Elecorn: The Animated Coder

To celebrate the upcoming release of Caster Episode 2, I have asked famed video game rapper Random (aka Mega Ran) (www.megaran.com) to record a new theme:

Caster – Random (right click to Save As to your desktop).

I am looking to you awesome player/game videographers to put a sweet Caster vid to this score. So I am holding a competition to create a dynamite music video to accompany the theme song. The competition starts today and lasts through the end of July.  I will choose several finalists and let Caster enthusiasts vote on a winner!

Winner Receives:

• Custom made Caster t-shirt
• Piece of original Caster artwork
• Credit in the game
• Notoriety of having their music video used as promotional material and the intro for the iPhone version of the game.

Qualified Entrants Receive:

• Caster iPhone or desktop wallpaper

Rules:

• You must only use Caster art or other art that you have a license to use.
• You may add additional sound effects, but they should not obscure the base music track.
• Keep it clean / family friendly.
• Use the entire song.
• Use the Caster title in the first part of the video.

Suggestions:

• Fast action.
• Showing off the different attacks and abilities in the game.
• Something that fits with the song.
• Please use a high quality video compression scheme that is a fairly standard format.

When you have something ready that you’d like to submit, just e-mail me a link to where I can download the video (like a file share website) or write me to obtain access to my FTP server.

And that’s it!  Have fun!  I’m excited to see what you come up with!

Let me know if you have any questions:

Inspiration (some existing YouTube videos to check out):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSQSkINkT0s

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

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

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

Last year at Casual Connect in Seattle, I met Omaha from iGame Radio.

Here’s a recent interview we did on Caster.

Enjoy!

http://www.igameradio.com/2009/07/09/podcast-ep-75-plants-vs-zombies-9-innings-and-elecorn/

So I gave myself and some of my friends a challenge to make a game in 10 hours.

My purpose for this was to have an excuse to finally try out the Unity engine for real.  Not just playing around with it here and there, but legitimately trying to make a real game with it.  Here is the result:

A, S, W, D and Arrow keys to move / shoot or use an xbox 360 controller.  You’ll need to download the small unity plugin for your browser if you haven’t already.

www.mikedsmith.com/Moderation.html

And here’s what Kyle Schouviller did using the Flat Red Ball Engine:

www.kyleschouviller.com/files/AcidBoots.zip

I went through the Unity tutorial and played around a little bit before getting started.

I had an idea for a game design… however, I never got to that point with this project.  I still plan on trying out the game design idea (probably with the Caster engine), but the main purpose of this was to take Unity 3D for a test run.

I met with the Unity Team a year ago at Casual Connect in Seattle.  At the time they were just starting to get some traction.  I was immediately impressed with their tech and paradigm for game development tools.

There are so many good things I can say about Unity, but I’ll just some it up with it’s done right and it’s awesome.

So where does that leave me with my Caster engine?  Well, I’m a “right tool for the job” kind of guy.  There are some things the Caster engine does better than Unity and some things Unity does better.  Depending on the type of project I do next, I could go either way…. I could, but I think I’ll just stick with the Caster engine.  More control (I can fix bugs in the engine instead of hoping Unity does it), better performance, super sweet features you won’t find in any other engine ^_^.

So when looking into what engines to use for your next indie project, I suggest you check out the following and see which one best fits your needs.  Prices vary, but FlatRedBall is free.

FlatRedBall  (www.flatredball.com) Xbox Live Communities / PC / Silverlight in the works, best developer support you will find anywhere.

Blade3d (www.digini.com) Xbox Live Communities / PC

Unity (www.unity3d.com)  Mac, PC, Web Browser, iPhone, Wii

Viva la Indie!

If you use Firefox for your web browser, you can check out the Caster persona here.

This will decorate the border of your browser window.

Also, if anyone is interested in making a Caster themed persona, let me know!  I can provide source art etc and can approve the persona that you want to submit.

Thanks!

Caster episode 2 will be introducing new tracks by Trance Emerson.

Here’s a sample of some work hot off the press:

Not Alone (mp3)

Not Alone (ogg)

If you like what you hear, please check out more of Trance Emerson’s work on iTunes or CDBaby.

This announcement is a bit late.

Lots has been going on and I haven’t had a chance to post.

But yeah, Caster and Caster Lite are now available on iPhone!

itunes.com/apps/caster

itunes.com/apps/casterlite

Now I’m focusing my energy on episode 2 for all platforms.

I was feeling a bit sick today, but the entire day was not a complete wash.

I went ahead and video taped me playing a level of Caster on the iPhone.  It should be out in April.  Until then, enjoy!

Yes, this is the main menu of Caster on the IPhone (simulator).  Most of the credit goes out to my main man Spencer Nielsen that handled the Mac port of Caster.  Spencer is one crazy awesome coder that is not to be taken lightly.

No, that is not Caster with the Seeker (pink colored attack) selected.  We just need to swap the blue and red channels for our loaded images.

So why IPhone?

Well, the first hour after I heard the announcement for opening up IPhone development, I had to take a break from work because I was so dizzy with excitement for the possibilities of what could be done that I almost passed out.

Later when I got a grip back on reality, I realized that Caster was not the best game for the IPhone.  It’s a third person shooter.  I could think of a dozen other game ideas that would be cool and work much better on the IPhone.  If I was going to spend time doing something for IPhone, I would rather spend my time doing something that made sense on the platform.

So I shelved the idea of Caster on the IPhone.  However, I still really wanted to get Caster on an embedded device because:

1) Caster has a small footprint and pretty low hardware requirements.

2) I like doing ports and I like the challenges of low end development.

3) It’s just cool.

Really, the turning point for me was when a publisher offered to port Caster to the IPhone for me.  For some reason, this made me look at it in a different way.  Instead of thinking “Caster is not a good game for the IPhone”.  I was thinking “How can I make Caster work on the IPhone”.  Then it became a challenge.  How can I take a 3rd person shooter like Caster, and make it work… no… make it ROCK on the IPhone?

For me, the value of getting Caster on the IPhone is the challenge of taking something that has no business being there and making it shine.

And shine it will!… (if nothing else, from the glare you get when you tilt your IPhone into the sun).

So what about a port to Nintendo DS and Pandora?  Well Nintendo DS is of interest, but I would need a publisher and I would have to deal with a publisher as well as certification etc.  As far as Pandora (Linux handheld) goes,  they have an awesome dev community and I have a person planned for this.  If the install base was bigger, I would probably do it myself.

Here’s a great review Mike Rose form Independently-Speaking wrote up on Caster.

Caster – An Independent Opinion

I’m really glad someone said they liked my game that isn’t just trying to be nice or preserve our friendship… okay to be honest, most of my friends tore my game apart when it was in development, but  I guess that’s what I pay them for ^_^.

You can check out the original review here:

http://www.macupdate.com/reviews.php?id=30158