We worked very dilligently to complete our application for the new Screen-Based Content Initiative from the Ontario Government. As i mentioned earlier, Captain Ontario drummed up two million dollars to fund not a final project, but a development toward a final project. This is great news, because often times, getting that ball rolling is the most difficult part.

The Ontario Media Development Corporation, who are reviewing the apps and doling out the money, have been dropping hints along the way that this fund will be “very competitive”. Eligible candidates include those companies who need the funds to develop screen-based content (ie film, television, interactive, video games, radio [when said radio is behind a window], screen door manufacturers, olympic athletes subjected to drug screenings and silk screen T-shirt artists), as well as just about anyone else in the provice running a fairly regular pulse.

When i walked into the OMDC office, i really hoped to see enormous towers of folders, boxes and bind-o-files looming in impossibly-piled stacks, their twisted silhouettes blotting out the sun, their stratospheric summits encircled by seagulls. Alas, no. Instead, i walked into a fairly calm and organized office.

Then i was greeted by Application Checker Lady, who thrust out her oak staff and blocked my path. She deigned to ask me a series of two questions before our application would pass muster. Answer them correctly, and she would spirit the app away to her treasure hold. Get the questions wrong, and she would … i dunno. Eat my face or somesuch.

Her questions were these:

ONE! Does your submission contain four separate copies?

“Y-yes!” i stammered.

TWO! Are the copies collated??

This last gave me pause. Were the copies “collated”? i knew what the word meant, but hadn’t i just answered that yes, there were four separate copies? Did she assume that i had shuffled all of the pages together and left it for the Corporation to sort out?

Or was this some kind of trick question, upon which the fate of our application hinged?

Like a fool, i grunted “W-what do you mean ‘collated’??”

Application Checker Lady was not impressed. “Separated and bound together in their proper order”, she said firmly.

“Uh … yes! Yes they are!” i said.

Application Checker Lady nodded curtly and turned on her heel. i was safe.

On my way back to the office, i tried to brainstorm other question combinations that would have thrown me off in a similar manner:

ONE! Do you live in a house?
TWO! Do you live in a home??

i dunno. At any rate, i’m disappointed that i didn’t get a chance to glimpse the mysterious Chamber of Wonders where all of the funding applications were being stored. i’m picturing the piles of gold you see shored up around sleeping dragons in airbrushed high fantasy artwork, but probably only because the app we submitted was for a high fantasy-themed game.

High fantasy with, naturally, a twist.

Aside from the volume of submissions, what i was really curious to see were the myriad ways in which people bound their applications. It was a bit of a trick to find just the right combination of plastic presentation folders and clips at Stipples; i wanted to see what everyone else had come up with. The next time i need a file folder, though, i’m going to hit up the OMDC - i can’t imagine how many folders and folios they’ve got cluttering up the place … some probably inlaid with find goldleaf and scented with lilac.

i won’t say what we actually presented until i find out our application status in about three months. This was our first funding application, and we’re a young company, so i realize we’re a long shot. Still, it’s nice to entertain thoughts of going into full production on a high-quality game that’s entirely our own.

Details have been announced for the third annual TOJam, wherein a gaggle (a peck? a herd? a murder?) of sweaty developers descends upon a predetermined location and hole themselves up in a room to create games. What sorts of games? Complete and fully wild and woolly indie games, of the sort that could only have resulted from a weekend of zero sunshine or regular human contact.

A Semi-Cultural Institution

i’m a big supporter of TOJam, having put in my own compacted 40 hours last year to produce Two by Two, a simple Noah’s Ark-themed matching game mapped to a cube. Other titles that resulted from last year’s jam included an anime-style giant robot fighting game, a few music rhythm games, an abstract geometric shooter, a Robotron-style actioner starring televangelist Benny Hinn, and far more besides.

i can’t list them all, because unfortunately the climax of the event is its weakest element; rather than showcasing each game in a spotlight session with a captive audience, attendees wander the room, tripping over empty Cheetos bags and passed-out developers, trying any games they happen upon. i missed about half of the games last year because some computers weren’t properly labelled, some machines were facing the wall, and some workstations smelled a little too strongly of three-day-old pepperoni sticks for me to approach.

TOJam2’s follow-up event last year was very well attended but very poorly organized. The good news is that this year’s event looks to be well-loved by its organizers, who are trying to arrange an arcade day where the public can try out all the titles. The TOJam site has been turned up to 11 this year, with an excellent section on what to do with your game when you’re finished. My kudos and thanks go to the organizers for a great list of links and resources.

Make a Game, Fatty

If you’ve got a game idea you’ve been back-burning and have any game-making skillz whatsoever, sign up now! Space is limited, especially if you’re morbidly obese, which you most likely are. TOJam organizers can provide you with two chairs if that’s the case.

So grab your cane, and slowly hoist yourself off your enormous rump. Go forth and game!

The over-arching theme this year at the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco is the democratization of game development. i can’t escape it. At least two sessions a day feature companies opening up their software and platforms to the unwashed masses so that they can create their own games. Here are the examples i’ve spotted. i’m sure there are scads more:

Microsoft’s XNA Framework for XBox 360

The not-so-big news at the Microsoft keynote on Wednesday (aside from the Gears of War 2 announcement - whatta shocker!) was the removal of the membership wall to their XNA Game Creators Club. You’ll still have to be a Club member to push your game from your PC to your XBox 360. But now, once the Club members have vetted your creation (handily removing the burden of policing content from Microsoft’s plate), XBox owners at large will be able to play your game.

i say that this is not-so-big news because it falls in with the likely “what if” scenarios that Microsoft has been discussing for its XNA project all along. The next step, predictably, will be the integration of the Creators Club games into the marketplace, so that XBox 360 owners will be able to buy the indie games with their Billy Bucks, with Microsoft naturally taking a cut.

Kongregate

i caught a small panel with a Kongregate member early this week, having attended a much higher-profile talk by site head Jim Greer at last year’s conference. Kongregate is a site where Flash designers can upload their games and get a cut of ad revenues based on the popularity of their creations. Kongregate also funds developers a lot of money in limited doses to create products that integrate with their multiplayer API.

Sims Carnival

The people behind the outlandishly successful and ubiquitous Sims series have released a series of tools enabling players to build their own games and upload them to the Sims Carnival site. The complexity of their tools ranges from prefabricated formats where you choose a game genre and adjust variables to change gameplay - gravity, number of enemies, etc - to a much more complex tool that uses hierarchical nodes to manage gameplay elements.

Metaplace

This is the flagship product from Raph Koster’s Areae startup. i don’t know anything about it. Wikipedia says, cryptically, that worlds and games created with (in?) Metaplace will be accessible by any device that connects to the web.

Multiverse

One of many create-your-own-MMO tools, Multiverse is a mediocre-looking tool with very a permissive rights structure that enables you to create your own virtual world. The 3D worlds that have been created with the tool range in utility, from a straight-up shooter MMO to a virtual office simulation for new hires and a game that teaches astrophysics to graduate students in Florida.

The artwork in most of these projects rivals mediocre-looking 3D games from 2002, which is more than a little disappointing. Sulka Haro of Habbo Hotel fame always extols the virtues of his project’s retro-pixel art style by arguing that time is not kind to 3D artwork. i’m with him all the way on that. 3D does not age well. 2D has far longer legs.

Whirled

Puzzle Pirates microtransaction millionaire and all-around crazyperson Daniel James apologized that his newest project, which he announced last year, was still in closed alpha. Whirled is a very post-modern approach to virtual worlds, enabling participants to tool up basically anything in Flash to integrate in a visual space that includes mermaids, moustaches, mech suits and talking jars of marmalade. i can’t see it appealing to all tastes, and i’ll be interested to see if “design cliques” form, where fans of the medieval content band together, while the furries stick to their own corner of the virtual space (as furries most definitely should).

Like Kongregate and Sims Carnival, Whirled team Three Rings is hammering out revenue-share model for its creators.

Everything Else

That’s to say nothing of all the games that support player-created content, including but by no means limited to

Lego Universe
IMVU
Lord of the Rings Online
Second Life
Little Big Planet
APB

Admittedly, that’s not much of a list. The point is that there are many, many games doing this. i can’t seem to remember them all. After four days at GDC, i think my brain is full.

Game Creation Tools Even Mom Can Use

The key tip i’ve heard for creating tools that anyone can use is to build them with simple interfaces like household appliances. In other words, building an object should be as easy and straight-forward as making toast.

While it takes a lot more time to build a creation tool like a level builder that’s friendly and intuitive enough for all the toast-adept out there, it’s well worth the effort. Suddenly, you have a community of people willing to do the heavy-lifting of content creation for you. i can’t be bothered creating the game - here, YOU create the game. Sounds alright to me.

i wish other jobs were perceived to be as enjoyable as game design. Cab drivers could sit in the back seat while their fares drove themselves around. Students would throw themselves into their studies while their teachers kicked back in the staff room. Dogs would scoop their own poo into little baggies. What a utopia.

This was my second shot at creating a game using Microsoft’s new XNA Framework:

A memory game is my project of choice whenever i learn a new language or technology - C# in this case. Memory games require you to learn loops, arrays, random numbers, input control, game states, branching statements … many of the basic building blocks of simple game construction.

The biggest challenge with this project, aside from the syntax, was making the controls respond properly. Since the “update” code is in a loop that runs every billionth of a second or whatever, you’d push the control stick and the game cursor would fly to the end of the row of cards at lightning speed. i eventually came up with a delay condition to make it behave properly, but the control still needs work.

The project is super simple, but if you think you could learn from it, grab the source code here.

i started fooling around with XNA back when it was first released, and i produced this gem:

i drew the button graphics myself and used free NASA images for the backgrounds.

Coming from a Flash background, the idea of having one master loop and programming “game states” was completely foreign to me. This “game” was just an excercise in creating different game states to flip through. If this is useful to you, grab the source code here.