Drawception

(The game servers are migrating, so I have a moment to write this.)

Seems like drawing games are all the rage right now. First Drawsomething took over the casual people and now I'm hooked to Drawception. It is something between Pictionary and image boards. First one player sets first sentence for the game, like "Batman eats a hotdog". Then the second player draws what s/he thinks the sentence would look like. The third player sees only the drawing and has to describe what on earth is it. Then fourth player draws this and the loop goes on until 12 players have played. Then the end result is shown to everybody and hilarity ensues.

The tools for drawing are very spartan, MS Paint is way more complicated. This makes most pictures look similar style and hilarius. Some times pictures have nothing to do with each other but I have seen some Drawceptions that form a consistent story. There are a few characters that usually survive till the end no matter how crude they are, like Batman, Pikachu and Abraham Lincoln.

Go play it. NOW! http://drawception.com/

Some examples:

Batman usually survives till the bitter end.

Nyan from the beginning till the end!

Like a Sir.

How to fix IAStorDataMgrSvc.exe and enable AHCI without Windows reinstall

My girlfriend’s pc just came from warranty repairs yesterday. The first boot-up took suspiciously long time but I thought it was just Windows optimizing itself or something alike. When I got to desktop I opened task manager and saw IAStorDataMgrSvc.exe taking 15-25% of the four-core processors power. IAStorDataMgrSvc.exe is part of Intel’s SATA driver and usually if driver uses more than 1-2% of processors power something is wrong. After a little googling I found out that this is usually caused by incompatible SATA-mode “IDE-emulation”. That was the case on this pc also. Some people have said that just changing the setting in BIOS/UEFI should do the trick, but in my case that didn’t work. Windows just greeted me with blue screen (of death) on boot. I first had to enable AHCI support on Windows and the update Intel driver to solve the problem.

So here is a step-by-step guide for enabling AHCI after Windows install:

1.     Open start menu and type “regedit” to search, it should find regedit.exe. Click on it and if you get an UAC prompt just allow the operation.

2.     Navigate to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci” from there you should find setting named “Start”. Check the Data column, if it is not 0x00000000 (0) right click on it and choose edit. Set the value to 0. This starts the Windows built in AHCI-driver on boot.

3.     Restart your computer and go to BIOS/UEFI. It is usually done by pressing F2 or DEL on manufacturer start screen.

4.     On Asus UEFI I had to click “Exit/Advanced mode” and go to advanced mode. This is different on every manufacturer. On advanced mode go to Advanced menu and select Drive Configuration. This too may change from manufacturer to manufacturer. Locate SATA mode selection and change it to “AHCI”. The steps may differ but you should find the SATA mode and “AHCI” on any Intel board.

5.     Save and exit. Windows should now boot up normally and start installing drivers. It requires just one more reboot and the operation should be complete.

Congratulations! You have enabled AHCI without reinstalling Windows! But please check if the original IAStorDataMgrSvc.exe problem still persists. In my case it was still hogging up power like nobody’s business. That was fixed my installing newer driver from Intel’s site: http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/highlights/chpsts/imsm .

Well here is the guide how to enable a small setting that should be correct without you knowing it. I don’t think that an average user should have to do Registry hacking, BIOS configuring and driver install after a warranty repair. Why should I have AHCI enabled any way, one may ask. It seems to speed up booting process and should save power on a laptop. Should you have the Intel driver installed? That, I don’t know. Windows Vista and 7 have the support built-in so it is not required. It might speed up drive even more and won’t allow itself to be uninstalled, so I left it on this pc.

Sources: Microsoft, Intel

Work in Progress Trailer for Honey Escape

I am working with Charlotta Tiuri on a new game created with Unity. The game will be part of Charlotta's Thesis Work, which is about designing art for an infinite game. Honey Escape will be an "infinite runner" type of a game, like Monster Dash or Robot Unicorn Attack. It will be released soon for Mac and PC.

Music by Anamanaguchi, used under Creative Commons licence.

Julkaisu: Paikkatieto ja pelit

Sorry English speaking readers, this one will be only in Finnish.

Julkaisen kandidaatintyöni blogissani. Työn aihe on "Paikkatieto ja pelit" ja se käsittelee yleisellä tasolla kuinka erilaisia paikannustekniikoita voidaan hyödyntää peleissä.

Tutkimuksen tiivistelmä:

Tämän kandidaatintyön tavoitteena on tutkia kuinka tietoa käyttäjän sijainnista ja liikkeestä voidaan käyttää erilaisissa videopeleissä. Aihetta käsitellään teoreettisesta näkökulmasta ja esimerkkipelien avulla. Tutkimuksen tavoitteena on vastata kysymyksiin: ”Miten eri tavoin paikkatietoa voidaan hyödyntää peleissä?”, ”Miten käyttäjät suhtautuvat paikkatietoon peleissä?” ja ”Miten peleissä syntyneitä innovaatioita voitaisiin hyödyntää tutkimuksessa ja GIS-sovelliksissa?” Tutkimusmenetelmänä on kirjallisuustutkimus.

Pelaajan sijaintia ja liikettä hyödynnettäessä on tiedolle yleensä tarpeen tehdä muutoksia. Tarpeen mukaan pelimaailman koordinaatistoa voidaan skaalata, rajata, siirtää ja orientoida uudelleen oikean maailman suhteen. Näillä toimenpiteillä voidaan peleistä saada esimerkiksi nopeatempoisempia ja rajata niiden pelaaminen vain tietylle alueelle. Pelimaailmaa suunnitellessa se voi perustua osittain tai kokonaan todelliseen maailmaan. Tätä kutsutaan isomorfiaksi.

Käsiteltäessä laajoja aihealueita on niitä tarpeen jakaa alaryhmiin. Paikkatietoiset pelit voidaan jakaa esimerkiksi mobiileihin peleihin, paikkaan perustuviin peleihin, kaikkialla läsnä oleviin peleihin ja lisätyn todellisuuden peleihin. Esimerkkipeleiksi on valittu viisi eri tavoin paikkatietoa hyödyntävää peliä. Esiteltävät pelit ovat Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops (2006), Time Warp (2008), Foursquare (2009), Shadow Cities (2010) ja Nintendo StreetPass (2011).

Tutkituista peleistä voi löytää yhdistäviksi tekijöiksi sosiaalisuuden, internetin hyödyntämisen ja käyttäjien nokkeluuden. Tärkein edellytys paikkatiedon yleistymiselle peleissä on helppo saatavuus. Kuluttajat eivät mielellään hanki uusia laitteita tai lisälaitteita vain tiettyä peliä varten. Viimeaikoina paikannuspalvelut ovat kuitenkin yleistyneet mobiililaitteissa ja ne ovat mahdollistaneet pelien kehittymisen. Paikannuksen hyödyntäminen peleissä tulee todennäköisesti yleistymään tulevaisuudessa.

Artikkeli on ladattavissa Download-sivulla:
https://sites.google.com/site/joonamo2/

Bing search accuracy

I am a Google user. I use Google Reader, GMail, Googles Blogger and of cource Google Search. Blogger puts text "blogitekstit (atom)" link on all blogs when viewed in Finnish. The link is for subscribing blog post atom-feed. Today I checked what searches bring people to my blog and one of the search terms was "blogitekstit (atom)". I checked Google and could not find my blog, but on Bing it was The First Result! Of all the Finnish blogs out there Bing chose my blog to be the one to show. This probably will change soon, but here's photographic evidence of the incident:

Thanks Bing for bringing people to my blog!

Source: http://www.bing.com/search?q=blogitekstit+%28atom%29&go=&form=QBLH&filt=all

Finnish Game Jam 2012: Best games I didn't make

On FGJ2012 there were also nice games other than just Sad Cactus. Here are some I liked best. They are not in any particular order.

Samuel L. Jackson's Super Sledding '86


This is my favourite. If I had an Windows Phone 7 device, I'd definitely had to get this game on it. The music, graphics and humour perfectly compliment each other. Only downside is that the game is only for Windows and WP7. But if you can, i definitely recommend you to take it for a spin:

http://globalgamejam.org/2012/samuel-l-jacksons-super-sledding-86

Grindstone of Time

Winner of the Helsinki site. This game has interesting time mechanic, when the character moves right time flows forward and when moving left time flows backward. Music also plays backwards when going back in time, which is a nice touch. The game runs on practically any desktop platform, give it a try:

http://globalgamejam.org/2012/grindstone-time

Dance of the Underdog


Another game with retro style sounds and graphics! Created with Unity and played with Kinect! How could you possibly resist a game like this? Probably only if you are like me and don't have a separate power cord for Kinect... The game could have another song, but it is created in 48 hours after all. Go get it:

http://globalgamejam.org/2012/dance-underdog


Mr Suns Singularity Adventure


This game would be nice on a touch screen platform. It was meant to be for WP7, but rumour has it that the developers got the promised test device just 30 minutes before deadline. I played the game with a Wacom pen tablet, which was as close as we could get to a real touch screen device. The game is kinda hard and the controls could do with some fine tuning, but with some polishing this could be a nice addition to WP7 game library. Try it:

http://globalgamejam.org/2012/mr-suns-singularity-adventure

Tenderizer


Another Unity game! This has a nice and consistent audiovisual execution. As a hardcore platformer i would say that the jumping mechanics aren't too great, but the idea and Portal-like aesthetics give me good vibrations. Try it out too:

http://globalgamejam.org/2012/tenderizer

Honorable mention for non-Finnish game:
Sifteo Nyan Cat



Nyan Cat on Siteo cubes? I have to get those cubes, like RIGHT NOW! A download link could appear on this site:

http://globalgamejam.org/2012/sifteo-nyan-cat

Game Development in 48 hours: Sad Cactus

Last weekend I took part in Global Game Jam. People all around the world gather on GGJ sites and arrange a team and create idea for a game on the fly. Our team consisted of 7 people; 3 programmers, 2 artists and 2 designers. I worked on programming side. The idea was to create game about a cactus, who is sad because he can't hug anyone. We created the game on Unity and we even had time to sleep! The experience was great and I recommend these kind of events for anyone who can program, create art, design games or manage projects. Especially for project managers, we only had one on site and many teams could have probably done better with one on their team.

Take a look at the video:

Want to try it out? It runs on a Mac and PC and is downloadable from GGJ site:
http://globalgamejam.org/2012/sad-cactus