Elecorn: The Animated Coder

iPort Slides from GDC Austin

September 18th, 2009

caster_iphone_021

Here are the slides in several formats from our presentation on porting games to iPhone at GDC Austin.

The notes section on each slide contains the real meat of the information.

Bolded notes were bullet points for me while reading the slides since many of the slides just had simple pictures.

Hope you find the info useful! Hopefully I’ll have a video up soon. Thanks!

http://www.elecorn.com/mikedsmith/data/iPort_GDC_Austin_2009.key

http://www.elecorn.com/mikedsmith/data/iPort_GDC_Austin_2009.ppt

http://www.elecorn.com/mikedsmith/data/iPort_GDC_Austin_2009.pdf

Posted in Articles, Caster, Programming, video games | 1 Comment »

GDC Austin! iPort: How to Bring Any C++ Game to the iPhone

September 13th, 2009

I’m heading off to Austin tomorrow morning to attend GDC Austin.

I will be giving a lecture on some stuff my friend and I learned while doing the iPhone port of Caster.

We hope that it will help other people considering porting their existing C++ games to the iPhone.

If you’re going to be at GDC Austin, look me up!

I’ll be posting the slides and notes after the conference.

Thanks!

Posted in Announcements, Articles, Caster, Programming, video games | 3 Comments »

Caster Desktop Art

July 27th, 2009

Someone requested I post up this image for people to use on their desktop etc, so here it is!

Right click HERE and save as to get the full sized version.

It is very large and you will most likely want to shrink it down before using it.

Enjoy!

Posted in Caster, Pictures, video games | 9 Comments »

Caster iPhone icons

July 20th, 2009

My first job in college was to create several dozen 16×16 icons for an engineering software package. Obviously at this level you work per pixel since every pixel counts.

In the app store, icons need to be 57 x 57 pixels. While this allows you to do quite a bit, it’s still a small space to work in.

When designing the icons for Caster, I wanted to convey a sense of movement and power as well as display something representative of the game.

Here’s the icon I came up with for the first version of Caster:

While I like this icon because it’s clear, I don’t really like how it looks. I decided to do a new icon for the next update for Caster using this source art:

CasterBackAtCha_final_web

Click HERE to download a high res version.

Here are a few icons I came up with:

CasterBackAtCha05_icon05e CasterBackAtCha05_icon05d CasterBackAtCha05_icon05b CasterBackAtCha05_icon05a CasterBackAtCha05_icon04_57x57_final

CasterBackAtCha05_icon05f

I think I’m going to go with with the last one.

Hopefully this will help it stick out a bit more.

Which icon is your favorite and why?

Posted in Articles, Caster, video games | 8 Comments »

Caster – Lydonia Chronicles: Music Video Contest

July 13th, 2009

mega_ran

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

Posted in Announcements, Caster, Videos, video games | 5 Comments »

Interview on iGame Radio

July 12th, 2009

Header04a 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/

Posted in Announcements, Articles, Caster, video games | 1 Comment »

Game in 10 hours with Unity 3D

July 9th, 2009

unity

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!

Posted in Articles, Caster, Programming, Tools, video games | 12 Comments »

Caster Persona for Firefox

June 9th, 2009

caster_persona_header_small

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!

Posted in Announcements, Caster, video games | No Comments »

Caster Episode 2 Music Preview!

June 3rd, 2009

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.

Posted in Announcements, Caster, video games | 6 Comments »

Caster is Hot!… well sort of.

May 16th, 2009

I’ve been hoping for some time that the iPhone version of Caster would show up on the “New and Noteworthy” list in the AppStore.

That hasn’t happened yet… but it might be because it’s on the “What’s Hot” list instead!

caster_is_hot_edit

Granted, I’m about 10 pages in for apps in general, but for games I’m on the first page.

So how have sales been on iPhone? Eh. Let’s just say I’m hoping they’ll pick up when I release episode 2.

However, since being featured on a prominent German new site (http://www.golem.de/0905/67071.html), sales for the Linux version have gone up significantly. In fact, they’re starting to rival the PC and Mac sales (outside of Steam).

This was very surprising to me as I assumed that no one would ever pay for anything on Linux. I guess there just may be some hope for games on Linux after all!

Posted in Uncategorized | 12 Comments »