I usually try to avoid posting more than once per day, but I nearly forgot which date it was today… it’s the 5h of March! That means we have two birthdays to celebrate!
First up is Pontus Hammarberg, our own very cuddlesome artist who is trying to save mankind, one life at a time He has turned 26 today. Give him a cheer! (And in case you were wondering, Pontus goes by the internet alias “Kinten”, you may have seen him around.)
Second up is Harvest: Massive Encounter that is 2 years old today! It’s crazy how long time that has passed since its release, and how different things are now compared to back then.
To celebrate this we are going to give you a present! We are going to send out postcards (real, physical postcards) to anybody who wants one. All you need to do is to give us your home address (we’ll not use it for anything else, don’t worry), and maybe suggest a name for Project B! Anything goes, but obviously we prefer actual usable game names over “Cheesemaster of Death 2000″ The best name will receive an extra present… I think.
In any case, suggesting a name is optional, so to receive a postcard all you have to do is to go here:
We’ll gather addresses for about 2 weeks. I’ll post again later. (We may not send a postcard to everybody in case this becomes unexpectedly popular, since I have to write all of these by hand… so if that happens it will be first come first served.)
/jeb
UPDATE: Remember to write your NAME with the address! Our divine senses can only stretch so far…
Hey! We’ve made a fun little tool that tweets our subversion commit comments on Twitter. You can see the comments by checking http://twitter.com/oxbot
What…?
Subversion, or SVN for short, is a version-control system that keeps track of our project files when we work on Project B and other games. Think of it as a wiki for files that we add and update files on. Each time a file is modified, SVN keeps track of who made the changes, and makes backups so that changes can be reverted if necessary.
Each commit is also tagged with a small comment describing why the commit was made. It’s this comment that our bot picks up and puts on twitter.
Why…?
Because we can! Also, because this will let you keep track of Project B. We want to be more open about the project, and this is a step in that direction. Actual game information, such as screenshots and a game name, will come later.
Oh btw… We’ll soon announce the next round of secret gifts. Since the wiki went down we have had to change our plans slightly, but we have something new cooking!
Two times a year for six years, that’s how often the Nordic Game Program is choosing projects for their development support grant. The program is intended to promote game development in the… uhm… Nordic countries, and focuses mainly (but not only) on games for younger audiences. Today (first of march) is the deadline for the first round of projects during 2010.
Nordic Game Program’s managing director is Erik Robertson, a really nice guy. You should head over to their GDC booth and have a chat if you get the chance. Here’s his NGP presentation from the last grant ceremony:
We have applied for the grant almost every round since it was started (2006). We missed one round because I didn’t know it was twice a year (I thought it was only once). In total we have applied with 5 or 6 different projects, I think… This time we applied with Project B (again). We still haven’t been selected for the grant, unfortunately, but it would obviously help us a lot. At least we could pay thewreck more than $3 per hour, hehe.
There are some noteable NGP recipients in their funded games list. Of course, being independent is a requirement to seek the grant, but these are the names that you may recognize:
Limbo
Limbo, one of the current IGF finalists, has received the grant two times (once in 2006 and once in 2007). Both grants were 300,000 DKK.
Crayon Physics Deluxe
Petri Purho received a grant of 100,000 DKK in the round after winning IGF.
Boingo
Black Drop Studios received 300,000 DKK in 2008 for their platform game Boingo. (I just realized when visiting their site that they have disbanded! That was a surprise )
When we had our Harvest holiday sales on Steam we were contacted by the nice guys over at Immortal Machines (a part of the Colony of Gamers network). They wanted to know if we would be interested in participating in one of their nice podcasts, but because of time zones (and lack of confidence in speaking English live) we settled for a text-based interview instead.
The interview is mainly about Harvest, but we also talk a little about games that we like, and the future. You find the interview here:
I just wanted to post a reminder that you can use RSS to follow us on this blog. If you don’t know what RSS is, a simple explanation is that it’s a way of being told when the blog has been updated, instead of remembering to check the site manually.
Most browsers have a built-in feature for adding RSS feeds to the bookmark list, but I personally prefer to use an RSS reader, such as Google Reader. Or, you can follow the instructions in this YouTube explanation:
Two weeks ago a box full of stuff dropped into our mailbox at the office. (I don’t go to the office very often these days, so that’s why I’m not posting about it until now.) The package was from Daniel Wolf, who wanted to pay for a bet that he lost over two years ago. To thank him for his effort, I decided to record this clip:
A few weeks ago somebody gave me a link to an interview with Ira Glass on YouTube. I had never heard of Ira Glass before, but I found this part about having good taste to be very inspirational:
I think a lot of game developers have this kind of problem. They know what they want to create, but the finished product didn’t really turn out as they had thought. It can still be a good game, but it’s missing something. It’s nice to hear a solid reason why you should keep on going, and not just empty phrases like “believe in yourself.”
The other parts of the inteview are interesting as well.
The good news is that during the weekend I filled our wiki with a lot of DaisyMoon info! I think I added over 20 new articles about methods in the API.
The bad news is that our host decided it was a good idea ™ to upgrade our PHP to 5.3.1. Unfortunately that version of PHP contains a bug that breaks MediaWiki, so it’s currently not possible to edit pages on the wiki. We don’t know if or when our host decides to revert the upgrade, or upgrade again to PHP 5.3.2, so we will have to wait and see…
I got an email from our Korean friend, Mr. Kwang. He’s the editor of the indie game blog Pig-min, and he asked me if I would mind helping to spread the word about a game called Cut & Paste. The game looks quite cool, so why not? I thought it would be a good time to write about some other games you may or may not have heard of, too.
Cut & Paste
As you can see in the trailer, it’s a flip-book-styled game where you cut things from the world and then re-use them later to solve puzzles. The idea reminds me of Snapshot by Kyle Pulver and Peter James that was nominated in IGF for best game design last year.
Bob Came in Pieces
There are many indie developers in Sweden, especially in the cities with higher game development education. One of these are Ludocity who recently released their game Bob Game in Pieces on Steam. Although I’m not a fan of the ship rebuilding mechanic (they know what I think), there are a lot of people who are, so it’s worth spreading the word.
glorg
Martin Jonasson was the main organizer of No More Sweden last year. He works with flash and repeatedly release new games on his blog. The latest one, glorg, is a one button dungeon crawler made for the Gamma IV event.
Birthdays and Postcards!
I usually try to avoid posting more than once per day, but I nearly forgot which date it was today… it’s the 5h of March! That means we have two birthdays to celebrate!
He has turned 26 today. Give him a cheer! 
(And in case you were wondering, Pontus goes by the internet alias “Kinten”, you may have seen him around.)
The best name will receive an extra present… I think.
)
