Filed under: Awesomeness
In my experience, Picto-Chat on the DS has only been entertaining in two situations. One, when you first get your DS and the “gee-wiz factor” of wireless networking forces you to seek out another DS owning human so you can instant message them from 3 feet away.
Two, when you are forced attend a weekly lecture featuring artists who swear that rolling around on the floor with a pumpkin on their head is original, non shitty art.
My friends, I have uncovered the next big thing in Picto-Chat functionality: Collaborative Art (that you can never, ever keep in its original form)
Equal credit must be given to my dear friend Ali as well. She’s cute as a really cute button, and I always enjoy giving cute buttons their dues.
The process is simple. One person draws a set of lines (usually 3 to 5) on the top of their Picto-Chat window. They send this to the other person who then copies it to their window. Using these lines as a guide, one person is designated the top half of a creature, the other person takes the lower regions.
Provided one of you is not an idiot, the results should be entertaining! Unfortunately, one of us was an idiot (hint: not the button), so only some of the results were entertaining.
Click that big fat MORE button to see just that!
[Having just scraped enough nickels and dimes to cash in at an internet cafe proper]
In recent weeks, any evidence of level design development has been severely lacking. Although I’d like to say that while I haven’t been posting any progress I have been working diligently to craft a tangible, digital world, this is sadly not [entirely] the case.
So the post count has dropped severely. There are a bunch of reasons for this, one of them is what you see before you.
Its a fun little 3D video I made with a title I am not sold on yet. Click the image for a link to the .MOV file.
If you have any better for a title, please let me know. Enjoy!
edit: would probably help if the link worked, yah?
This soap makes me excited to get all dirty, just so I can wash myself off!
According to my girlfriend, this Japanese soap is not only very old but very famous (the brand, not the soap itself.) She was even able to sing the commercial for me (we’re seeing a counselor, don’t worry.)
If anybody has any info on this soap, along with any of the old commercials, I hope you will extend the information to myself. This stuff is excellent! I think I am going to buy a box and bring it home to my friends.
+peter
Filed under: Japan
Japan is horrible for my coffee addiction. At home we have a machine that simplifies the coffee creation process into a single button affair. But here in my Polly Pocket sized apartment, one cannot afford such luxuries. I will outline the entire process for you in a single post without any breaks. Excited?
Start by pouring tap water into a frying pan and placing pan on the Easy Bake Oven stove top.
Remove coffee packet from wrapper and lay out on wooden cutting board.
Tear off along the dotted line (be sure to hold it right side up otherwise coffee grains will spill all over.)
Unfold wings, allowing the packet to support itself and walk around.
Open up packet into a cute little basket.
Place into cup.
Your water should have started boiling 10 minutes ago,
so pour boiling water into tea pot.
Now pour boiling water into coffee packet. (note: DO NOT attempt to pour the boiling water directly into the cup from the frying pan. I learned this lesson multiple times, so you don’t have to!)
Let sit for a minute. Enjoy aroma.
Move coffee packet to auxiliary cup. Repeat the last two steps with this new cup, thus cheating the coffee packet into giving you a second tiny cup of coffee.
We are trying to be healthy here, so only add a little sugar.
Add Hokkaido (only!) milk. Only the best Japanese cows will do.
Place next to Apple computer on ethnic Japanese table.
Enjoy!
+peter
The Osaka day was very humid and I had escaped to my micro apartment with the ambition of actually getting some design work done. My companion for the day was the air-conditioner in my window.
air-conditioner – “craaaank, CLANG, chug chug chug chug … blorp, SLAM!”
me – “Shut the fuck up! All I want is your cold air!”
It’s a delicate relationship at best. I decided it might help if I let the air-conditioner rest while I sought the coolness provided by the now evening, Nagai outdoors. I grabbed my keys and cigarettes and headed out.
It was a quiet evening in Japan. The day had begun to pass into the west, in preparation for its magnificent rebirth the next morning.
My girlfriend and I sipped green tea under an orange sky in the park near my apartment. I lowered my cup and looked into her eyes mirroring the sunset. Silently, we agreed that it was time.
High-school children were all around, riding their bikes and laughing, relaxing after an incredibly long day at school. The couples were always obvious as the girl would be riding on the back of the boy’s bike, either sitting on a rack or standing on pegs.
My bike has no pegs, so Mayumi had to balance on the frame itself. She somehow managed beautifully, and we glided out of the park on an old bike with a broken chain and unresponsive front brake.
After many nights of false starts, it was now time. The mood was right and we had plenty of time to relax. It was time to finally watch, The Fountain by Darren Aronofsky.
What you see above you are two copies of the same game. Normally I might only purchase one copy of a game as the consumer’s desire has not yet caused me to feel unsatisfied without acquiring multiples of the same object. In this case though, I suffer some form of “collector’s” obsessive compulsive disorder.
The true fault lies in my, still horrible, comprehension of the Japanese language. Typically, when I buy I game, I expect the sales clerk to merely retrieve the game and hand me the complete package after an exchange of some monetary details.
I shift into panic gear when the man behind the counter starts asking me questions. “Uhh, hai!” is all I can exhale while a drop of sweat starts to collect on my forehead. The man smiles awkwardly in return as if saying, “you really want to buy this?” I mimic his smile with my own uneasy version and accept the yellow bag containing the game – with no box.
“SHIT, he told me there was no box for the game! I don’t know the word for box!” The collector in me is punching at my tear ducts. I hold the yellow bag to my chest and quickly shuffle outside where I proceed to vent by knocking my bike over.
Thus my journeys and trials in Japan ‘o’ land continue. While here, I have a good mind to continue blogging about about life and other wonderful things that interest me. It has been a while since I have contributed anything of value to this blog (ever?) No time like the right now to get things rolling again.
So how does this epic tale end? Where does that second copy of Drill Dozer (Screw Breaker here in Japan) come from? On the advice from my girly friend, I made a second trek to the retro game store I originally intended to go. There I found multiple copies of Drill Dozer, in boxes and for half the price I payed at RipOff Gamez. I could not resist humoring the collector within and purchased a fully boxed second copy.
The most troubling part of this whole ordeal was the calm I experienced at the end. Am I really that anal?
+peter
After finally finishing up and presenting the alpha version of ‘game-concept-number-1′, it has been brought to attention that in-progress updates have been sorely lacking. In order to end the post drought, please enjoy the image while new content is being contemplated and created.
-steph
Filed under: Gaming as Usual, Glitch Feed Game Development, Totally Random
How do I put this lightly? No, I DON’T want to get drunk tonight and I have a variety of reasons why I shouldn’t! Starting off, this is a Wednesday night, as in I have school all day tomorrow. Thursdays equal academic death. I need sleep to prepare for my collegiate suicide. Parties and sleeping usually end in humiliating pictures and dry erasable penises.
I guess the threat of phallic shapes on my face are not enough to keep me from doing what I know is wrong. I guess knowing what I am about to do is wrong is also not enough to stop me from doing it. Thus the strawberry red margarita hits my face and I begin my descent into sugary debauchery.
At least my intentions were noble. Work more on the game, that was the plan. Steph and I had our little cave rigged up and we were pumping out code like it was coming from an assembly line. She handled the camera and controls while I tinkered with level assets. Development was running smoother than something that was really smooth. It came together in more graceful prose than iambic pentameter. She was William, and I was a knock off Shakespeare.
