Immediate ideas for the customisation of an idevice version of Henry pose some questions-
How do I build an environment for the aquatic psychopath? Water and power are heady but dangerous mix.
And giving full reign to his glorious nature? Here lies the rub. In an ideal world with access to XML/LISP and a rubber case all would be fine. Will not GS step up to the mark and add rubber wear to the roadmap? Perhaps this is project Masala? We should be told! Did I not download this software expecting diverse waterproof fabrics and sealants in the post? Look what is happening! An aquatic based TOTB, 21 days, and no way to keep the humidity levels below 100%. I may as well go and sign up with the London Rubber Company as I am sure their products are cross platform, free on the NHS, and and glow in the dark!
He breathes! Well actually he doesn't but he does make an odd noise and parts of him are looking scaly. There are a few things I have to test to prove concept and test if to go Ipad or phone. The balance is graphics overhead vs memory size as usual. As I want to control as many people as possible and reck havoc I think I may go iphone/touch4. It is strange to see my beast rise. Will I be able to contain him once I release him? I am almost certain no one has ever been so dumb to attempt such rubbish before, and it may make some question if it was the right and/or moral thing to do- to let tools such as GS into the hands as mine! They know not what they do!
This morning I awoke to find that FIsh-Monk had slipped an old envelope under the door. He seems to be deluded that he could come up with something that might distract me from my path towards world power. HIs offerings are pitiful and mundane apart from one- Who eats Who?, but as I understand it Apple has a ban on cannibalism themed games. The most pitiful is 'stop the scurvy'. He explained that you would have to rub a citrus fruit on a salty sea dog to stop his teeth falling out. Sad!
Henry is being naughty. I have his mouth with all phoneme shapes set up and a system for referencing his voice samples, so his horrid gob speaks as it should. But if only I could script the frame numbers. As it is I will have work very hard to put all samples through the process of phoneme breakdown and then hand paste the frame orders for each sample. 15 fps seems to be expectably for this work. And all this to get my ungrateful evil seducer to make small talk. With each sample he becomes ever more insulting.
I wonder if anybody has done lip-sync in GS before?
Now I know nobody cares but Henry is getting just plain difficult. I showed him off to another dev and the poor man thinks that I may not succeed as no right-minded app purchaser is going to want their own Henry as it might scare the horses. LIttle does he know but that is the intention. At the moment Henry is barely brighter than a Toc-H lamp, and at this rate poor Turin would be turning in his far too early grave. Perhaps I underestimated the shear b****y work involved, but World domination is not something that falls off a log. I doubt I will get Henry to ever play chess, but that is not the goal. By Wednesday morning I want him tapping you rude responses to the good for nothing AI therapist Eliza. Chance would be a fine thing, and if he ain't up to it, it will be me trading in the last bits of my sanity for a few paltry marbles for him.
I jolted out of my sleep this morning and am feeling rather chipper. All these warm feelings are guiding me towards a slightly different approach to the dim witted player and I've decided to throw in the odd carrot along with verbal beatings. I am going to have a rewards system. This i am thinking will be displays of synchronised swimming in return for not getting out of line or answering back.
Last night I retired exhausted after hours fighting a verbal tick that Henry had developed. He seemed to be randomly inserting and screaming the names of types of fruit. This I put down to my using a template for a gaming machine when I started my experiments. It seems to have gone away but it might just be I'm not on a winning streak.
I am wondering if I should post images/video of my project or keep it a surprise? Will some whippersnapper lift my brilliant idea and knock out a hacknkipper? Will I be inundated with requests for drinking partners or offers of marriage? Is the world ready for an eighth formed Henry without the implemented synchronised swimming? Should I see if I can program up the rubber hats wavy arms by the end of the day and post or should I make my pubic sweat?
The water is leaking into Kipper-Lair, confidence has dropped and all is despondency within the ranks. And why all this misery? A game changing update!
Fish-Monk informed me (while I was preparing to output my second build and the one that was to be the first public display of Henry) that 9.5 was upon us and that the game had indeed changed. Not only was the world going to be targetable through the iOS but now we have HTML5 to work our evil plan with... But only through a window no bigger than Henry's scaly belly.
I spat on the floor when it became clear that I would either have to get him to contort his fishy form so his head was repositioned*, or scale his impressive physic to a puny display size and rotate him to fit the landscape format. A fish laid flat is far less imposing and evil looking. What was I to do?
*(this would not be easy as he has lumbago)
And then there is the issue of security. If I allow Henry to be published through Chrome, will my AI monster be secure? Will not other super villains be able to grab his fishy assets and rebuild a pale but damaging imitation in a manner that those weak but commercially successful pig hating birds have been hacked? I am a worried fish. By allowing this to happen there is even the chance that clue to that defeat of Henry might be found. His fuse box is vulnerable and with knowledge of it, a pair of insulating rubber gloves and an old screwdriver it might be possible to remove his fuses and diminish his intelligence to the point where he not even capable of singing ditties. A sad state indeed.
So do I through caution to the wind in an epic battle to win that elusive Pro membership of do I just continue on with by current quest and aim for iOS? I know not.
I staggered about my room for hours, occasionally seeking solace on the forum for posts that might spur me in one direction or another. And then the final two straws! Two Posts that reveal that a battle was on. I see a couple of projects that might stand a chance against me if the judges are weak minded enough to be swayed by decent programming and original ideas. I spat again... twice.
My thoughts now are to indeed throw down the gauntlet, and put the wind up the opposition. Publish and be damned!
Fish-Monk has been at it while I have been asleep. He crept into my inner sanctum and booted up the mainframe, then constructed a shoddy working version of 'WHo Eats WHo!". I awoke as he has finishing up his pathetic offering, and when I confronted him about it and that there was no reason to go forward as Apple seemed blind to the advantages of cannibalism, he explained that now that HTML5 was with us, he could circumnavigate the restrictions and allow the world a new entertainment of his design without recourse to the app store. Oh JOy!
SO I let him upload the awful interface video and I display it below along with his point scoring system which he says is based on a butcher's chart that he remembers from the wall of his local meat vendors from when he was a child. I am not sure if to laugh or cry at his offering, but will instead busy myself with further work on Henry
Fish-Monk is in a hopeless state of despair. He has been contacted by one of the last groups of practicing cannibals to let him know that he is infringing their intellectual property/cultural practices and have asked him to cease and desist from going any further with his project (under thread of legal action and mastication).
I was rather warming to the little fellow's idea and now will have to put up with his mood swings until he comes up with another ruse. The alternative is to encourage him to go on and rid myself of his bony a**e. What to do?
Meanwhile Henry is still being a complete pain. Based on a bottom up approach to AI- he will fail miserably. If MIT can get it wrong/take years/approach things top down/get funding of millions and still not produce something that could give Mr Turing's terminal the positive he requires, Then I feel a couple more weeks might not do it. Time for more horse meat I think!
I have just metaphorically kicked FIsh-Monk while he is down. The poor sop has come back to me with an idea for a rag doll kipper. After explaining to him that inverse kinematics/joints are not available within GS currently he insisted on perusing this avenue despite being warned. The up side of is now miserable state is that he has given me an idea.
A while ago, after experimenting myself up this creek with no paddle , I did get a few blocks when constrained together to flail about until they started to make my Imac smoke from it's vents. Remembering this now I wonder if it is possible to use joints (however limited/brutal) to simulate the death throws of a beached kipper ? I shall report back shortly.
Edit- due to the decision not to allow HTML5/Games-arcade entries to TOTB3 Fish-MOnk's 'WHo Eats Who?' would not have fetched up with any chance of being judged anyway as his super8 camera hasn't got a firewire or usb out. Better encourage him to forget it forever.
This afternoon when after a certain amount of yelling I was unable to raise Fish-Monk to attend my needs, I had to break out of my creative space in order to feed. There were no signs of life anywhere, and the keys to the spare submarine and a hand gun were gone. I waited for a few hours as I thought that perhaps Fish-Monk had gone 'shopping'. By 4.30 there was still no sign of him or the others, and not a morsel of food to be found anywhere so I decided to head to land myself.
After a quick flip of the old fins I was on the beach and making for the slipway when my eyes alighted on newspaper stand. Dread filled me.
'What has the old fool been up to?' I wondered.
With a quick zoot through my lawyer's numbers I found one of the faster and cheaper options and called. The slime-ball was most helpful and while leaving me on hold he made a quick call himself to the local lockup. Turns out Fish-Monk was arrested for using firearms during a sandcastle competition.
I quickly arranged to meet up with the lawyer at the afore mention lockup and see what could be done. We gained entrance with the help of a few folding notes and in minutes had the story.
It seems that my stealing of FIsh-Monk's joints plan upset him, and as he couldn't get a similar system working for himself and the lack of a template, he decided to emulate the joints by just capturing the twitching of a dying kipper by filming a fish while unloading his weapon into it and then he was going to cut out the images and sequence them all in GS to give a similar effect.
"FOOL!"
We managed to bail him out, as the man with the key happened to be a member of certain fraternal organisation that I subscribe to, and now we are back home and I have promised not to let him out of my care with anything more dangerous than black powder and a musket.
And who is to blame I ask you? How are we supposed to eat the d**n fish filled with holes? How is Fish-Monk supposed to get an entry in on time with a ban from the beach? What are we having for tea? I expect more from free software!
Fish-Monk has been locked in the cupboard with too much time, and a laptop. When he was let out he confessed that he'd been up to his old tricks and had come up with another idea incase my own don't come to fruition.
He offered up 'Fish FInder'. His he shot the footage for while in locked up. His idea replicates wandering aimlessly around a cupboard filled with fish, with only candles to find your way. He was also rather chuffed with himself for his multi-candle programming. This seemed a bit rich as all he was doing was cutting holes in a lump of black, but I am not sure how he got them moving about.
There was also the issue of his test being portrait, when if we are to hit the world through the joys of HTML5 he should have banged it out landscape. So we decided to put the monitor on it's side while we recorded it so it could be seen in the right aspect ratio.
this darn image code doesn't seem to be working... have things changed or am I as stupid as ever...
It has struck me like a bolt of lightening. Henry is an idiot! He was starting to make sense after the application of about 300 rules, 1200 pasted frames of lipsync and 20 minutes of audio. But I cannot be bothered. He is just plain stupid and besides... I have a better idea!
It struck me recently that when I was walking past a shop window wearing my top hat that I looked a little like Captain Beefheart on the cover of one of his finest albums. This was in fact the look I was after as I had heard a certain Ms. Love extolling his virtues and I have a bit of a hankering for Ms. Love. FIne figure of woman and as feisty as they come. Now that I am less than half fish, have always had a bit of a croak like the said Captain, and have a passing resemblance to one of her heros, I am in with chance. So where does this take me in terms of app development?
A situation arose this morning when I mentioned my longings to my humble servant Fish-Monk. He scoffed and lost his breakfast across the table.This riled me to the point where I took up a fish and struck him squarely on the face. It resounded with a very satisfying thut! And the servant dropped like a small felled ox.
Oh joy! I enjoyed it so much I took my fish and gave him 15 or 20 more. Then I sat down and did the crossword in Kerrang, while he recovered.
I notice with some surprise that all the clues in the cryptic section seemed intelligible to me. And what was more with a bit of hyphenation and txt spk I could manage to fit the answers in the grid. And why was that? They all spelt out the name of the woman I adore. It must be a sign! (and certainly clearer than the dream I had last night of being attacked by Big Bird in a sauna).
With my reluctance to carry on with Henry and only a week and a half to go, how was i to tie in my love for a good woman with the Ocean theme? I was not sure but I was still 'up' after dishing out a drubbing to Fish-Monk. Then it occurred to me. Use the moment and your own life as the basis of the game.
1). I loved hitting Fish-Monk with a fish. 2). I am part fish, part hormonally driven Ms. Love fanatic. 3). Combine it all!
I will make a two player fish slapping game with the winner gaining the hand of a beautiful rock socialite, and the world championship FFF belt (I say FFF as it stands for Fantasy Fish Fighting. This I have added as a bonus. I want everybody to enjoy and empathise with their character so will offer up player the chance to play as their favourite fish. This is a bit tough as there are not many well know fish characters outside of the Tokyo markets).
But player fish might include-
A loveable but just outside of copyright clownfish. A copyright expired white whale called Moby Dick Teeth- a nasty creature slightly similar to a great white shark in a movie FLooper the Porpoise (please note that any similarity to a well known sea going mammal is pure coincidence)
I shall not however be have anything to do with Killer Whales! (they are b*****ds!)
The only downside of a new development is that it delays my possible love tryst with the heavenly woman. So my reader... Should I search out love, or app development and glory?
Was it peroxide that give your locks the texture and look of Summer Straw? How can I resist the balm they serve when imagined rubbing on my scales And that skin of pale water when out of club in early morn And the ride upon sweaty tour bus does nought to quell feeling until now unknown.
I am a fish A man And in Love!
This is a pure poem from the heart of a fish that feels more manly each day with the the joys of fish slapping, and hard rock. I should say that I have knocked this up under the influence- that crazy brain state when a fish is intoxicated by pure beauty, and I have to thank Mr Razormane, for the use of this rendition of 'our' song. I contacted him as I was looking for something with a feel of the ocean and some sort of bridge to my love, to put in my new prototype. He responded right way and I really do thank him for it. I hope he like what I have done with it. So while whiling the day away with rose tinted glasses I set to gently test a few ideas and banged together some tests. If I do say it myself I think it went rather well. The animation of myself is rather ropey.
P.S. Apologies for the use of water going up and down. I just rather liked it and it was on the menu of items to include in my project as I wanted to get the player feeling sick with a nautical love. Mine is going sway about a lot.
old_kipper, you are always full of surprises and a delight to read. "Time for a new idea!" - you are also courageous! Tick tock, friend. Looking forward to the magic.
CircleTime said: old_kipper, you are always full of surprises. "Time for a new idea!" - you are also courageous! Tick tock, friend. Looking forward to the magic.
Dear Reader, tiz not the prize but the game. Fish-Monk is now taken over and is struggling with sine/cosine for our new seasickness inducing app (after I almost puked with the motion I managed to generate), and I'm on the camera control to give it a certain tilt-a-bility whizz. Good stuff and surprisingly it works.
Perhaps we will take out the enemy by uploading a few seconds of the results. It would perhaps give team Kipper an advantage if the opposition were laid low clutching paper bags.
Play up and play the game. Tally Ho!
Kipper
I deny that I have taken out any form of injunction, super or not. My connection with an overrated 'rockess' never existed and I am over it. I do not care if they shout my name from the stands at Man U or Twitter me. Damn them!
Things are going just swell... If you can excuse the pun. I have the got the camera working as desired and the water is moving in a pretty scary way. There are also experimental spry via particles but I am not satisfied with it yet.
The challenge is to make this game work orientation free, and to this end I have beat up my humble ecclesiastical minion to the point where he submitted to knocking out a photoshop safe area guide for switching camera. I post the link below as I am not sure I can post it here as the last attempt to post an image ended up in miserable failure and a kicking for the monk. So help yourselves me hearties... and if I see it as artwork within an app I shall come round and borrow your lawnmower and get my tom cat to despoil on your chaise-lounge. The image is already lodged with the wet fish commissioners, and they are a tough bunch.
LudwigHeijden said: Great work Kipper, I love your artwork. You have a great hand. (Hoping this makes sense in English)
Thanks mate! It's down to an early childhood defacing newspaper photos with moustaches and weird fangs, years of embellishing desks and textbook at school, followed intensive graffiti training, bad eyesight, too much caffeine, and being left finned.
Progress and a bit of a break through of the graphics side. Realised that it's looking like a cross between pixel art, and Saul Bass (in quite a good way)and I going to stick with it. Most of the environment is procedural which give lots of scope for colour effects and tweaking (with just numbers). I look doing this as you can change the whole look and feel with a few attributes, and in game you can change the mood. The main actor is animated cutouts (moved about in After Effects with the parent and child tool). I'm rendering it out white on an alpha and also playing with sections of the alpha in actual image files to mix areas of solid with semi transparency to get it 'sitting in the scene' and more integrated in the look and feel.
Part of the idea is to have the player influence the game but not totally in control. If left unattended the hero actor will 'go down', but will if I have time for the AI, put up struggle.
Currently wondering also about a title. Something simple. Probably one or two word. I am not really in a position to post a video of it yet as it only works properly on device and setting up a camera will take more time than I am willing to break from making. The other problem is stills. I can do them but I am under the impression that the forum image posting is bust.
It may not be to everyone's taste and might not be what anybody who has read this thread would expect, but I'm unexpectedly chuffed with the results of the labour. Sound effects I am not too worried about for the main, but there is possibly the use of a human voice. This in itself is not a problem but getting the voice just right, and not sticking out like a sore thumb might be hard. And music... The mood of the game will be very effected by any use of music, so I think I will ponder on. My skills in the playing department are limited, but perhaps with a hard whack at Garageband and ThumbJam I may strike lucky. I will leave this until I get the other audio in, and then try stuff against it. Currently I am thinking lone cello. And because I don't want to put people off, leaving it to the intro.
so back the animation. I hope to get it largely done today. I can see there will be about 200 frames and flips. Possibly more but I shall try to be economic. Much will be down to how well the basic behaviours look, and play when the animations are in. Currently without actor animation its running at 60 fps on an forth gen iphone and the memory is well up around 30meg. And all of this based on one animated title word, a spawning actor that self-replicates, a bunch of rules and some particles. Better keep an eye on things...
old_kipper said: Thanks mate! It's down to an early childhood defacing newspaper photos with moustaches and weird fangs, years of embellishing desks and textbook at school, followed intensive graffiti training, bad eyesight, too much caffeine, and being left finned.
I done all that, still your hand is way much better then mine
4 days and too, too much to do. There is something I thought of that I hope might make my game actually cool (if I can do it well), but it is going to push me time and experience wise.
Each time I put more work in on this one, and get something done, it looks simpler as a game. But it takes an enormous amount of effort for each step. Just wish I had started 2 weeks ago. It may kill me to get this thing finished in time, and I don't want it to be so very much less than I desire it to be. Whatever happens I will try to take it to the point where it is viewable and understood. I hope it doesn't disappoint me, or astound others with it's dullness.
your's, a worried kipper.
p.s. its possible to build a game upside down by accident! There is stuff in what I am doing with rotation that due to early set up a dev, I found I had to switch things 180. This ties in with GS and it's minor problem with going sub zero on rotations. There maybe a fix for this but currently I am working around it. So part of my game is upside-down in the editor (not on the device). I repeat... 'part of it'. Without going back through some rather complex stuff I cannot bear to review it will have to stay that way.
The monitor is encrusted with spittle, ash, and coffee spattering, but I am getting a little more chuffed. After I got so mad and confused with working with a mix of orientations, I stripped everything down and rebuilt it. In the process sorted some homegrown very, very basic physics, but in doing so lost a bit of crude charm.
The more I work on this stuff the more I find myself building systems that are tweak-able. A poor man's backdoor, I guess? I've also been starting to use overlays of debugging readouts and switches that hang off a boolean that with a jammy finger can prod to switch in and out. It a bit like an idiot doctor being able to attach his homemade x-ray machine to his little Frankenstein's monster. Other's may well have brains like planets but I need all the help I can get.
Comments
Hmmm?
Looks like some good pizza box....
I want some pizza....
How do I build an environment for the aquatic psychopath? Water and power are heady but dangerous mix.
And giving full reign to his glorious nature? Here lies the rub. In an ideal world with access to XML/LISP and a rubber case all would be fine. Will not GS step up to the mark and add rubber wear to the roadmap? Perhaps this is project Masala? We should be told! Did I not download this software expecting diverse waterproof fabrics and sealants in the post? Look what is happening! An aquatic based TOTB, 21 days, and no way to keep the humidity levels below 100%. I may as well go and sign up with the London Rubber Company as I am sure their products are cross platform, free on the NHS, and and glow in the dark!
Great work Kipper.
Keith
This morning I awoke to find that FIsh-Monk had slipped an old envelope under the door. He seems to be deluded that he could come up with something that might distract me from my path towards world power. HIs offerings are pitiful and mundane apart from one- Who eats Who?, but as I understand it Apple has a ban on cannibalism themed games. The most pitiful is 'stop the scurvy'. He explained that you would have to rub a citrus fruit on a salty sea dog to stop his teeth falling out. Sad!
KIpper
I wonder if anybody has done lip-sync in GS before?
Now I know nobody cares but Henry is getting just plain difficult. I showed him off to another dev and the poor man thinks that I may not succeed as no right-minded app purchaser is going to want their own Henry as it might scare the horses. LIttle does he know but that is the intention. At the moment Henry is barely brighter than a Toc-H lamp, and at this rate poor Turin would be turning in his far too early grave. Perhaps I underestimated the shear b****y work involved, but World domination is not something that falls off a log. I doubt I will get Henry to ever play chess, but that is not the goal. By Wednesday morning I want him tapping you rude responses to the good for nothing AI therapist Eliza. Chance would be a fine thing, and if he ain't up to it, it will be me trading in the last bits of my sanity for a few paltry marbles for him.
http://www-ai.ijs.si/eliza/eliza.html
Last night I retired exhausted after hours fighting a verbal tick that Henry had developed. He seemed to be randomly inserting and screaming the names of types of fruit. This I put down to my using a template for a gaming machine when I started my experiments. It seems to have gone away but it might just be I'm not on a winning streak.
I am wondering if I should post images/video of my project or keep it a surprise? Will some whippersnapper lift my brilliant idea and knock out a hacknkipper? Will I be inundated with requests for drinking partners or offers of marriage? Is the world ready for an eighth formed Henry without the implemented synchronised swimming? Should I see if I can program up the rubber hats wavy arms by the end of the day and post or should I make my pubic sweat?
The water is leaking into Kipper-Lair, confidence has dropped and all is despondency within the ranks. And why all this misery? A game changing update!
Fish-Monk informed me (while I was preparing to output my second build and the one that was to be the first public display of Henry) that 9.5 was upon us and that the game had indeed changed. Not only was the world going to be targetable through the iOS but now we have HTML5 to work our evil plan with... But only through a window no bigger than Henry's scaly belly.
I spat on the floor when it became clear that I would either have to get him to contort his fishy form so his head was repositioned*, or scale his impressive physic to a puny display size and rotate him to fit the landscape format. A fish laid flat is far less imposing and evil looking. What was I to do?
*(this would not be easy as he has lumbago)
And then there is the issue of security. If I allow Henry to be published through Chrome, will my AI monster be secure? Will not other super villains be able to grab his fishy assets and rebuild a pale but damaging imitation in a manner that those weak but commercially successful pig hating birds have been hacked? I am a worried fish. By allowing this to happen there is even the chance that clue to that defeat of Henry might be found. His fuse box is vulnerable and with knowledge of it, a pair of insulating rubber gloves and an old screwdriver it might be possible to remove his fuses and diminish his intelligence to the point where he not even capable of singing ditties. A sad state indeed.
So do I through caution to the wind in an epic battle to win that elusive Pro membership of do I just continue on with by current quest and aim for iOS? I know not.
I staggered about my room for hours, occasionally seeking solace on the forum for posts that might spur me in one direction or another. And then the final two straws! Two Posts that reveal that a battle was on. I see a couple of projects that might stand a chance against me if the judges are weak minded enough to be swayed by decent programming and original ideas. I spat again... twice.
My thoughts now are to indeed throw down the gauntlet, and put the wind up the opposition. Publish and be damned!
only the mouth and the voice is not jet synchronous;) (is synchronous good english? xD(you understand what i mean^^))
SO I let him upload the awful interface video and I display it below along with his point scoring system which he says is based on a butcher's chart that he remembers from the wall of his local meat vendors from when he was a child. I am not sure if to laugh or cry at his offering, but will instead busy myself with further work on Henry
I was rather warming to the little fellow's idea and now will have to put up with his mood swings until he comes up with another ruse. The alternative is to encourage him to go on and rid myself of his bony a**e. What to do?
Meanwhile Henry is still being a complete pain. Based on a bottom up approach to AI- he will fail miserably. If MIT can get it wrong/take years/approach things top down/get funding of millions and still not produce something that could give Mr Turing's terminal the positive he requires, Then I feel a couple more weeks might not do it. Time for more horse meat I think!
A while ago, after experimenting myself up this creek with no paddle , I did get a few blocks when constrained together to flail about until they started to make my Imac smoke from it's vents. Remembering this now I wonder if it is possible to use joints (however limited/brutal) to simulate the death throws of a beached kipper ? I shall report back shortly.
Edit- due to the decision not to allow HTML5/Games-arcade entries to TOTB3 Fish-MOnk's 'WHo Eats Who?' would not have fetched up with any chance of being judged anyway as his super8 camera hasn't got a firewire or usb out. Better encourage him to forget it forever.
This afternoon when after a certain amount of yelling I was unable to raise Fish-Monk to attend my needs, I had to break out of my creative space in order to feed. There were no signs of life anywhere, and the keys to the spare submarine and a hand gun were gone. I waited for a few hours as I thought that perhaps Fish-Monk had gone 'shopping'. By 4.30 there was still no sign of him or the others, and not a morsel of food to be found anywhere so I decided to head to land myself.
After a quick flip of the old fins I was on the beach and making for the slipway when my eyes alighted on newspaper stand. Dread filled me.
'What has the old fool been up to?' I wondered.
With a quick zoot through my lawyer's numbers I found one of the faster and cheaper options and called. The slime-ball was most helpful and while leaving me on hold he made a quick call himself to the local lockup. Turns out Fish-Monk was arrested for using firearms during a sandcastle competition.
I quickly arranged to meet up with the lawyer at the afore mention lockup and see what could be done. We gained entrance with the help of a few folding notes and in minutes had the story.
It seems that my stealing of FIsh-Monk's joints plan upset him, and as he couldn't get a similar system working for himself and the lack of a template, he decided to emulate the joints by just capturing the twitching of a dying kipper by filming a fish while unloading his weapon into it and then he was going to cut out the images and sequence them all in GS to give a similar effect.
"FOOL!"
We managed to bail him out, as the man with the key happened to be a member of certain fraternal organisation that I subscribe to, and now we are back home and I have promised not to let him out of my care with anything more dangerous than black powder and a musket.
And who is to blame I ask you? How are we supposed to eat the d**n fish filled with holes? How is Fish-Monk supposed to get an entry in on time with a ban from the beach? What are we having for tea? I expect more from free software!
He offered up 'Fish FInder'. His he shot the footage for while in locked up. His idea replicates wandering aimlessly around a cupboard filled with fish, with only candles to find your way. He was also rather chuffed with himself for his multi-candle programming. This seemed a bit rich as all he was doing was cutting holes in a lump of black, but I am not sure how he got them moving about.
There was also the issue of his test being portrait, when if we are to hit the world through the joys of HTML5 he should have banged it out landscape. So we decided to put the monitor on it's side while we recorded it so it could be seen in the right aspect ratio.
Watch and weep....
this darn image code doesn't seem to be working... have things changed or am I as stupid as ever...
It has struck me like a bolt of lightening. Henry is an idiot! He was starting to make sense after the application of about 300 rules, 1200 pasted frames of lipsync and 20 minutes of audio. But I cannot be bothered. He is just plain stupid and besides... I have a better idea!
It struck me recently that when I was walking past a shop window wearing my top hat that I looked a little like Captain Beefheart on the cover of one of his finest albums. This was in fact the look I was after as I had heard a certain Ms. Love extolling his virtues and I have a bit of a hankering for Ms. Love. FIne figure of woman and as feisty as they come. Now that I am less than half fish, have always had a bit of a croak like the said Captain, and have a passing resemblance to one of her heros, I am in with chance. So where does this take me in terms of app development?
A situation arose this morning when I mentioned my longings to my humble servant Fish-Monk. He scoffed and lost his breakfast across the table.This riled me to the point where I took up a fish and struck him squarely on the face. It resounded with a very satisfying thut! And the servant dropped like a small felled ox.
Oh joy! I enjoyed it so much I took my fish and gave him 15 or 20 more. Then I sat down and did the crossword in Kerrang, while he recovered.
I notice with some surprise that all the clues in the cryptic section seemed intelligible to me. And what was more with a bit of hyphenation and txt spk I could manage to fit the answers in the grid. And why was that? They all spelt out the name of the woman I adore. It must be a sign! (and certainly clearer than the dream I had last night of being attacked by Big Bird in a sauna).
With my reluctance to carry on with Henry and only a week and a half to go, how was i to tie in my love for a good woman with the Ocean theme? I was not sure but I was still 'up' after dishing out a drubbing to Fish-Monk. Then it occurred to me. Use the moment and your own life as the basis of the game.
1). I loved hitting Fish-Monk with a fish.
2). I am part fish, part hormonally driven Ms. Love fanatic.
3). Combine it all!
I will make a two player fish slapping game with the winner gaining the hand of a beautiful rock socialite, and the world championship FFF belt (I say FFF as it stands for Fantasy Fish Fighting. This I have added as a bonus. I want everybody to enjoy and empathise with their character so will offer up player the chance to play as their favourite fish. This is a bit tough as there are not many well know fish characters outside of the Tokyo markets).
But player fish might include-
A loveable but just outside of copyright clownfish.
A copyright expired white whale called Moby Dick
Teeth- a nasty creature slightly similar to a great white shark in a movie
FLooper the Porpoise (please note that any similarity to a well known sea going mammal is pure coincidence)
I shall not however be have anything to do with Killer Whales! (they are b*****ds!)
The only downside of a new development is that it delays my possible love tryst with the heavenly woman. So my reader... Should I search out love, or app development and glory?
An ode to the most wondrous woman on the planet
Was it peroxide that give your locks the texture and look of Summer Straw?
How can I resist the balm they serve when imagined rubbing on my scales
And that skin of pale water when out of club in early morn
And the ride upon sweaty tour bus does nought to quell
feeling until now unknown.
I am a fish
A man
And in Love!
This is a pure poem from the heart of a fish that feels more manly each day with the the joys of fish slapping, and hard rock. I should say that I have knocked this up under the influence- that crazy brain state when a fish is intoxicated by pure beauty, and I have to thank Mr Razormane, for the use of this rendition of 'our' song. I contacted him as I was looking for something with a feel of the ocean and some sort of bridge to my love, to put in my new prototype. He responded right way and I really do thank him for it. I hope he like what I have done with it. So while whiling the day away with rose tinted glasses I set to gently test a few ideas and banged together some tests. If I do say it myself I think it went rather well. The animation of myself is rather ropey.
P.S. Apologies for the use of water going up and down. I just rather liked it and it was on the menu of items to include in my project as I wanted to get the player feeling sick with a nautical love. Mine is going sway about a lot.
Perhaps we will take out the enemy by uploading a few seconds of the results. It would perhaps give team Kipper an advantage if the opposition were laid low clutching paper bags.
Play up and play the game. Tally Ho!
Kipper
I deny that I have taken out any form of injunction, super or not. My connection with an overrated 'rockess' never existed and I am over it. I do not care if they shout my name from the stands at Man U or Twitter me. Damn them!
Things are going just swell... If you can excuse the pun. I have the got the camera working as desired and the water is moving in a pretty scary way. There are also experimental spry via particles but I am not satisfied with it yet.
The challenge is to make this game work orientation free, and to this end I have beat up my humble ecclesiastical minion to the point where he submitted to knocking out a photoshop safe area guide for switching camera. I post the link below as I am not sure I can post it here as the last attempt to post an image ended up in miserable failure and a kicking for the monk. So help yourselves me hearties... and if I see it as artwork within an app I shall come round and borrow your lawnmower and get my tom cat to despoil on your chaise-lounge. The image is already lodged with the wet fish commissioners, and they are a tough bunch.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/190/cameraguide640.png/
pip pip! kipper
kipper
Lump Apps and My Assets
Part of the idea is to have the player influence the game but not totally in control. If left unattended the hero actor will 'go down', but will if I have time for the AI, put up struggle.
Currently wondering also about a title. Something simple. Probably one or two word. I am not really in a position to post a video of it yet as it only works properly on device and setting up a camera will take more time than I am willing to break from making. The other problem is stills. I can do them but I am under the impression that the forum image posting is bust.
It may not be to everyone's taste and might not be what anybody who has read this thread would expect, but I'm unexpectedly chuffed with the results of the labour. Sound effects I am not too worried about for the main, but there is possibly the use of a human voice. This in itself is not a problem but getting the voice just right, and not sticking out like a sore thumb might be hard. And music... The mood of the game will be very effected by any use of music, so I think I will ponder on. My skills in the playing department are limited, but perhaps with a hard whack at Garageband and ThumbJam I may strike lucky. I will leave this until I get the other audio in, and then try stuff against it. Currently I am thinking lone cello. And because I don't want to put people off, leaving it to the intro.
so back the animation. I hope to get it largely done today. I can see there will be about 200 frames and flips. Possibly more but I shall try to be economic. Much will be down to how well the basic behaviours look, and play when the animations are in. Currently without actor animation its running at 60 fps on an forth gen iphone and the memory is well up around 30meg. And all of this based on one animated title word, a spawning actor that self-replicates, a bunch of rules and some particles. Better keep an eye on things...
til later.
kipper
Lump Apps and My Assets
Each time I put more work in on this one, and get something done, it looks simpler as a game. But it takes an enormous amount of effort for each step. Just wish I had started 2 weeks ago. It may kill me to get this thing finished in time, and I don't want it to be so very much less than I desire it to be. Whatever happens I will try to take it to the point where it is viewable and understood. I hope it doesn't disappoint me, or astound others with it's dullness.
your's, a worried kipper.
p.s. its possible to build a game upside down by accident! There is stuff in what I am doing with rotation that due to early set up a dev, I found I had to switch things 180. This ties in with GS and it's minor problem with going sub zero on rotations. There maybe a fix for this but currently I am working around it. So part of my game is upside-down in the editor (not on the device). I repeat... 'part of it'. Without going back through some rather complex stuff I cannot bear to review it will have to stay that way.
The more I work on this stuff the more I find myself building systems that are tweak-able. A poor man's backdoor, I guess? I've also been starting to use overlays of debugging readouts and switches that hang off a boolean that with a jammy finger can prod to switch in and out. It a bit like an idiot doctor being able to attach his homemade x-ray machine to his little Frankenstein's monster. Other's may well have brains like planets but I need all the help I can get.