He is his fathers son

My 10 year-old-son son came running out of school today, and very excitedly explained to me he had been learning Scratch at school. He explained on the bus ride home what he had been learning and what he would like to do, so as soon as we got in we loaded up Scratch and started a new program. He did say "but it is not real programming is it?" because we were using Scratch which I explained "no, it is real programming, it is visual programming" and he was happy with that, I think it maybe validated what he was doing, not that it needed it.

He knew how to make a Sprite move around the screen but not how to control it, so I simply took him through controlling the sprite using ifs and sensing blocks. Needless to say he was ecstatic, he knew from that moment on he could make a game. If he could control it, he could give the character a goal.

We also added a key which when you collect it, it dis-appears and re-appears randomly on the screen. We decided that we needed an obstacle so we decided that it needed a timer. So that is what we will do tomorrow, I am really pleased he has taken an interest in programming and really pleased I can be there to help him.

To AR or not to AR?

Here is the final video for a Augmented Reality (AR) project I have been working on with a local school, it was good fun, hard work for me having to build 4 game engines, but it was worth it.

I have been a bit ambivalent towards AR as I have often seen it as a imagination destroying prescribed narrative driven product placement entity, I didn't like it. I kept seeing toys that came to life and interacted with other toys in the "product range" to force children down a specific narrative, which usually lead to the purchase of more toys to continue.

When I was a lad I made up my own stories, a Stormtrooper was once a giant city destroyer, destroying the LEGO peoples towns, who then had to take refuge in the giant "Millenium Falcon" city. With several AR toys this type of scenario would be an "incompatible experience".

So AR, I didn't want to be a part of it, until, I learned I could use it so the children I was working with could create their own narratives/games/ interactions. They were now the creators of the story, using technology to tell it, instead of being told it. I like AR like this, well in all fairness I like all technology to be like this.

I am glad I did this project and tackled an area I didn't particularly like the idea of, as we have achieved some great results, now what should we do next?

Old Dogs, New Tricks

Everyone knows I am old school, I code old school even in Xcode I do everything programmatically and usually in one class, it works, it is just old school. However recently I have been playing with Scratch which is a visual object orientated programming language. One of the great things about Scratch is that you can get an object to simple detect if it is touching another colour, it saves loads of code for object collision. I have also been tinkering with loads of visual stuff like Augmented Reality, image and shape detection, so I have been analysing the content of pixels a lot recently. So I just thought why not code that in to a game engine of my own, I know people have been doing it for ages, but I am old school.

I would usually code a level like this"Old School" 2D array from "OCARBOT" Level 1.

However now it just looks like this. Instead of looking at the LEVELGRID it just analyses the colours of the pixels around the character. If it detects the color (Red: 66 Green: 0 Blue: 8, the slightly reddish black around the platforms) below the character, under the feet, it stops the character from falling. If it detects it to the left or right it prevents you from moving in that direction. It means I can move a character with better collision detect and a hell of a lot less code.

The example image above "OCARBOT Processing" with the new detection implemented, it plays the same just uses loads less code and is faster.

It also means I can do something awesome, very awesome, but that is for another time.

Like I said, "Old Dog, New Tricks"

Been coding all day

I have been pretty much coding since I woke up this morning and I am very happy with the results. I have been coding the AR Games for the Springfield Junior Project. There are four games that use Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality or just the camera for recognition. This is the first game "Bunny Maze" the code and the graphics for the demo was by me, the graphics for the final and the design will be by the students. The code has been done for a while just been optimizing it a bit today.

The second is "Zombie Football" where zombies invade a pitch and you have to dispatch them with your football skills, we will put in the graphics tomorrow. The big white block is the footballer, the little rectangles that slowly get bigger as they move towards you are the zombies. There is a power bar to help you continuing scoring despite the zombie apocalypse, so lets set how many you can get with three lives, while the hordes chase towards you.
I have two more to do "Animal Rescue" and "Trap the Dead", but I am going to have a break now.

The Humble Bundle V

Just a quick blog about this and then back to work teaching kids (9-year-olds) how to make Augmented Reality games. This might seem strange me blogging about this, on a blog predominantly aimed at how purchasing an expensive Mac Book Pro effects my productivity, I decided to talk about a collection of games I have recently bought. I have to though, it is great.

I recently purchased the Humble Bundle V, I had seen previous bundles and been tempted in the past but this collection was just too good to pass up, I think the tipping point for me was the "Limbo" soundtrack, I already have "Limbo" on the XBOX 360 and hold it in the highest regard, it is an awesome, unsettling and beautiful game. There was also "Bastion" and "Braid" both games had been released to critical acclaim, I however hadn't gotten around to them yet, and now as a treat, I decided it was the right time. I had just done a major chunk of work on the Creative Computing Club and had some money to treat myself with $15 to be exact.

There are several other games in the bundle, but if I am honest I didn't know much about them, it is not to say they are no good, they are brilliant, I just hadn't heard of them. There is Psychonauts by Double Fine, I had just bought "Double Fine Happy Action Theatre" for my 3-year-old for the Kinect and it is easily the best "game" we have had on Kinect system, everyone in the family has been playing it, so we knew "Psychonauts" would be good. Super Brothers: Sword & Sorcery EP has this wonderful and bizarre animation and graphics style which make it unforgettable, and I love the way it is sectioned in chapters of play. "Braid" is outstanding, you have to play it and get infuriated with it to know what I mean, it is a challenge but well worth it, it is like a melancholy 2D Portal. I haven't played the others yet but judging by the quality of these, I will be very happy.

You can download the games in several ways directly or through "Bit Torrent", so I downloaded "Bit Torrent" and did it that way to take the strain off of the Humble servers, it was a little slow but it meant I could do my work online at the same time.

In the end I downloaded them all for PC, my Mac Book Pro is for game development and "work". But to my horror, my PC just wasn't up to playing "Limbo", it doesn't have the "shader" graphics card capability, (my PC makes music it is not really concerned with graphics), it is not the games fault, my PC is crap.

In the end I got them for the Mac as well, how good is that, not only can you buy all these games in a wonderful collection, you get them for PC and Mac (I think Linux too), and the soundtracks, I love game soundtracks, one day maybe somebody will ask me to make a game soundtrack, ok yeah I did "OCARBOT" and that was great, but one day hopefully I will do another.

So just to recap, you get excellent games, in the format you need, some of the soundtracks too, you can decided how the money you send gets shared between, the developers, the charities and the people who organise this wonderful thing.

So there, I was happy with what I had bought, and having them installed on my Mac was ok, so long as I just dipped in and out of games and didn't get too distracted and I am pretty good with that kind of discipline, and then it happened "Super Meat Boy" along with "Lone Survivor" was added to the bundle, I love "Super Meat Boy", I really do the fast and infuriatingly diffulct (for me) game play is a must experience. So the best games bundle I ever bought just got better.

This "system" putting great games together is wonderful and I strongly recommend this bundle of games, in a lot of cases they re-affirm just how thoughtful and introspective games can be. I came for the horrifying ambient "LIMBO" soundtrack and I stayed for the comic bloodshed of "Super Meat Boy", and I got to rewind it all and do it again with "BRAID". I got to see and discover a load of other very talented games developers and hear a lot of excellent music.

I sincerely hope the charities make a ton of money from this, I hope the game developers make a ton of money so they can make a living and make more wonderful games and I hope the organisers make a ton of money so they too can carry on the good work they do.

Well done to all involved.

Any questions, comments, abuse tweet me on twitter @pixelh8

You're great, but I am not convinced I love you

So I did get my son an Android 4.0 tablet for his tenth birthday (see previous blog), admittedly I was bit nervous as I hadn't seen it in the flesh, just reviews and videos online etc. So I was relieved when it turned out to be pretty good especially for the price, it surfs the net, he can play games, watch BBC iPlayer and even Skype. There are a few issues, and these might sound dreadful at first but they aren't that bad, we'll start with the worst.

The SD card slot wasn't aligned properly so I had to pop it open to retrieve a micro sd card that disappeared into nowhere, much to my sons horror, I had his new tablet in pieces on the second day. But is all sorted and works wonderfully, he can now put his homework stuff on a micro sd card and in to the tablet. I am quite used to popping things open for minor repairs, it was a simple matter of taking the back case off getting card out and putting it back together, only better.

The battery life isn't great 4-6 hours tops and it seems to go down even if it isn't being used.

A few games purchased from the Android Market don't work at all. How foolish of me to expect a marketplace dedicated to providing products for a specific type of device, would actually have software that works on those devices. These are paid for games by major games companies and they don't work, that is awful. This is why I don't make Android apps, because there are too many possibilities, too many opportunities to go wrong.

He however loves it, absolutely loves it, Angry Birds (all), Wheres My Water? Cut The Rope, Fruit Ninja, he can play on the websites he likes because it has flash, you can add a keyboard and mouse to do even more.

So yay, I am pleased with it although not totally in love with the device, I am too used to the iPad 2, with software you pay for to work, I am gutted that I can't use flash though.