Did you ever want desperately to do something, and you thought you’d be pretty awesome at it, only to give it a first try and realize that you’re not some sort of prodigy? Or worse, to discover that you’re COMPLETE GARBAGE at it?

When i bought my wife a knitting class for her birthday years ago, i picked her up after the session and she was in tears. She thought she’d be a total pro, but her project looked like someone had had a grand mal seizure while playing cat’s cradle.

My whole life, i’ve adored the work of Jim Henson, to the point of changing my middle name to “Henson” (while on the run from Colombian authorities during my tomb-raiding escapades searching for the legendary South American jewel of Toh-Tallei). i finally had my chance to try it out during a workshop with the Nanalan’ / Mr. Meaty puppet troupe The Grogs, only to find that my arthritis and inflexibility kept me from lifting the puppets far enough over my head. It never dawned on me what a physically demanding job puppeteering was. Acting, puppet construction, improv - i could handle all that. But lifting my arm and keeping it straight? Impossible. Another dream crushed.

Down but not Out

Another dream of mine is to create a video game that uses physical, photographed objects as graphics. i want to either make some kind of game from clay, or to build a graphic adventure-style POV game (think MYST) where the whole set it made of physical stuff, and i just drop a camera inside the set and take pictures that serve as the graphics. The player would feel as if he’s inside a dollhouse, i think. i dunno. i haven’t done it yet. Maybe it would just stink?

i’ve also been burning to do a game in clay. “Like, Claymation?” everyone asks. No - not exactly. Stop-motion animation is incredibly time consuming. i just want the look of clay. i need a game with static graphics that are programmatically animated. That way, i can build the elements in clay and simply photograph still shots - no animation needed.

Clay Achin’

i got my chance a few weeks ago while building a game for the Chumby. It’s a simple card game, and all the cards have symbols on them. Why not build the cards and their symbols in clay? i could scratch the itch in the course of a weekend!

My family was taking a trip away, and i had a bachelor Saturday ahead of my, so i siezed my chance. i ordered a pizza, turned on Goodfellas, and set up the camera and tripod. i took a little desk light from my office and shone it on a white piece of paper - that was the extent of my set. Then i modelled nine little shapes and photographed them all. In a few hours, i was able to knock out all the backgrounds and lay the pngs down in my Flash game.

Here, friends, is the assy result:

It’s embarrassingly bad. Like really, really horribly awfully bad. And bad, bad, bad. Just - just no. Just a failure. A horrible, horrible embarrassingly bad failure. But i decided to write a post about it, warts and all, in the hope that some readers would offer advice, or that i’d encourage someone else who was facing the same challenges.

Here’s a short list of things that went wrong:

1. a poor workman blames his tools, but my camera - particularly with its macro focus - is not that stellar
2. i don’t know a thing about lighting.
3. the shadow cast by the yellow clay shape was also yellow, which made it very tough to separate it from the background. i somehow expected a grey shadow (?) Clearly, my scientological understanding of optics is flawed.
4. i’m not the best hand at Photoshop. Whenever i tried to change the colour of the shapes, they’d lose all the wonderful texturing that made them look like clay (that’s why all the shapes are yellow. They’re actually supposed to be different colours)

Ply, ply again

Unlike puppetry, knitting, and championship weiner-eating, i’m determined to keep at this until i get it right. i think my main stumbling block is the photography. If you have any advice or tales from the trenches, speak up! Meanwhile, enjoy a few screenshots from some games made out of clay:

We were very excited to receive our Chumby today in the mail. Chumby is an adorable, squeezable bean bag with a cuddly creature-shaped charm on it. You can hold it, cuddle it, or toss it around the room, though that might not be a great idea because it has a computer inside.

The device pulls wireless Internatz content through the ether to display a chain of Flash Lite 3 displays, called “Widgets”, that can do anything from displaying the time and weather to updating you on the latest Chuck Norris legends. The designers built Chumby so that owners can very easily develop content for it, which is then uploaded to the Chumby network to enjoy privately or to share with other Chumby owners. Chumby Industries even actively encourages its userbase to hack the device, providing Chumby schematics and specs on their site.

Long before the Chumby was released, i knew it was right up my alley. i’ve long been looking for a device that will run Flash that i could show off to my friends, and the fact that this thing is encased in a cozy beanbag drove it way beyond “Daddy Wanty” on my “Vapid Materialism Metre”. Unfortunately, the Chumby isn’t the answer to my portable device fantasies that i was hoping for.

Crumby

No device is perfect, and i hate obsessing over the flaws of a device once it’s in my hot little hands, so let’s get this part over with quickly. The trouble with the Chumby, as most online reviews attest, are as follows:

1. Unresponsive touch screen
2. No hardware volume control
3. Wall power required.

This last point absolutely killed me. The Chumby has to be plugged in via its AC adapter and cable to function. My dreams of running through idyllic meadows, spinning my battery-enabled Chumby around in my arms and collapsing into a bed of fluffy dandelions was shattered. The need to plug in your Chumby precludes all kinds of interesting uses, not least of all carrying on a polite conversation with someone about all the magical things you can do, and then proving it by pulling a bizarre touch screen-enabled beanbag out of your pocket and demonstrating your software.

i haven’t owned the Chumby long enough to comment on the missing volume dial, but i immediately noticed that the touch screen was not very sensitive. Regardless, folks with meatfingers like mine are probably best off using a stylus. i can’t even wrap my sausage-digits around the P2 interface to play a lousy song or two.

Untold Entertainment

So with its mandatory wall-tether, the Chumby makes for an expensive, gadget-lover’s alarm clock replacement. i’ll wait until the hardware hackers come up with a cool Chumby Mech Suit that lets your little beanbag walk around the house shooting tiny layzzor beams at your cats. Until then, the Chumby can download and play Widgets for free from the Chumby Network.

i’m still in the process of reviewing the 50-odd games available on the Network to figure out where my Chumby ambitions lie. i am excited to exploit the more unusual features of the device, like the squeeze sensor and the accelerometer.

The Cure for the Common DJ

Even if the Chumby is destined to sit dutifully by my bedside for the rest of its life, i was more than thrilled to unplug my old alarm clock and all but hurl it out the window. For the past few months, i’ve been enduring Toronto radio DJ Bill Carroll talking about how much he hates cyclists. Just this morning, he was talking about the current Toronto police campaign to improve cyclist awarness, and complaining about the fact that he’ll now have to signal before making turns in his car just for the benefit of cyclists, because the police are watching. A few weeks ago, after a cyclist was killed when someone opened a car door in his path, Carroll put the blame on cyclists.

As a cyclist who commutes with his 2-year-old daughter to day care every morning, i don’t enjoy waking up to this guy dangerously misinforming his listeners, tacitly defending motorists who maim and murder adults and children on bicycles. Good riddance, Carroll! Say … perhaps the Chumby could use a “Punch Your Detested Morning DJ in the Face” app?

But no! i must not use my Chumby for evil. i will most likely tool up a quick little game get my feet wet with the Chumby, before embarking on something more ambitious.

If i develop anything that can be played properly on your computer, i’ll be sure to make it available on the Untold Entertainment Games Page. If i build stuff that uses the squeeze or motion sensors, you’ll have to consider getting a Chumby!

There’s an interesting but brief article at Massively titled “Could Smaller Be Better?”, asking whether the “massive” aspect of Massively Multiplayer Online Games takes some of the fun out of gaming.

Before this company existed, i entered the 2007 Vortex Game Competition. The competition turned out to be a disappointing event catering to students, and run by staff and friends of the incredibly dodgy International Academy of Design and Technology, a school about which i’ve heard stories to curl your hair. (i almost hesitate to link to them. Well - here it is in a nutshell: don’t go.)

The Vortex entry was called Islands Untold. It’s exactly the kind of small MMO the Massively article talks about. One of the posters there says:

To replicate this sort of experience MMO’s would have to forcibly seperate people and that just wouldn’t work out.

Au contraire! Islands Untold solves this problem by grouping players together on islands.

Here is the original game proposal for the competition:

Islands Untold

Islands Untold is a casual multiplayer online game in which teams of five players co-operate to survive, settle, and defend a tiny tropical island. Every island is home to a Thinker, a Maker, a Worker, a Gatherer, and a Shaman. As each player brings a special skill to the island, success depends on teamwork and co-operation. Even so, some players may decide to backstab each other … even if it means angering the island god “the Big Pao”. As players research and create new tools and technology, they will be able to communicate with, and even invade, the thousands of other islands adrift in the endless uncharted seas.

Players will be excited to log into Islands Untold every day to feed their online avatar, much like a virtual pet. Fellow island dwellers will see logged-out players as though they are sleeping. While he is away from the game, a player’s team members might feed his avatar to keep him alive, or decide to murder him! The Big Pao keeps an account of all injustices, and will recincarnate players on different islands if they fall victim to a mutinous tribe.

Every day, a new random item will wash up on the shore of the island. This could be a common item or a rare one – players have to log in to find out! Along with the survival mechanic, the random crate reward is an excellent hook to encourage repeat gameplays.

Project Elements:

The game will utilize a Flash front-end and a PHP/mySQL solution for the backend. Communication between the two will be handled by SmartFox Server, a multiplayer gaming server built specifically for Flash.

Point of Difference:

Islands Untold will appeal to casual online gamers who claim they have no time to play games, yet end up playing as often as so-called hardcore gamers. The game’s depth and complexity will there for players who want a more enriching experience, but to new players, Islands Untold will seem a fun, survival-themed Tamagotchi game.

This game is unique in that it is technically a massively multiplayer online game, except that the potentially thousands of players are grouped together in teams of five on isolated islands. This has the dual effect of speeding up messaging between players, and focussing on co-operation before competition. Since co-operative play is often cited as an appealing element to female gamers, Islands Untold will have a broad consumer reach.

Regular content updates will be supported by micropayments.

<< end submission >>

The judges didn’t show me much love because i didn’t discuss financials, a required component of the competition. (i may have had a more complete presentation, but the organizers confirmed my entry two business days before the event!) The judges also figured i “didn’t need the help”, because i was gainfully employed at a Canadian media conglomorate.

Little did they know that within a few short months, i would leave my company and resort to scrounging for improvised loin cloths in city dumpsters to keep my body warm in the ensuing winter.

Here’s what you can do with a terrible costume idea and an hour and a half to kill:

The idea, naturally, is a robot that changes into pants to blend in with his terrestrial surroundings. i can picture such robots waging fierce battles against each other - say, a necktie (the evil “Neckotron”) vs. a pair of pumps (the sass-talking “Heel It”). i’m not sure what my Pantsformers name is.

Perhaps “Pantaloons Prime”?

Post your favourite Pantsformers name!

While it’s still fresh in my mind, i wanted to commit to pixels the ideas that sprung to mind during the Adobe OnAIR Bus Tour.

AIR is a product that lets you develop desktop applications. The apps can interface with the Internets and your user’s local file system. Adobe has taken pains to ensure that the product is accessible to as many people as possible, from C-language coders using Flex, traditional HTML and javascript guys, and web sugar Flash guys and game developers like myself.

i don’t know why, but the one feature of AIR that gripped me most was the file drag n’ drop API. Here it is in a nutshell:

- drag and drop files onto your app
- teach your app to recognize the file type
- teach your app to respond to the file when it is dragged into the app, and when it is dropped (user releases the mouse button)
- drag stuff out of your app and on to other apps
- bundle file info with the doodad you’re dragging so that other programs will recognize and accept it (for example, your user drags an image out of your app and on to Photoshop. Photoshop likes image files, so it loads the sucker up.)

Wow! Pretty boring - unless you have imaaaaaaginaaaaationnnn ….
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