Tri-Tri-Triobelisk

A game jam is an event where game developers come together and make small games during the span of a few days (sometimes just hours). It’s usually both fun and stressful in a strange mix. It’s also a great chance to try out ideas since you don’t have to feel that you should continue working on the project after the event. Unless it turned out really great of course, but that’s OK too  :)

I’m helping out organizing two game jams this summer so I thought I’d write about them here:

Enterhake

This one happens here in Gothenburg June 8 – 10 (that’s soon!) The indie game scene in Gothenburg is really coming together right now but we have never had a jam, so it’s definitely about time. People from other places are very much welcome to come also, of course (we can help with arranging accommodation). The theme for the games will be ‘Camera’ so hopefully that will lead to some interesting stuff being made. More information (in Swedish) can be found at www.enterhake.se.

No More Sweden

This one has been around since 2008! It seems like a lot of people are coming from all over the world so that’s very exciting. Apart from the jam there will also be talks and presentations. This year it’s going to be in Malmö, July 19 – 22. All the information can be found at www.nomoresweden.com.

A lot of these songs will be in else { Heart.break() }

You can also get them on iTunes

One of my best friends when I studied in Skövde was this man, Jacob Wallén. He makes awesome music that you can listen to here. He has also put all his chiptunes up for free there (under ‘XM’). What a guy!

Hello,

There is going to be a lot of programmer lingo in this post so if you’re not into that kind of thing – be warned! :)

I didn’t go to the Game Developers Conference this year but I did read stuff about what was going on there, for example this article from “The Indie Soapbox Session”. What caught my eye was Steph Thirion‘s talk about open source and how we in the computer game community should become better at sharing our code and helping each other out to improve the tools we use. I have been thinking a little bit along these lines before but never had the guts to actually share anything – mainly because it is so scary! I have also never contributed to an open source project for pretty much the same reason. Anyway, Steph and his talk made me take the plunge and a couple of weeks ago I put most of the libraries we have built for “else { Heart.break() }” up on github.com/eriksvedang. The gameplay code, art and sound is not up there though, so you can’t try the game (sorry!) Here’s a quick explanation of the different repositories that actually are available:

• Grimm – A story scripting language that makes it easy to write branching dialogue, to listen for events and conditions in the world, etc. It doesn’t have any dependencies on our own game logic and can be easily extended from the client code. It is heavily tied to our own database system though, which is something that I want to remedy in the future to make it simpler to reuse.
• Sprak – The programming language we have created to be used by the player inside the game. It is mainly inspired by Python and Ruby. The main goal has been to make it easy to learn and use, hopefully it will also produce better error messages than what is currently the norm. The test suite should give a pretty good view of how the language looks and behave. It will probably change a lot during development though, since we evolve the language as part of the overall play testing. It doesn’t have any dependencies so it can be tried out on its own.
• Pathfinding – A node based A* implementation.
• TingTing – A tiny game entity framework. We use it so that we can run all our game logic separate from Unity in a MVC-kinda way. We actually have a working command line interface for the game also, but that’s a story for another day :)
• Relay – a simple database we use for saving and loading of state. Used heavily by both Grimm and TingTing. We built this when our old, reflection-based save system proved to be too inconsistent. With this solution we can save all the state in the game as one big file if we wish. It makes everything very cohesive and reliable but unfortunately also forces its users into adapting certain paradigms that might not be optimal (specifically inheriting from a special base-object).
• GameTypes – most of the other libraries use this component for some basic stuff like logging and a few basic data types that we need throughout the game. Should probably be split into a few more pieces but this is a practical solution to keep the number of projects down.

All the code is written by me and my friend Johannes Gotlén during the last 1½ years. If anyone wants to check them out or try to use them for something I would be very excited and I am willing to help out as much as possible! If you just wanna browse the code and give me some thoughts about it, that’d be interesting too.

XOXO,

Erik

Hi!

I’m in Stockholm this weekend since a project I did some work on is being presented here now. It’s a facade projection where a building (the Stockholm City Museum) is transformed in different cool ways. My contribution was an interactive thing that let the people that are watching the projections text in messages with their phones. Those messages then appears in speech bubbles on the wall. The whole event started yesterday and people seemed to like it a lot. If you are in Stockholm and want to see it, just go to Slussen between 18.30 and 23.00 today (Saturday) or tomorrow!

More info can be found here: http://www.solarisfilm.se/iris/

After more than 1 year of pre-production, plus another full year of actual production (supported by the Nordic Game Program), I feel that it’s really about time that I reveal something about the project I am currently working on together with some friends.

It is called else { Heart.break() } and will be a kind of adventure game. Here’s an excerpt from the initial description I wrote for the game:

else { Heart.break } is a game about being able to change reality. It is set in a mysterious world made up of computers and their code; a place where bits have replaced atoms. The player – who is assumed to have no previous knowledge about programming – gets access to the code and is taught by other characters how to modify it. As the story unfolds the possibilities of what can be reprogrammed, hacked and controlled increases greatly. Eventually the inner parts of the gameplay code are revealed and the barrier between our own world and the game starts to dissolve.

The idea is to create opportunities for truly creative gameplay that goes beyond the kind of puzzle solving and stats improvement normally seen in games. Ideally it even allows the player to free herself from the designer of the game! The goal is an experience that borders the metaphysical, and to create a kind of game where thoughts and knowledge mean everything.

Besides the programming aspect, we also focus on creating great possibilities for interactive drama. The game world will be inhabited by characters living their own little lives. Talking to them and becoming part of their world is a big part of the game and just being in the world should be a fulfilling experience in itself.

We are a team of five people working on the game: me, Johannes Gotlén (programming), Oscar Rydelius (sound design), Tobias Sjögren (graphics) and Niklas Åkerblad (art direction, music and graphics). Here are some drawings that Niklas has made for us:

So far, work on the game is going well but there is still a ton left to do though, so we won’t be finished for another year at least. Hopefully we can share some videos and smaller demos soon. Come back again for more information!

Best regards,
Erik

PS. For readers of Swedish, here is an interview we did about the game last spring: http://www.blogemup.se/?p=11588

Here are some screenshots from Clairvoyance (work in progress, click them for full image)