Hackitat - A film about political hacking, world wide

RåFILM & mackt

On the 28th of November 2009 Malmö’s hackerspace Forskningsavdelningen was raided by masked riot police.

Armed with batons and pepper spay they stormed the social center where the hackerspace housed. Among the policemen were people specializing in IT.

One of the people detained was a hacker named mackt. With a background in the Pirate Bay, for him the raid was yet another proof of society’s mistrust and lack of understanding of hacker culture.

After the incident he wanted to do something about the distorted image of hackers. He contacted the film collective RåFILM in Malmö and the idea was born to make a documentary that explains the political aspects of hacker culture beyond the simplifications and preconceptions.

The film will take them out on a long trip to the famous and infamous hackers and activists around the world, hackers that express themselves artistically and politically through technology. What are their motivations? What are the politics and activism hacker culture has shaped out? How does this impact our world? The film will feature unique encounters with people that usually elude the public. It will crash land in the middle of the conflict currently taking place between those who want to keep the technology and the Internet free and those who want to control it.

The film collective RåFILM has been working with community based films, political documentaries and experimental shorts for over 12 years. They always spread their films free on the web and work to bring films into the public space.

http://hackitat.com/

They are seeking for funds to release this documentary, free to the internet. I backed them up with my share. Hope they get what they aim for.

Adventures of Shuggy

Shuggy has just inherited a castle full of goblins, ghouls, zombies, and robots. Help him clear out over 100 rooms to make his new home liveable again! Every room in the castle is different, letting Shuggy fly, float, swing, spin, change size, time travel and more as he explores the Dungeon, Boiler Room, Clocktower, Gallery, and Graveyard.

This is the formal description of that indie platformer game which you can buy on Steam  for $9.99 dollars. I bought it for $2.99 from the sales day but that is not what we're talking about here :)

Adventures of Shuggy is an indie platformer game which I discovered with the help of Steam sales. The game was $2.99 dollars as I stated before, so I gave it a go. At first glance, I liked it's simple graphics and liked the character a bit so I bought it.

The game is a basic platformer with some more gameplay elements like time travel, spinning the level or portion of the level, floating, jumping endlessly, swinging from a rope, solving puzzles with different sizes of Shuggy, using multiple images of Shuggy to pass the level and some other. Some of these elements are known from other games but different sizes thing and swinging from a rope are new mechanics for me. Forgive me if I'm an ignorant about this but I'm not much of a platformer type of guy.

Those elements are working good and it really spices up the experience but the thing is, the game design doesn't make you push yourself to master these mechanics. They really come and go. In one level, the game teaches you how to use a rope, and on the next level, it makes you to start learning teleporters. So, you can't really try to master the game or play a level on and on and on. It gives you the sense that, "you can pass this level, it may take more than a try but you definitely will". That is something good for me in games with good stories but Adventures of Shuggy has no story to follow, like most of the platformer games, so this type of casual level design does not help the game much.

There are 4 different themes in the game which is mostly related to the bosses. Dungeon, Boiler Room, Graveyard and Clocktower. Dungeon doesn't have a boss encounter but all the other themes do one. I can't even say that these boss fights were hard and I must say, it was a pretty disappointing end of game boss. I was really like, "Is that it? Is it all over?". Also, the themes affect the gameplay a little but not that much. It feels like they thought about changing the tiles but one of them said "hey, let's add some other things to make this game different", but he didn't succeed much.

I finished this game in like 8-9 hours and I liked playing it but I can't say it's a classic or a hit but a game that is worth trying. The game, overall, is not that exciting but there are times that make you grin, giving you the feeling of success or makes you really excited. Those moments are not too many, but Shuggy creates those moments, and for me, this is what makes a good game and make it worth playing. This game is something you should try.

News about me and the game

It's been some time since I've written about the game. Well, I have abandoned the project I was talking about before but there's something new so I'll talk about it.

First of all, I abandoned the game because I found the talent to draw and we decided to create another game that we like. An action game is what we are planning to do and we started working on this game. I did some coding and he started working on the graphics. We haven't decided for all the features yet but some main gameplay elements already are. There will be some shooting, fighting and many other elements that will soon be added.

The game controls are now "one-touch" only, but there maybe some changes to that if we decide to add some strategy-type elements to the game or other actions. I have something in mind about that and we'll surely talk about to decide whether they will be included or not.

It's all for now. We just started working on this, so it's very early to talk more about it but if we manage to handle working together, we will surely be working on more games and if we have enough time and money, we will also try to port this game to PC and go for Steam Greenlight.

Making of Grimrock: Rapid Programming

This one is not a must-read but a nice article to understand what a programmer does for a game.

http://www.grimrock.net/2012/07/25/making-of-grimrock-rapid-programming/

New IP from Team Bondi

Developers of L.A.Noire and The Getaway, Team Bondi, has announced their new game from their website. We have limited information now and here it is:

"Shanghai, 1936. Whore of the Orient. Paris of the East. The most corrupt and decadent city on the planet, where anything can be had or done for the right price. Plaything of Western powers who greedily exploit the Chinese masses. Boiling pot of Chinese nationalism, with the Kuomintang ruthlessly trying to suppress Communism and the labour movement. Home to the International Police Force, a group of Western cops hopelessly trying to keep the lid on and keep the peace."

http://www.teambondi.com/

Building my game

As I have stated in my first post, I am a software specialist, a former game software developer and a gamer. I still think myself as a game software developer by the way, self-employed maybe. A few weeks ago, I decided that I am done with the holidays and lying my ass down so I started designing my first game. I really think this one is an original concept. After all, I haven't stole the idea from another game.

I cannot give away all the details but the gameplay idea hit me when I was thinking about Snow Bros. which led to Tumblepop. So the level design will look something like this and this. I'm thinking more similar to the Snow Bros. levels.

Well, I just started programming for a prototype with the new IDE that I bought because I though Corona Project Manager was insufficient compared to this one. It is called Lua Glider(ex-CIDER) and it is a NetBeans platform product so it is similar to NetBeans in various ways which makes me very comfortable because of my acquaintance to NetBeans. It is really great to use such a similar IDE because I'm learning and coping with various other things in Corona SDK or Lua.

I can vividly see what the game will look like at the end but I don't know if I would be able to finish it or like find someone to create the animations and sounds for the game. Now, all I have is a character that walks on some tiles created by me. The game requires a lot of changes, additions and they will be done by me code-wise. Other than that, it is not very clear what I will do but I will think of something. Maybe I'll place an ad here for people to apply, I don't know.

I will be able to provide screenshot(s) from the game when I finish the prototype. So, it's all for now.

Archstone

This is an indie game being developed that I have found out about from Oyungezer web page. The game is being developed using Unity engine and will be released for Windows, Mac, Linux, Flash, Web, Mobile, iPhone and Android. You can find more information about the game from here and here.