Until I build a proper webpage for Space Junk (something I’ll worry about much later), I’ll now direct people to here when introducing them to the game. It’ll also give context to the past and future blog posts about the progress I’m making on Space Junk. You can also find a link on the top right menu.

My Digital Wind Chime will be at the Dallas Museum of Art for two more weeks — the New Media exhibition uninstalls on January 19th.

As mentioned before, I’ve been working on a silly web game — we’ve now submitted it to a contest and could use your help for votes!

http://musegames.com/community/immunitychallenge/

Hold down left mouse button to build up gas, release to let yourself fly. Spacebar restarts level.

It would be a HUGE help if you could register and vote for Poot! If we get enough votes, we’ll be one of the five finalists.

Our game just got put up tonight and other games have been submitted for weeks, so we need a lot of votes to catch up. Registration is simple/fast and it would be GREAT if you could help by voting for Poot!

We’ve only been working on it for a few weeks and it’s definitely not finished (working prototypes are all that is required for the contest). It would definitely be nice to win the contest though.

This requires custom firmware on your PSP and this guide assumes you already have a modern custom FW.

Screenshots taken with RemoteJoy

RemoteJoy allows you to play your PSP on your PC — you can take screenshots and record video, use PC controllers, etc. Personally, I use it more for screenshots/video/live streaming because there’s a few milliseconds of input delay.

Prepare your PC:
-download/install USB Type B drivers
-download/run RemoteJoy GUI

Prepare your PSP:
-in the Remote Joy zip, there’s a .prx file — copy that to your /seplugins/ folder on your PSP
-open game.txt with notepad and add the line: ms0:/seplugins/RemoteJoyLite.prx
-boot into recover mode on your PSP (turn completely off, hold R while turning it on), go to plugins, enable RemoteJoy

Then, while RemoteJoy is running and your PSP is connected to your PC via USB, launch a game on the PSP. You should get an ‘install new hardware’ dialog — after finishing that, you should see your PSP video in the Remote Joy window.

Hotkeys:
ALT + ENTER: full-screen / window mode switch
ESC: mode
F1: FPS, color display mode
F3: screen transfer ON / OFF switch
F4: window display ON / OFF
F11: Screen
F12: Video capture

It’s been a while since I’ve posted an entry. Finals were the second week of May — this semester marked the completion of my Japanese minor and the New Media classes required for my major (all I have left are some general art classes and a science course before I can graduate).

The day after my last final, I helped with a New Media workshop at the Dallas Museum of Art — the day after the workshop, I began moving into a house. Before I managed to finish moving in, I went to Japan for a weeklong trip.

I’ve been back for a few days and have been busy again moving out of my old place and into the new. Moved the final piece of furniture today with the help of a U-Haul trailer. It was quite difficult getting this couch inside our older, thinner doorways.

Tomorrow I’ll be moving my Digital Wind Chime project to the house of a fellow classmate who has generously offered the use of his garage as a sort of studio for the class to continue working on our projects. Hopefully progress is rapid and I’ll be able to update the blog often.

I expect to be done with the Digital Wind Chime project in mid July — after which I’ll be turning my focus to game development again.

While researching kinetic sculptures for inspiration to employ in my DWC (Digital Wind Chime), I found that it may be very useful to have components with full 360 degree rotation. Rotating components can be visually appealing, can react well to wind, and work great with accelerometers — three great advantages for application in my DWC. For reasons explained a bit later, none of the kinetic sculptures I ran across use electronics throughout the rotating components. The obvious hurdle would be the wires and how they would get wound up as the component rotated — preventing free rotation.

This is a 3D concept I made earlier today. The red box represents the accelerometer which will measure the orientation of the rotating component. The body of the rotating component is rendered in wireframe so you can see inside. The cylinders are ball-bearings and they are key in this working.

Ball-bearings allow rotation around an axle with little resistance. They work great for rotating wind-driven components, but I also took advantage of the fact that the inner rim, outer rim, and the balls inside are all made of metal (which of course conduct electricity). These parts are all separate and moving, but I can use them to complete a circuit because they’re always in contact.

After doing the 3D sketch to confirm my logic was strong, I set out to build a prototype to test it. I had some ball-bearings from a pair of rollerblades and made the axle out of an ink pen’s shaft (after some sanding). I drilled a small hole for a wire to fit through and carved out a notch for it to sit in, but still be exposed to (and make contact to) the inner rim of the ball-bearing. With the wire in place, I slid the ball-bearing onto the axle over wire. To confirm connectivity, I taped an LED (taking the place of my accelerometer) to the outer rims of both ball-bearings. When I actually build the Digital Wind Chime, what will be attached to the outer rims will be a mass designed to move easily with the wind with the accelerometer placed at the center of rotation.

And here it is lighting up the LED with free rotation.

While I’d call it a success, there are still issues. If I spin it fast enough, it will break the circuit — I haven’t confirmed whether this was due to the internals of the ball-bearings ceasing contact during quicker movement (a potentially significant issue) or whether the wires of the LED disconnect due to inertia (something that wouldn’t be an issue in the final project, as i’d permenantly affix them to the bearings). Either way I’m not too worried — I don’t expect any part of the DWC to move that fast and can do things to reduce that possibility as well. Another potential solution would be to use all-metal bearings (the ones I used for this prototype have plastic walls). Regardless, more extensive testing and prototyping will be conducted.

The video is of me playing — recorded and uploaded to youtube directly from the PS3.

I love trying out new game concepts and I love it even more when it’s cheap. This $5 game is unlike anything else I’ve played. You control two ends of Noby Noby Boy — his head and rear — with each analog stick. You can eat things, you can shoot things out your rear, and you can sort of fly, too. On a per-player basis, there’s not necessarily a point to the gameplay — just mess around, which luckily is fun enough. But you can report your length to Girl and, as a global community, everyone contributes to the progress — I assume we’ll unlock new levels etc, once the total collaborative length exceeds required amounts. I think there’s actually a ton of potential in this communal progress concept, so I hope Noby Noby Boy realizes it.

edit: trying out Vimeo for video uploading

Video-only test using my USB capture card (which I got off woot.com for very cheap). $5 monoprice order shipping to me now will allow me to output video/audio to both my capture device and my TV — full featured recording without input delay. If only I had a HD capture card

emedia.dfyb.net is something i’m building up as a portal, or hub, for UNT New Media majors (like what Communication Design majors have with VENT). Right now it functions as a blog. It will aggregate blog posts from students and also broadcast upcoming events and news. In the future, I hope to get a proper .com for this new website. Be sure to subscribe!

I’m renting Motorstorm 2 from gamefly. It’s got a screenshot feature, which I always appreciate in console games. The graphics can be a mixed bag, but the game has some beautiful moments. What’s really got me caught up with the game is how it reminds me of the old Rush series of racing games.

These games had a very fun gimmick — huge jumps and multiple paths. While Rush was based in cities and Motostrom has more natural environments, Motorstorm still embodies these two gameplay mechanics very well.

But Motorstorm also adds its own flare — not only are there multiple paths, but each different vehicle class has their own ideal paths. This all comes together to make a really engaging racing game.

I enjoyed Motorstorm 1 and Motorstorm 2 is an improvement in every way — you can’t go wrong with this very novel arcade racing game.
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