I have been messing around a bit with HTML5 Canvas lately, trying to see what all the hub-bub was about. I must say, it is pretty neat and Javascript (V8) runs quite fast on Google Chrome. V8 is not as fast as native code generated from C/C++, but it is also not as slow as many scripting languages like Lua or Gamemonkey.

My first test while learning HTML5 was to produce a retro underwater visualizer. I was heavily inspired by the beautiful aesthetic of aquariums and wanted to capture its 8-bit nature. The art assets were taken from my game. You can flick/move the screen with your mouse and the camera moves with physically modeled momentum. This visual has been tested on Firefox 5, Safari iOS 5.0, Google Chrome, Opera 11.

This project took me about half a week to create. Most of the art assets were made by Mike Hussinger.

[ View Here (HTML5) ]

It is currently being shown in the Startle Reaction exhibit and will last from October 2011 to January 2012.

The site says:

The exhibition will feature new commissions alongside significant works from the past decade, including Misshapen Pearl (2003), a wistful investigation of the streetlamp’s function in consumer society. Skipping Over Damaged Areas (2010) shows a series of film titles narrated by a voice-over artist, creating a new and unexpected narrative from the appropriated footage.

Below is a short video of the visualizer in action:

It’s been over a month now since I’ve started working as a programmer at Q-Games. And indeed, it has been very exciting, satisfying and educational. I am currently stationed on the PixelJunk team, doing mostly graphics for the upcoming PS3 title, PixelJunk LifeLike.

It’s hard to describe what Lifelike really is. Baiyon, the musician and visual designer of the title, described Lifelike as an “amoeba of life, reacting to your music”. I would not consider it a “game” in the traditional sense of the word — it’s more like an organic musical instrument that grows and responds visually to the sound. But regardless of what genre you want to place it in, Lifelike is one badass title.

I wanted to spread the word and announce that LifeLike was voted 1up’s Most Innovate Game in E3! Very exciting news indeed! Below is a recording of the game in action at an E3 press conference:

Yesterday, I landed in Japan to embark on my new life as a programmer for Q-Games, an independent video game studio located at the heart of Kyoto, Japan.  Q-Games is perhaps best known in the states for their Pixeljunk series of games (such as Eden, Monsters, Shooter) on PlayStation 3′s PSN platform.

Kyoto is indeed a beautiful city. It is alive with the wonderful colors from the spring season’s bloom of cherry blossoms. As the former ancient capital of Japan (before it was changed to Tokyo), Kyoto is a exquisite blend between ancient Japanese heritage and modern digital life.

I am extremely excited to be in the game industry. And to be part of the famous Q-Games studio is truly a dream come true. Nevertheless, I will keep you all up to date on my endeavors. Cheers!

Two of my digital arts pieces were recently accepted to be shown at GAFFTA (Gray Area Foundation for the Arts), an interactive digital arts exhibit located in San Francisco. The specific exhibition that my work will be shown in is called TRANSMUTATIONS and is being produced by sonicSENSE and GAFFTA.

The website states: “TRANSMUTATIONS builds upon an electronic information ecology framework consisting of a complex series of sound sculptures, machines, video projections and sensors that employ viewers’ reactions as one of the interface systems.”

The grand opening of the exhibit is on March 26, 2011 at San Francisco. The specifics of the venue are:

• Date: March 26, 2011
• Time: 7pm -12am
• 998 Market Street @ Taylor St
  San Francisco, CA 94102

The exhibition will show several interactive works as well as pure visualizers. My two pieces that were accepted are both purely visualizers. Both of them are coded in C++ using the Cinder library.

Black Star

I’ve always been fascinated by the beauty of space. This piece, which I titled “Black Star” draws inspiration from two concepts: the black hole and the neutron star. The black hole’s gravity is so intense that not even light can escape. Its gravity absorbs nearby matter, causing the system to be perturbed from its dynamical equilibrium. The system must apply restoration force which causes the system to oscillate back and forth as it endeavors to reach an equilibrium state.

Digital Star

Digital Star is a stylized abstraction of a star undergoing nuclear fusion. Fusion reactions power the stars and produces all natural elements in the world, including the elements that make up the human body.

Over this past weekend, I’ve participated in the Global Game Jam 2011 event hosted at USC. Global Game Jam is an annual event where aspiring game makers from all walks of life congregate together to create a game in 48 hours.

The game we produced was called Sun God. In this game, you play as an omnipotent God which controls the weather in order to prevent the militant vegetarians from consuming the island’s endangered plants. The theme of this year’s Global Game Jam was “extinction”, and we felt that the mechanics and art direction of Sun God supported the theme quite well. However, there is no end-state of the game; basically the goal is to survive as long as possible.

The game was developed by Team Sol Train, which consisted of five people: two programmers and three artists. My role in the team was the lead programmer, game designer and sound designer of our game.

I truly believe that we did an incredible job scoping the game to be completed and polished in 48 hours. The problem that plagued many other teams was that they were too ambitious and thus overscoped their project. However, we were able to build mechanics that were relatively easy to program and test. We also allocated several hours for “polishing”, which consisted of playtesting and balancing the game.

All in all, I think we developed an addictive game that captured the deep human desire for omnipotence and purification. We did this by introducing chaos management, a mechanic that is extremely popular in many genres. The only difficulty was being able to balance the game so that the difficulty curve was inline with the player’s increasing skill level. After several playtests and feedback from our testers, we were able to respond and balance the game accordingly (although I would admit, the game still seems a bit hard).

Overall, it was incredibly fun and definitely an invaluable experience to be remembered. I hope yall enjoy the game!

[ Play | Official Entry ]

Well, graduate school is finally over and now I’ve been spending most of my time deciding what I should do next. In the mean time, I’ve been noodling around with mobile development on the Android platform.

This is my first attempt at coding an Android app, which I named Aquatic Pixels. Aquatic Pixels is basically a non-interactive screen-saver that depicts an aquarium in pixel art. The art was borrowed from my other game, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, and ported into this underwater screen-saver. Above is the app running on the Galaxy tab. This application is built on top of the AndEngine framework and will run on any device that has Android OS version 2.2 or above.

Currently, there is no interactivity with the scene. However, I plan to add updates which allow the players to interact with the scene. Perhaps, I might even develop some simple progression mechanics. Stay tuned!

To download, search for “Aquatic Pixels” on your Android Market app or go directly there. If you have a QR scanner, you can simply scan the image below with your device:

I am very happy to present to you the new theme song for the underwater scene of my flash game, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. The song comes from the creative mind of Brandon Day, who is the musical composer for all the tracks in the game.

I apologize for not having made much progress in the past few weeks. I’ve been busy wrapping up the final weeks of grad school. But I do plan to get back in to full production once all the chaos has settled.

The screenshot above shows two types of the enemies that you can encounter in the underwater environment. I plan to have a total of 14 types of underwater enemies. Each creature presents a different strategic challenge to the player. I hope that by varying the features of each enemy, that it will provide meaningful choices for the player to make in order to progress through the level.

So stay tuned for some updates! I plan to start coding up some enemies very soon.

It is my pleasure to introduce to you my lastest and greatest game, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is a sea-faring adventure-RPG where you take the role of a protagonist who is set out to slay the epic sea-monster which captured your loved one.

Most the game takes place underwater where you battle dangerous sea-creatures to gain experience points in order to level-up and to grow more powerful. You can resurface anytime to board your boat, where you go sea-faring amongst open water in search for your long lost love.

Nearby, there lies a port town where friendly locals give you advice and offer you weapon upgrades and equipment to aid you in your journey.

The epic sea-monster lies below waiting for you. Do you think you have what it takes?

The project is heavily under construction. But if you wish, you can check out the work in progress. The art in this game is done by Michael Hussinger. As you can see from the art in the game, he is quite awesome.

Synesthetic Dream, a game that my team, People’s Choice, have been developing at the Guildhall has just reached vertical slice! So far, it is looking quite groovy but there is still so much work we must do before we hit alpha. A lot of the core mechanics have been implemented and can be seen in the video, including the rhythm mechanics and all the various types of platforms.

We have different shaders applied to the various synesthetic levels of the player. If you look closely, the saturation shifts towards the beat and it increases as you become closer to the final level. There is also depth-of-field applied in the post-processing chain, which brings the focus to the playable area.