Google Maps: Pokémon Challenge

Daily Project Compilation

Did you remember the Antonio Vicentini's Daily Project I've said before? Well it doesn't turned out as expected, but still pretty awesome. Check the 10 days compilation.

Dance on the Circle

woah!

North Wind: Trill of Consciousness - First level!

Hey guys! Yup I made a game and stuff. I am not very good talking about my own stuff. Usually I do better praising other works. You can watch the trailer here:



So, to be fair with this creation of mine -that I'm pretty proud of- I will make a quick Walkthrough. How to beat Level 1 first "puzzle".

:D

So, this game is exploration with puzzle. Not focusing on combat, when you hit an enemy it is a brawl, dude. You get damaged and so do the enemy. That is a wild world out there.

Anyways.

Posture!
First, the best way to hold the iPad to play North Wind: Trill of Consciousness is like a huge Game Boy. Portrait position. Four fingers of each hand holding the back of the iPad and leaving thumbs free!

Start the game, a menu screen will load with a "New Game" mark on it. And a huge yellow button.
You can see some marks on the screen.

Swipe menus! (First time playing? Press the yellow button and jump to "Starting the game" section)
The standard language is English, you can skip this if you want to play that way. 
Swipe the top mark (on the title) to change the language. If you swipe once, you get the Brazilian Portuguese language setting. If you try one more swipe you will manage to see some Japanese characters, but no access to it - that's normal! It is under construction. Soon I will release the Japanese version.

If it is your first time playing you can skip this one:
Swipe the middle mark (on the 'new game' or 'level: x deaths:x') and it will appear a message asking if you want to delete the actual game. (if you have already played, sure). Press the yellow button twice to confirm the complete deletion, and the game will reset to 'new game' once again.

With the language defined and the 'New Game' on screen, press the yellow button. A mini story will pop while the maps are loading.

Starting the game!
The game starts with Makayla (the blonde pixel sprite) waving at Dir! Dir is our main hero. He is just a boy occasionally mentored by this blonde Amazon. Go there meet her. The game don't have a tutorial like: 'go left, press jump'... because I assume that you have already played a game on your life and can figure stuff out. But if you can't: use your thumbs to press the directional grey buttons. The purple button is jump!

When you reach her, you may have learned how to walk, and how far can you jump! Nice. You get and item from her. A shining pearl it is pretty useful on dark places, like this nice cave you are about to enter.

Keep going down. You can slip trough the rope at left or just jump right at the floor. Height won't kill you on this game! Go at the water, float till the other side. Keep walking right until a scene begins.

Dir sights a bat. You have to kill it to impress Makayla. But Dir felt a tremor and as you may have noticed something pretty odd is happening out there. A bunch of monsters and stuff on sky. Wow. Makayla must be in danger. Dir still need to beat the bat. Like I said before, lean on it! This is not super Mario, so you don't need to hit the head. Just tackle him down. You will get light injured.

Now the path is opened, you can go back and see what the hell is going on! Apparently Makayla is heavily wounded. And your future doesn't look brighter. 

Boss: Incubus

Incubus is ridiculous strong for a boy! You can try your best... you can't reach him.

The only thing remaining here is: death..ops! What? 

Werefox!

When Dir faces any Vampire, the smell of these creatures do some inner damage on his mind. After Dir is beaten up, an inner fox souls takes place. It is more strong and can jump higher. Incubus is no match for you now, perhaps his energy balls are a lil annoying and protect him. Avoid them, hit him and kill it.

After beating the boss, the Mandragora monster will lose all its energies. And will be back as a seed. Dir get it and attach it on his body. Now he is able to absorb purple energies. Beware! If a monster attacks you with a purple energy it can hurt you - because they are full of evil intentions. When you get these energies standing still on the wild is pretty safe. Mandragora will eat it and will get stronger. 

Small energies give: 1 energy point

Big energies give: 5 energy points

Get the energy and Mandragora will level up.

This is basically a "not declared" tutorial. You manage to understand the basics of play.

You can see this whole process at this video gameplay made by TouchGameplay:

First level puzzle.

After first level up you will be able to swipe and change the screens! (Like it happened when the Incubus appeared). You can only swipe between 3 maps at level one. But is pretty enough right now.

Stay away from screen divisions. Hold off the buttons and wait. Did shining lines appeared on the screen? 

NO:

You are on some wrong spot. Stay at a lower place on the map.

YES:
Great! The map screen are now divided on 3 pieces. #Top, #Middle and #Down. You can also notice some marks on each piece. Green arrows show that there is some maps to the right! If you swipe to the left you can access them. The red bar indicates that you can't swipe that map yet. On the screen above you can notice why: Dir is on the map. You can't swipe it if Dir is on it or if Dir is in the middle of the line. The reason is clear: Dir would not divide himself in the middle! With that in mind let's advance.


-if you want to beat the game by your own guts, don't read bellow, try your best and good luck. if you are stuck tho... keep reading-

To stay easy I will call maps by numbers.

MAP1: with the cave and castle as background, the Rock Fields
MAP2: with the forest and egg at top of a mountain, Rock Forest or something like this xD
MAP3: the lava abandoned pit, The Pit

First thing:
Change the #Middle to MAP2
Change the #Top to MAP2.
(just swipe to the left one time each).

You will put on screen part of the forest map.

So make this configuration:

#Top MAP2
#Middle MAP2
#Down MAP1 --> you are here

Jump to the #middle map, and climb the mountain at right, until you reach the "egg" at #top.
Change the #down to MAP2.
Change the #Middle to MAP1.

You see a little opening? Go there, take the little energy inside the cave at #Middle. continue going down until you reach #down! Now you are at the cave made by the dwarfs! Watch out for the traps!!
Change the #Middle to MAP2.
Keep going up until you can reach the #Middle. Grab the bracelet. Now you can break grey boulders!
Yay! :D

And that is it. You get your first item. Now you can explore some new areas. Now is up to you, folks.

The Expert (Short Comedy Sketch)

haha damn!

Japanese Sushi Ads

Something like "our sushi is not fake". haha

This Is a Generic Brand Video

Crazy Ride - Insomniac Games (20th Anniversary)

Usually I am not a fan of enterprises 'self-made inside videos'. I mean, videos with employees happy, showing how is awesome to work at the place. With plastic smiles on the face... agh! Ad agencies tend to do this a lot. I am kind old school on that, like... I think that to raise the flag (or ~wear the shirt~ I don't know how to translate some national Brazilian terms of effort here) of the enterprise is to work and honour the enterprise. Not just do anything the enterprise ask for. Because they can be wrong, and it is your task to show, explain and prove your point. As is your ask to accept if you are wrong or to follow plans. But the communication is a must. And no one must be offended on that.

But when the enterprise choose to do a video. With you. Singing. It is a nice time to say: no.
First because you are not an artist. So there must be a lot of editing. Heavy editing. It must be a hyper produced video. A hollywood ad. Or it will be just plain bullshit. And you will be exposed there.
This is not "wear the enterprise shirt". This is just stupid.

In my past experiences I lived some some intolerant bosses, failed human management, on a eager necessity of showing greatness and happy ambient. Where only ordinary or even wishy-washy routine is the reality.

I made all this introduction to share this awesome video telling about the 20 years of Insomniac studios. This video is brilliant - with a goofy music. And felt kind honest. Not an enterprise showing how they are awesome to stand this many time active. Or creative (I hate this term). Or how they are brilliant and great. But an enterprise that learned to change among the time. That learns with experience and people. Organic! Not just happy. Being just happy is silly.

Hi. I’ve made a game.

Hi. I’ve made a game.

Yeah. Video games. When I was a baby my mom wanted me to have some tech stuff. She always loved to see tech stuff at the time. And bought me an Atari. I grew in a religous family with strict rules about playing. “There is moment just the right moment for everything”. They don’t wanted a spoiled addicted child, I guess. I was addicted but pretty obedient. I got a Mega Drive yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaars later. So I have played Atari a lot. Pitfall was the best.

But my favourite childhood games were Golden Axe and Streets of Rage series. I was a SEGA boy, since my first console right after an Atari was Mega Drive (Genesis). I would later get a Super Nintendo. But the colours, speed and kind more upbeat/mature music of Sonic make Mario just a kid game for my taste.

For Super Nintendo I loved the game Yu Yu Hakusho Final: Makai Saikyo Retsuden (at the time people at Descalvado, where I lived, used to call it Namcot Final - damn japanese titles lol). And for PC: Ultima VIII.

I always told my sister that I would be video game music composer. Just because I could do some freaking noises with my mouth. What a stupid, stupid child I was. haha

So I always was like thinking about ~working with something to do with games~. Simple like that. Like a kid wants to be astronaut. 

Being professional

But the things got serious when I saw the intro of Legend of Zelda, at a store on a shopping at São Carlos, Link riding Epona. No sound - I was outside the store. I didn’t had contact with older Zelda series before. First time meeting Link. I was like: I want to do this. I want to do video games. 

And I started to look about it, study. I see the term game designer. I was like: no shit. 

While some friends were ~tasting teenaging~ drink wine at central square, I was so hooked with King of Fighters on a local Arcade. I even started to do my own Video game project. A fighting game called North Wind. Each team had 3 fighters. And I started to draw them a lot with Yu Yu Hakusho references. I started to write a lot of background story. My mom said it was a bit confusing. And my dad criticise that “why all the characters sounds like japanese names”.

It was the first time I take a step out of my references and started to create my own stuff. I even did a small class of Game Design with a japanese teacher. It was in 2000 I guess. The fighting game got bigger and turn out to be a RPG. x) At the time an english teacher who came from Wales lent me a Zelda cartridge to Game Boy. Man, I love that game. It was a black cartridge. Original! It was AWESOME!! Zelda always impact me like that. 

Starting prototypes

I moved from Descalvado to Franca. At college, a physics teacher knew my desire of working with games and showed me RPG Maker. I started my first game production right there. I made a lot of “Beta’s”, North Wind got a lot of characters and branches. It was a mess. I lose a lot of content with HD burning and stuff. A teen drama. 

My North Wind game scripts got a lot of content. Zelda was on my head. Castlevania was on my head. And then it happens: Castlevania: Symphony of The Night.

dammit! I need to work with games so hard. lol After that time I tried some school at USA but they do not want foreign at the moment.

In Brazil, at the time, there was a post graduation course at a far away city. I was like, ok…I will do anything and go post graduate. That was my silly mind at that moment.

So I made Advertising.  …

My father works with Marketing, and speak about it at lunches - so it would be easy for me (4 YEARS DUDE, SERIOUSLY??).

In my mind I really wanted to avoiding programming. I always thought that: I’m a game designer, I have to think about experience. And schools make you hate math, so in the end you don’t know how cool math can be.

The university really screw me up. I started an innocent guy, doing ads classes and as hobby a RPG for the university. An horror game about a girl that wakes up in the university and it is already late. She is surrounded by large roaches, ghosts… a flying lizard?? and she need to explore the university to get the fuck out.

I never finish it. My mistake was to keep upgrading RPG Maker on all it versions. With this, I had to do a lot of “rework”. 

But at a bright side It was my first interaction with programming: the basics, if/else, fork conditions,  scripts in Ruby. I was really on it.

But I was having a hard time: I didn’t like advertising. I wanted to quit classes in the end of the second year. But my mother don’t accept it, so I finish against my will. Some teacher were really monsters that craft ego outside of our selves. I was transformed on a dick person. In the last year of university I was a total dick.

There was 3 stuff that happens to me that split me out of this nonsense moment:

1- The lost of Graduation hat

I have a musician friend that I helped a lot to pass the classes while he could totally focus on his music, so when he saw that I lost my hat he gave me his and said:

- you can have it, it is important to you than it is to me

That thing really hits me. I was like: this is not important to me. Why I care about this hat anyway? Simbolize something I don’t wanna do.

A nail on my brain. A crack on the ego persona.

2- The architecture student waiting for the bus

The dude was trembling, smoking 3 cigars per second… I asked if he was ok, he said:

- when this all finish (university), I hope I can go back to be who I was.

Another nail on my brain. A bigger crack on the ego persona.

3- The girl I had a crush

Then I saw a girl I used to like on the first year of university. She used to be a very mean to me, but I wouldn’t care. Every time I tried to be clever than before and make she smile. But she would always be hard on me. Always. Thinking about that, my experience with girls on university was so lame. Maybe this helped to make myself a dick too. lol Anyways. But then I met her again. The mean girl and the dick me. I thought: bla… she just hates me.

She was with a big smile, talking with me. I was like: is she drugged? But she said that really liked me, because no matter what she would say, I always gave her a smile.

Bang! my ego persona was killed. I was blinded. I created a being to finish the university, but the creature continued on me. Everything makes sense again. Fuck this university. Where was I this whole time? This is not important to me, I want to make games.

And that is why I am so bad with girls. lol

So I start to study, bought books, stuff. I wanted to know terms, professional methods. I got my old University Horror Game and tried to make it a popular game. I remake it and used Marimoon as character. I’ve used a popular girl in Brazil because I wanted to get feedback. Certainly her fans would play it and talk about it. What was the point to make a game and nobody knows about it? 

Despertar de Mari

Mariland

With this experience and feedback I could build up my confidence. My plan was: go to Japan, sit in front Konami’s door and beg a job until I starve. That’s me! My father was so worried, because I was deadly serious. I told him: If i have to work with ad I prefer to kill myself. And he was like: woa, calm down. I was a lil misguided about things. Started to do Theater classes. I was searching things to handle experiences, create characters and stuff - voice acting would be pretty awesome too. I was searching this aspects of creation and stuff.

Then Ubisoft came to Brazil with a game designer position. That was my time. But…. What should I send? a curriculum? pff. thats lame. I have nothing. RPG maker prototype with pixel pop artist? don’t make me laugh. I was empty handed. I researched and saw they want to make a DS game. So I made something that I am pretty proud of. I’ve found a DS game maker stuff. it was a pretty basic stuff that could make homebrew games to run on flashdrives and specifics cartridges. It could run on DS. The software had a lot of limitations and watermark on screen. It was really no good. So I started to edited the programming on Text notes. and compile with Eclipse I guess. And I freaking made a curriculum running on Nintendo DS. 

I was stunned. I made the package, It was ready to send, I open the Ubisoft site and: no position available. Dammit! What?

I was late. So I tried the old good internet, found the place Ubisoft was, send it anyway.

No response. I tried to call, emails. Until a day an HR guy answer me. He told that find it pretty impressive and in the first opportunity they would call me. I was like: happy!

And then my parents get divorced. That was quite traumatic. They were divorced but living at the same roof. My sis was married, And I was the only one here. I felt like I was holding them. Like a needle. And then Antonio, my friend, invited me to go to São Paulo. He don’t even had a home yet. He was living with some familiars. And even still he invited me. “come here we managed to do something”

:~

And I leave everything behind for the games. Even a girl I was with at the moment - for unbelievable it looks like. At São Paulo I was searching for any job. Just to stay close to Ubisoft. I past 3 months of total despair. Low money.  No job. Low food. Living under a roof by favor. But I manage to get a job finally. A cool one. Sell video games at a bookstore - how cool is that? A good experience. I met a lot of cool dudes, learn a lot about the market. But after 8 months, I was consumed. I did a lot of side projects in the meantime (paper, concept) and sent to Ubisoft.

some characters done with Antonio/DS project

some characters done with Antonio/DS project

Some facebook game prototype

Some facebook game prototype

No answer. Then I discovered the HR guy that was my contact wasn't at ubi anymore. Plus Antonio leave São Paulo. I was quite alone. I manage to live with my friend John for sometime. I even did a 4 days project - on my xmas vacation.

Reroute 2 Remain

Reroute 2 Remain

Reroute 2 Remain

Reroute 2 Remain

But John had a serious accident right after and came back to Franca. And I was alone again. And I left SP for the first time. I thought: in 3 months I will be back.

I made another project, and Antonio was back to São Paulo. I asked if I could spent a weekend at his house to send a project to ubi. He said it was cool. I went there. Sent the ubi the project. And in the same afternoon I got a call. I got a job. Not at Ubisoft, but as game journalist. What a plot twist. 

I work for Pop.com/games. Had a column about japanese games, met a lot of my personal heroes (old journalists from loved magazines). Tested some games. Learned a lot. I also visited some game schools. At the time "Game development" courses was trending. But was kinda disappointed. I made a distant course on Java. Made a lil game of pong. lol

I also had some interviews on new companies spawning at the moment, but I was rejected because I don't had experience - the enterprise don't have either... ¬¬ anyways you can't judge experience. A shower in the rain is a experience. Frustration is a experience. Moving on...

At the time Pop never wrote any article about indie games nor national made games. But I showed the game Talbot Odyssey (Miniboss) to the guys and they were very impressed and permitted to write an article about it.



Miniboss was like a relief for me. Finally a good stuff that mixed art+content. I was really angry with national scenario and Miniboss really made me proud of being a Brazilian wanting to work with games. I made quite a raging article. But my editor like it and approved it. After a while I get out the job. São Paulo is a very expensive city. I came back to Franca without perspective. Found myself in 3 shit relationships. I was really down. Broken. When Antonio came back from São Paulo to live in Franca. He and a fellow were about to open an animation studio. And ask me if I knew how to do apps for iPhone. I never knew shit about apple stuff. Just that were expensive stuff.

But I said: I can learn. I did a curriculum on DS godammit

My father helped me with an iMac, I got an iPhone.

I got seriously fucked up with money. I've started to study like was no tomorrow. 

The guys ask me a lot of prototypes. They got tons of ideas. Child books. Child games. Shoes catalogues. All for iPad. I had to do on iMac, go to the fellow house, got his iPad, came back to home build it, goes back to fellow and present it... But there was a serious problem. I made the prototypes, but it ends there. Nothing happens. The guys wont do nothing! When we got our first client I got so excited that I bought an iPad with the help of my mom. It was my last breath. It was also the last breath of the group. We got disbanded. I was bankrupt. 

It was a really fucked up moment. My mom helped me a lot. I was living under her roof again. I was marching to 30 years. I was a failure. I just hated myself because nothing goes right.

I tried talk with people. With the indie people from here. But everyone seems to be occupied with a lot of stuff. People were doing things. Traveling. I feel that I was interrupting them. Being annoying. I don't want to bother no one. I just want to know if I can help. I can do stuff for mobile.

But nobody wanted mobile because there is “just shit games”.

I said, “well this is a good scenario. maybe this is an opportunity to make a good game”

But I was kinda alone again. And my confidence was down the river.

Then I said. I will do this shit. I will do an entire game on my own. Art, music…everything. I don’t know how, but I will. I will draw a stick. Like that minimalist Street fighter characters.

I’ll try my best. I will not bother anyone. I will just do it. I knew that indie scene was about a community, people helping each other. And stuff. But now I feel like I was the anti-christ of Brazilian indie. I got myself inside my cave (bedroom). Don't bother anyone. And make something depending on no one. 

There is a lot of people out there that don’t do any games. Don’t do any apps and start speaking on how to do stuff. List rules. People gaining money trying to teach something they don’t personally achieve. While some may not achieved but researched a lot and have some basis to speak, there is also a bunch some o crap. I research a lot in the middle of garbage and could find also a lot of cool and precious stuff. For this game I’ve used my feelings and a lot of searching on Stackoverflow (I did just one question but I manage to figure it out by myself - nobody understand it anyway :~ Yup, I've deleted all my code haha).

I don’t make a game to be commercial. I made a game out of an idea I had and believe. I wanted it to be mine game, so I used old papers I had written when younger. I wanted to make it cool for me and respectful to all the references I love.

And the first success tip I read on internet was: to make a successful game, give it a short name. And that is how it is born: North Wind: Trill of Consciousness.

Because list of rules sucks!

[soundcloud]

Dark Noir

Co-created animated film by Rafael Grampá and Absolut Facebook fans worldwide.

DJ Snake & Lil Jon - Turn Down for What

I hate when this happens...

10 Strangers Eat Sandwiches for the First Time

CollegeHumor's Favorite Funny Videos

This is a parody of this one - First Kiss ad. Even Mike Falzone on it x)

Elliot The Bull - Colourblind

Mom Tries to Teach Girl Life Lesson

Ballad of a WiFi Hero

:D

[Full Movie] Italian Spiderman

Trailer: Full movie: )

Dan's Parents' House

This is Dan. He is a vendor at Brooklyn Flea, a weekly Flea Market in Brooklyn, NY. He easily has the busiest, most unique booth in the whole place with something for everyone. This is his story.

[Ad] FIRST KISS

This is an ad for Wren clothes. The concept is: "Twenty complete strangers asked to kiss each other for the first time." All of them, sure, using Wren brand.

Space Replay

"A floating orb that explores and manipulates transitional public spaces with particular acoustic properties. By recording and replaying these ambient sounds, the hovering sphere produces a delayed echo of human activity.

Electronics were programmed and inserted into the sphere in order to record and replay the surrounding sounds. "

Revenge of The Lol Cat

Big Brother Helps Little Sister

:~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

JAXA & NASA Space Mission

Nasa and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency 'JAXA' launched a Japanese H-IIA rocket. It has onboard the GPM (Global Precipitation Measurement) Core Observatory. It can collect data about rainfall and snowfall every three hours. There is a short anime about this launching, with a girl who works at JAXA and have a sister who will marry. As she works her relationship with her NASA partner, she is preparing herself for the wedding party.