Elecorn: The Animated Coder

Here’s a little fan art I received from Ruairi Flynn (jhammo52).  He used some of the sketches found here (http://www.casterthegame.com/caster_sketches/) as a base.

Great stuff!

He also has some great videos for Caster found here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0cpW3VGS0c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVXWa7ll5_M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EwlICILWIc

Thanks Ruairi!

Hey all!  The Caster t-shirts have arrived!  I am very happy with how they turned out and I think you will like them.

In true Caster fashion, they are glow-in-the-dark!

I just finished packaging all of them up with your pencil drawings and I am sending them your way!

All nicely packged up in tyvek envelops.

Thanks for your patience!

Hey all!

We had about 50 orders for Caster t-shirts.  Since each shirt ships with an original hand drawn pencil sketch by yours truly, that means I did 50 of those as well.

Today I just finished the last of those and went ahead and scanned them all in and uploaded them for your viewing pleasure here:

http://www.casterthegame.com/caster_sketches/

I’ve submitted the t-shirt order and things are looking good.

It will still be a little while until the shirts are done, but I will let you all know once I’ve mailed them out.   Oh, and the shirts have a little something extra to make them true “Caster” shirts…. Any guesses what that might be?

Thanks!

Sadly, many times game studios work on projects that are confidential and never see the light of day.

Thankfully this one is out!

Hidden Path Entertainment worked with Valve on this update.  I didn’t help much on this one, but am excited for it’s release nonetheless.

Check it out here:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/260/

Thanks!

Lately I’ve taken a break from Caster and have been focusing my “side project” time on SmithGame.  SmithGame* is a game I’m making with my kids.

*Disclaimer: It was named by my kids and I did try to talk them into a better name but to no avail.

The game was greatly inspired by Katamari Damacy <Tangent>It’s a game my entire family including my wife adores and one of three reasons I purchased a PS2… the other two being Shadow of the Colossus and the numerous PS2 demo disks that used to come in Playstation magazine… good stuff… </Tangent>

Anyway, I didn’t plan to spend tons of time on this project, but there are some things that are worth the extra time spent.

For example, I spent the past four sittings implementing procedurally generated beveled cubes.

Was it worth it?  See for yourself:

Before Bevel

After Bevel

I think the amount of extra polish something like this gives the game is significant.  Plus it was a lot of fun figuring out a good way to handle the corners–their triangle arrangement etc.  Yes, I could have spent much less time making one in a modeling program… but that’s not as much fun so I didn’t.

It’s been a while since I’ve done much with 3D geometry and mesh manipulation and it felt really good to get back into it a bit.

Anyways, for those of you interested in looking at the very-slow-non-optimized-code-because-I-only-run-it-once-at-startup, you can download the code below (look at CustomModel):

ModelManager.cs

Caster has been updated on the iPhone!  Enjoy!

http://www.itunes.com/apps/caster

The Mac version of Episode 2 is now up!

www.casterthegame.com

Also, check out this fantastic trailer that Marco Herold made:

Just finishing up the iPhone version.  Should be submitting it tonight!

Great review on Caster Episode 2!

http://jayisgames.com/archives/2010/03/caster_episode_2.php

Here’s an interview I did with iWorth It.  Too bad they didn’t spell the name of Elecorn properly.  Well, they’re not the first…. Elecron…. hmm.

“Elecron… the little known autobot that transforms form an elephant into a unicorn.”

http://www.iworthitappreviews.com/2010/01/23/elecron-developer-of-caster-iphone-app/

The release of the next update for Caster is fast approaching so, time to make another t-shirt design!

I’ve always liked the negative space design ideas for t-shirts where the color of the shirt becomes a dominant factor in the design itself.  Here’s an example of a favorite t-shirt of mine from back in high school:

I’ve also liked the idea of an unbalanced composition where the design sits on one side of the shirt.  Here’s an example of a design I did back in 1998.  The idea was that the picture should sit on the left side if the shirt.

And here’s what I just finished for Caster.  The black is replaced with the color of the t-shirt (preferably a dark color for higher contrast).  And since this is a “Caster” shirt, the white is of course glow in the dark.  (Click image for larger view).

Now who wouldn’t want a shirt like that!