Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

See you at GameJam tonight!

GameJam starts tonight (5pm at the Joondalup Business Centre; for more details see our last post). We hope to see you there! :D

Image (related) via gondaba.com

GameJam starts this Friday!

The next Perth GameJam starts this Friday. We’ll be there to take part and report on the event, and we want to see you there as well! ;)

In order to give participants time to prepare their ideas and tools, the theme and significant asset have been revealed on the official GameJam website.

Details:

  • Time/Date: 5pm Friday, 6 August – 3pm, Sunday 8 August 8th
  • Location: 15 Barron Parade in Joondalup
  • RSVP:

Here’s an approximate map (showing Barron Parade):


View Larger Map

GameJam in 2 weeks! Sign-up now!

The next Perth GameJam is just under two weeks away. That means we’re just two weeks and a few days away from playing some sweet, sweet GameJam games!

It also means that you need to sign-up soon in order to secure your place!

For more information visit the GameJam homepage.

Spinfast Snowboard released

We recently received this message from Spinfast General Manager, Robert Spencer:

Our latest release is Spinfast Snowboard, featuring ESPN X-Games announcer Sal Masekela and available now for iPhone & iPad. There is more information and screenshots on the Website if you would like to read more about what we’re doing and please visit iTunes if you would like to download it right away.

Spinfast Snowboard is the third iPhone (and now iPad) sports title from this local developer (following Spinfast Cricket and Spinfast Baseball), and we’re expecting to see more from them in future.

Congratulations Spinfast! :)

Three more games added to directory

We’ve just added three more games to our games directory:

Thanks to the game developers for submitting profiles… although we’re still after profiles from more developers! (And for more than a few games!)

As a reminder, you can submit developer and game profiles by completing the corresponding surveys that have been running since April.

Star Hammer Tactics on PS3 and PSP

Last month we reported that Star Hammer Tactics had been released on the Xbox Live Marketplace, and we lamented the lack of availability here in Australia.

We are happy to hear that Black Lab Games‘ futurist turn-based strategy game is now available in Australia for Playstation 3 and Playstation Portable via the Playstation Network.

Black Lab Games have released a new game trailer to coincide with the launch:

It’s quite an achievement for a solo developer to release near simultaneously on three platforms. So Paul Turbett, our collective metaphorical hat goes off to you! Good work!

Games directory

Thanks to everyone who submitted profiles for games developed in Perth. They’re now up and listed on our brand-spanking new Games page!

Everything has kinda just been dropped in there at the moment and everything has to be manually updated (although we do have some offline scripts to generate pages based on the survey results).

We considered putting in a database or wiki initially, but a database backend would require more setup and testing, and a wiki can easily turn into a inconsistent mess if it doesn’t have a critical mass of contributors!

We’ll work on improving both the game and developer directories as they grow.

Let us know if you find any errors or mistakes! Thanks!

Developers! Developers! …

We now have a Developers section that includes a page for each profile submitted in response to our latest developer survey.

As you can see from the image above, we have 14 developer profiles and we want more! Clearly, we would like to heard from all 20 developers listed in our links, but we also hope to collect profiles on local game developers that are no longer active.

The surveys are still running, so please submit a profile if you are/were part of a team that has yet to do so!

We understand that filling out a profile can feel a bit onerous, so we’ve tried to make it as easy and as fast as possible. If you need even more encouragement, we refer you to Steve Balmer:

Next up: We’ll be creating a Games section based on survey responses (and updating developer pages to include links to their games).

Art assets for game developers

After the positive response we received for our Releasing a Game page, we decided to add an Art Assets for Game Developers page to our Resources section.

Here is our (completely subjective) top 5 list of free online resources:

  1. OpenGameArt.org: Inspiring concept. Although, still in its early stages.
  2. Lost Garden free game graphics and SpriteLib GPL: We couldn’t decide between these two new-school and old-school sprite sets.
  3. CG Textures: An abundance of textures suitable for 3D models.
  4. The Freesound Project: A huge list of Creative Commons sound samples.
  5. Serendipity: Random text generators, including the (G-rated) cuss-o-matic.

Honourable mentions:

We hope that you find the full list on our NEW Art Assets for Game Developers page handy! Be sure to bookmark it and post some comments.

Halogen now available on iTunes

Rockethands (local game developers and serial gamejam participants) has announced that Halogen for Apple iPad is now available on the iTunes App Store.

Here’s a description from the product page:

Halogen is a fun, fast paced action game which pits you and your pucks against hordes of enemies in a battle to clear a drifting space dreadnought of crazed droids. Deflect your pucks and smash the droids where it hurts! Mow down the enemy onslaught en masse to rack up insane scores! Activate the coloured reactors on each level and liberate enough Halogen elements to shut down each section of the ship, until all that remains is a final inexorable confrontation! In SPAAACE!

Their first endorsement is effusively positive:

First class time killer, you really knocked it out of the park. Easily one of the best games I own. You must be very proud of your game…would you mind terribly making all games from now on? – Cranberry Juice

Congratulations Brad and Rockethands!