory.
The previous design has been archived.
To get my blog up and running as quick as possible, I initially just grabbed the most simplistic template I could find, and used that. It was still not exactly to my liking, of course, but it was only momentary. Well, six months later, and I was still using the same old thing—so I finally got off my lazy bum and created a new template. I kept it as streamlined as I could, and I like the results. Not everything is complete, though, but it’s good enough to use, so things will keep evolving for some time; just expect some rough spots here and there for now (especially if you’re not using Firefox—sorry!). You can see how it used to look.
After salivating a bit for the Korg DS-10, a software that simulates a synthesizer named Korg MS-10, for the Nintendo DS (not a game), I came to realize that I did not need to wait or spend money to make music using my DS, for there was NitroTracker freely available to us lucky flashcart owning people. I had known about this tracker (music sequencing software) for a while, but I had never attempted to use it. I was feeling adventurous now, so I downloaded it and read the rather short explanation on using it; it has a surprisingly approachable interface, which was put to the test with someone as ignorant on music composition as myself. Thirty odd minutes of toying with it later, I had made a song. Hooray—my first recorded composition, ever! I only used the samples recommended in the short tutorial I read, which proved to be insufficient, so I went looking for more. After seizing my arsenal, I went back. And, right now, I’m sitting on four frankly awkward tunes that no one would likely want to give a second listen, but I am, honestly, pretty proud of myself. As much as I love music, it’s surprising even to myself that I can’t play any instrument, so it was not only satisfying to have finally drafted something listenable, but also like taking a weight off my shoulders. I crossed the line, and it feels pretty great.
The little horrors are in extended module (XM) format, which should play fine in Winamp if you have a not-too-old version, and probably in other audio players as well. The first in the list below is my latest ‘oeuvre’, and you could consider it my contribution to this year’s Halloween. The others (chronologically ordered, with the oldest last) are unintentionally terrifying. Boo.
