http://nyarlulabs.tumblr.com/

new blog

Sun, 30 Jan 2011 07:16:43 +1100

so fickle… don’t like this blog any more, made a new one. this one will now languish….

for all future NYARLU LABS adventures, see http://nyarlulabs.blogspot.com

I like the end of the year

Thu, 23 Dec 2010 23:57:00 +1100

Magnetic Shaving Derby is free for the rest of the year. Yay! Thanks so much to everyone who played it, wrote nice things about it, sent me emails, LOL’d at it and all :D You make it worthwhile. <3

~~~

The overall MSD WINNAR of the year is Peevey, who managed the completely insane score of 46 MILLION in Score Attack mode. I still don’t know how he did it. My best so far is 29 mil! Nice work dude!

~~~

Here are some of my favourite iOS things of the year…

* Spirit by Marco Mazzoli. Lovely arcadey game where you encircle enemies in big vectory bubbles.. chilled but tense.

* So Long Oregon by Captain Games. Poubelle has dysentery and everyone else is dead, but let’s keep on wagoning all the way to El Dorado!

* Brickadelic by Alpha72. Trippiest, beautifullest brick breaking game in the world. Might be my favourite iPad game.

* Frogatto by Lost Pixel. 2D platformer…big nonlinear world. Lovely art and vibe. Mega quality.. feels like a snes game or something.

* DoDonPachi Resurrection and EspGaluda II by Cave. ZAPZAPZAPZAPZAP!

* Sword and Poker 2 by GAIA. Fun card game with a skimpy RPG clothes on. Really good.

* SunVox by Zolotov Alexander. Amazing modular softsynth/tracker (music making program!). Like having Jeskola Buzz in your pocket.

* Reactable Mobile by Reactable. Another music program, but this one is for live performance. Very cool and odd.

* Minotaur Rescue by Llamasoft. Not actually out yet but I got to beta test it. Awesome oldschool shooty asteroids game with subtle trippiness. Like playing an Atari 2600 in a dream.

~~~

Rock on.

v1.3 approved

Wed, 15 Dec 2010 03:38:15 +1100

yay! guess it was just the Christmas rush slowing things down.

I have added Game Centre and multitasking support for the next update, but won’t be submitting it until the 29th because of app store submissions holiday downtime.

my new music app project is going well. boogaloo beatbox is the tentative title. it’s going to be like a weird drum machine with some advanced sequence manipulation functions, and a cool looking interface. no boring buttons and boxes, just dancing people and exploding fruit and snowflakes and stuff. the aim is to make something that’s fun to watch, but also actually useful for music making.

the artwork and built-in sounds are being created by my good friend Kris Keogh. it’ll also be possible to load your own sounds into it.

nothing yet.

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 01:42:32 +1100

nothing yet.

MSD 1.3 in review...

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 01:07:00 +1100

After submitting this update a bit over a week ago, yesterday it reached Apple’s “in review” status. Yay!

But then, a couple hours later I received the famous email saying “We are currently reviewing an app that you submitted for inclusion on the App Store, and want to let you know that the review process will require additional time.” Eek!

Had a look round for posts by other people who’ve received this email and apparently it could mean anything from the update is going to be rejected, to the person assigned to the review had to pass it on to someone else because they were too busy. Most people who’ve had this email seem to have their apps rejected though. And lots of them have had to wait for ages before finding out the story..

I can’t think of any reason why they’d reject this (technically it’s exactly the same as the previous versions, just with more gameplay stuff), so hopefully it’s just that they’re a bit busy. Who knows. If I don’t hear anything within a few days I’ll send ‘em an email and see if I can get some info. Wait and see I guess…

More space surfing.. slightly higher quality vid.

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 22:48:00 +1100

More space surfing.. slightly higher quality vid.

Sun, 28 Nov 2010 00:23:51 +1100

Video

Sat, 27 Nov 2010 15:48:42 +1100

Better surfing

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 15:17:35 +1100

So that MSD update’s been out for a few days. Cool. But I’ve decided Space Surfing mode needs more. It was originally inspired by the very simple Balloon Trip mini-game in Balloon Fight on the NES. I love the idea of an extra game mode, using some of the same basic mechanics and resources as the main game, but with different setting and gameplay.

So, Space Surfing in MSD 1.2 is about that simple. But it seems a shame not to add a bit more stuff and make it more interesting.. there’s not much point if it’s not fun to play more than a couple times eh.

So I’ve been slacking on my other project for just a little bit longer to work on this, and man it’s coming together! It’s miles better. Worth submitting a new update as it is already, but I’m going to get as much in as I can and submit before I sleep tonight.

MSD 1.2

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 21:14:30 +1100

Submitted version 1.2 of MSD this morning. It has a new bonus minigame mode wherein a peguin surfs on a razor in space, collecting rings and dodging space junk. It has a bunch of small cosmetic enhancements and reworked menus. It’s a bit more optimised. It’s also now a universal app.

Running on an iPad, it doesn’t do anything fancy.. just upscales everything 2x and sticks it in the middle of the screen. Just like running an iPhone app in 2x mode, but without the horrid blurry filtering. MSD iPad is nice and crisp and runs lovelyly. =)

Now I’m off to work on a top secret music app..

Memetic Shaving Derby

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 17:26:00 +1000

Charlie of Charlie’s Games is currently finishing off his amazing looking shooty game Scoregasm. It has a crazy amount of stuff in it. Including weird minigames, like the one in the video below.

You should go check out his games, especially if you’re at all into shoot-em-ups. Scoregasm, Bullet Candy, Irukandji, SPACE PHALLUS! They’re good fun, beautiful to look at (and listen to), and they come in Windows, Mac and Linux flavours. www.charliesgames.com.

-=-
Additional: Sunrise Moon has made an online magnetic shaving game! It plays differently to MSD - you steer the constantly moving magnet + razor with cursor keys. It even has a rather epic story. This story includes an act of bear shavery. :D

Check it out here: A Close Shave

wave crashing

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 17:56:00 +1000

I released a free album. Thirteen tracks made over the last decade. They were gathering dust on my hard drive so I figured I’d do something with ‘em. These were made with Jeskola Buzz on various ancient computers.. external sounds recorded with minidisc + stereo condenser mic. It’s odd sort of ambient stuff mostly. Best listened to on headphones, alone, in the dark. Share and.. enjoy?

http://4096salts.bandcamp.com/album/wave-crashing

LD18 and other stuff

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 23:06:00 +1000

I’ve been messing around with this tumblr trying to make it behave. It looks pretty but I can’t get comments to work how I want (they work ok on blog posts, but not on ‘pages’?). Maybe I should make a blogspot blog instead. Not that I’m good at blogging… I tend to get grumpy and delete all my posts every few weeks.

In other news, I started learning Actionscript and Flixel. It’s awesome fun. I entered Ludum Dare, the famous 48 hour game making competition. The theme was ‘enemies as weapons’.. I made this dancing game. There isn’t much to do in it yet. I’ll probably keep working on it. Source code is here (it’s horrid!)..