labe.me

Twenty times on the loom, put back your work

Wed, 23 May 2012 15:59:50 +0200

The night gives good advises and I prefer this interface:

Once skinned it will be more intuitive even if it requires a little bit more effort from the player.

Put your finger on an anchor (gray discs) and make the thing spin. The board follow your finger and the movement is validated when your release your finger.

The system accept fast movements and incomplete rotations to reduce finger strain :)

Some tapas later

Tue, 22 May 2012 18:21:00 +0200

Between tapas and family excursions, I had the time to test accelerometer control, pan control, swipe control and of course rotate control.

It was a really interesting exercise which opened my eyes on many interface possibilities which cannot exists on our old keyboards/mouses.

Tactile tablets and phones are new extensions to the human body. Learning how to intelligently use them will takes some time…

According to my tests, for the little game, the optimal comfort position seems to be:

the tablet on the laps (or on the filled with tapas belly),
the player secure the tablet use his left hand (or right) and use the thumb of this hand to turn the game board touching lateral zones.
the player use the index of his other hand to touch color groups to explode.

The beer position also works:

the tablet on the laps or a table
the player use any free index to activate touch lateral zones
the player use the same finger to make colored things blow away

Please node the little curve with the disc. They let the player do a little curved movement with the finder. The player put its finger on the round and follow the curve up or down. It helps the brain associate the movement with the desired board rotation.

It is fun to play with and this prototype really give me the will to finish the little game both on the tablet and the web :)

haxelerometer

Tue, 08 May 2012 14:30:00 +0200

haxe to generate an SWF, adobe flex sdk and air sdk to generate an IPA file, iTunes to put this file on the iPad -which was previously configured in develop mode.

I met a few simpler development processes. If only the iTunes step could be automated (to check).

Well… it works and it allows me to play with the accelerometer and thus create a new prototype -in haxe this time- to know if it is fun or not to turn the iPad in every directions to make blocks fall before exploding them with a finger.

Warm-up

Mon, 07 May 2012 15:57:00 +0200

After spending many weeks without coding any game, always be careful of potential strains. Take the time to warm up before starting serious things.

To exercise, I am going to code a little block game you will have to explode. It’s stupid but always fun. I’ll try to give a little bit of GamePlay freshness giving gravity control to the player. And may be one or two options will later spice things up.

A little bit of prototyping using Processing to check that the game’s core is fun enough before spending more time on the game itself.

The little prototype without score, nor options, nor bling-bling is playable there.

Click on the game to give it focus
ENTER to add blocks
Q/A/LEFT to rotate gravity left
D/RIGHT to rotate gravity right
Click on a group of blocks of the same color to make them explode
Your goal is to clear the board

If it’s not too rotten after a few more prototypes, I may create a full game from it.

I’d like to adapt it to tablets so you will have to rotate your tablet to rotate the board but I’m afraid it wouldn’t really be practical for the player :)

To test.

Living great new adventures

Fri, 04 May 2012 14:06:00 +0200

Moving from Bordeaux to Barcelona wasn’t that easy with a never sleeping baby and a learning how to pee 2.5 years old child. But we done it!

I am really glad to be there. This is a marvelous place to live in with so many things to see and learn that I don’t know if two years will be enough.

Now we have to find a new rythm of life and I have to get back to work quickly!

DIE MIDS on github

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 18:35:00 +0100

As expected I do not have a lot of time to code.

Still, I have something to show: DIE-MIDS is on github.

If you ever wanted to get rid of a middlemen and sell your downloadable game straight to your players DIE-MIDS is here to help.

DIE-MIDS helps you configure AWS S3+CloudFront to create a secure, cheap, fast and reliable download service.
DIE-MIDS contains a solution you can use to auth your customers and deliver your files.
DIE-MIDS contains an example of PayPal digital goods integration you can use to create your own shop.

It is still the beginning and DIE-MIDS has to improve a lot to be really easy to use and complete.

However I think that showing the code in its current form is already a good thing which can help programmers build their own solution.

Tell me if it helped you and if you earn a lot of money thanks to DIE-MIDS do not hesitate to donate a few bucks to pay the beer!

MindLabyrinth on the Ubuntu Software Center

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 10:18:00 +0100

The good news of the Week-End! The validation process took 4 weeks. It’s long for someone as impatient as me! But it was smooth and transparent so it’s quite OK. The developer interface of the center is the simplest and cleanest we saw up to now.

The Ubuntu Software Center’s share is also the most “honest” and transparent around the bloc: 20%.

Let’s hope Ubuntu users will enjoy the game as much as we had fun creating it :)

If you did not tried the latest version with the improved gameplay and new levels, get the demo here!

DIE MIDS

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 15:11:00 +0100

During all these years, I developed a kind of hatred against intermediates. Administration, commercials, distributors, etc.

Each time you rely on an intermediate you lose time, energy, joy, and money.

Intermediates are enemies of independence.

You know it, creators are fighting to recover their due and their liberty (and they immediately misled themselves in new closed platforms but that’s another fight).

Because organizing my move to Spain takes a lot of time and since creating my next game will requires even more time, I decided to dedicate my few free time slices to change the numeric distribution world a little.

I chose some recent thing I encountered and didn’t like. I am currently fighting it with code and brain power. And I will soon propose an open, efficient, secure, lowcost and easy to use solution which will make an intermediate irrelevant to most programmers.

For now I name this creation “Deliver It Enthusiastic! My Indie Delivery System.” (DIE MIDS)

I hope that many independent downloadable games developers will use it as well as others downloadable numeric goods creators. Anyway, the project in its “primary” form should be on GitHub within two or three weeks and you will do what you want with it :)

Program or be programmed like they said.

MindLabyrinth final version

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:34:00 +0100

The final version of MindLabyrinth is available! Huray!

We changed the no-headset gameplay to make it a fast and fun arcade-puzzle game.

We reworked 90% of the levels to make them more challenging and stressful :)

The levels of the demo has been modified too! Don’t forget to test them!

The game is available in English and in french for Mac OSX, Windows and Linux!

For Ubuntu users, the game will soon be available on the Ubuntu store!

The demo is free and the complete version without DRM only cost 3.99€!

The complete version contain both modes: with and without headset.

An android/iPhone/iPod/iPad version may be created in the future depending on troops’ motivation :)

Let’s play!

//And now it’s time to work on my move to Barcelona. Deadline 20 april. “incoming!”//

MindLabyrinth for wookies

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 17:14:00 +0100

We spent a few days creating a version of MindLabyrinth with an alternative gameplay which doesn’t requires a MindWave(tm) headset.

We are not sure yet about this version’s gameplay. A demonstration containing the first chapter can be downloaded for Mac, Linux and Windows.

org2tumblr tool

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:58:00 +0100

Here’s the tool I made and use to synchronize my blog (and website) from emacs.

Do not hesitate to fork and improve, there’s a lot of features I would like to see implemented :)

https://github.com/labe-me/org2tumblr

Incoming "branding"

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 23:29:00 +0100

I finally found some hours to create a little logo and a minimal web design for labe.me. Blogs and logos should be updated within a few days. I will improve labe.me incrementally later :)

The logo idea was created using “labe” characters.

Pyramid + spiral + spheres = little alien face.

MindLabyrinth improved video

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:29:00 +0100

I think I did a better video editing. I added some sounds and melodies from the game, a small tutorial sequence, some transitions, etc.

It’s still not “PRO” but that’s much better! :)

Note: François created all the sounds and melodies for the game, hurray!

Red And Blue

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 19:36:00 +0100

I finally found the time to play with augmented reality and it is really fun.

Nothing special there, only a minimalist game to test the technology. The laptop’s webcam is not practical to film the table but using a phone or pad should be ok.

Hell, I don’t want to buy yet another gadget but it seems I must break the bank one day or another…

MindLabyrinth video

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:08:00 +0100

I still have to improve but it was really fun to create this amateurish video :)

Here’s what MindLabyrinth looks like:

Drawing with data

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:53:00 +0100

Two months ago I heard about http://data.gouv.fr, a governmental website containing data and statistics provided by french authorities.

Playing with a selected set of data and three.js I made this little visual experiment which… well… it’s up to you to decide if it moves you or not :

Dessiner avec des données (requires a recent browser supporting WebGL)

MindLabyrinth coming soon

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:33:00 +0100

Hey!

My first indie game was made in collaboration with a good old mate.

A little game to have fun with a weird mind technology, Haxe, NME, Pixelmator, SketchBook pro, Inkscape and friendship :)

— Mind Labyrinth in Neurosky store —

three.js for haxe

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 22:39:00 +0100

A few days ago I played a little with three.js, but Javascript is so annoying to work with…

Since I had some free time here and there I created the related externs for haxe.

haxelib install three.js

Nearly all three.js library is covered, feel free to contribute through github!

https://github.com/labe-me/haxe-three.js

Léonce

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 12:20:00 +0100

A beautifull little project, released the 11th of december 2011 at 09:34 AM :)

Hot one

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 17:42:00 +0100

This one was the most difficult. The result is full of errors but since the end of the world is imminent… let’s draw to survive!