Pickled ramblings and homemade marmalade
We (my little family) were at the sea for a week. We got back - I went through all the stats and news. The only noticable thing that happened while I was gone is that Zemanta is one of 6 winners now at seedcamp. Ok, I suppose the news for some is also that iPhone got $100 cheaper but I already have some no-name Nokia and I don’t need anything better.
Do two posts in a row about some comp. make you a fan club?
I saw the news on techcrunch about seedcamp’s 20 finalists. There is a table below and I went scanning it with my brain’s ’search_the_table_column_for_string(1, “Slovenia”)’ function.
The function returned null but triggered the warning at last row - “realtionship detected”. Ok, I stopped the execution and ran the function ‘myfuzzydb_get_by_keyword(”zemanta”)’ and I got this back…
“zemanta is a 3.0 company where that young guy from TV is in and they made odprti kop and I was just at the next table in a bar last weekend when we meet my cousin and she didn’t know how to order an ordinary 0.3dl beer and it was fun and we had to walk like mad to the car twice to pay the parking lot, and he made odprti kop in django - python”
The point is… One of the finalists is from Slovenia. Congratulations! I saw their Diego Maradona demo and it is cool..
The third activity Qubi Slide has started working today. Two html based activities are in plans now. When we make around 7 activities we will contact a very good artist and I hope he will make a very nice user/website interface.
Swap, Slide and Draw were made with haxe, backend is php mysql, Flash comunicates with the backend via SoTinyRPC. Backend php is made with library Pulp
(this below is playable so press the buttons)
I am no scientist in AI, AIML or NLP but I am bit of a practitioner. Around 4 years ago I made a bot “Robotek Robi” with Python.
It used PyAIML and custom server made with Twisted Matrix that talked in XML to the Flash front-end. It was for website otroski.net (eg. kids.net).
A cute robot was looking at the cursor and chatting to you in natural Slovene language. To my knowledge it was the first AIML bot talking in slovene lang. Now the “tax department” has the (I presume AIML) bot named Vida with which you can chat about your tax formalities.
But imho there is actually no AI in AIML. AIML is
AIML shows one interesting thing… human dialogue in basically very shallow and doesn’t loose all that much if it’s reduced to simple action-reaction without any deep memory and structure.
Robotek Robi went to a vacation one day and never returned. I lost a server with root access so I couldn’t run it. After a year the “legend” formed in o.n. community that there once was this nice and very smart robot there that you could really talk to. But the fact is that when Robi was active 30% of chatting ended up with “oh ..you are so stupid” 
My writing to this blog seems like shit when looked from the distance. I have a theory that nobody is interested in my everyday thoughts, but I need some outlet to notify the “world wide humanity” of what new I have made and where they can find it (in which everyone is wildly interested).
So I end up not writing anything for a month and then stuffing 4 quick announcments into one post. And now that I thy to look back at what I have written and it’s all totally confusing and has no rythm.
So I decided to write more often in shorter posts, with 1 topic at a time. And I would
And this theme is clumsy!! I like minimal themes (what you are looking now is the new theme)
I had 4 BIG contract jobs… all started aprox. 1 year back … last 2 months were a hell but they are all getting finished these weeks… what a relief…
QubiDraw, the very first version is online and is here.
We are going for 3 days camping in the alpine camp Sobec in Gorenjska region this week. I pulled my kayak out and cleaned it. Can’t wait to sit in it and feel the flow of the water. This will be first camping for my 14 month old son… he just made 5m walk for the first time today (which according to my pedantic wife means that he is walking)
BTW.. Camp sobec is a really beautiful camp and that website and pictures really don’t do it justice.
Far, far away, behind 7 hills and a big sea — there is a restaurant in Springfield, Missouri, that has Brave Kid Printables on their kid’s menus. We got a nice letter from their local print-shop asking if they can use them. Of course we said yes. This gets booked under “nice, cute and unexpected things that happened to us”.
Another cute and unexpected thing that happened 9 months back was this video…
“I have to do the dance”
Kubi was basically the first “real” game I made. I got some lovely feedback for it… it got featured on Apple.com and it was one of 12 (2 of them were indie) games for kids in yearly round up in PC Magazine. These are the positive results… but all in all, it didn’t sell well. I have been working on the “next” Kubi since then..
Now after a lot of delay because of lack of time and good/clear concept… QubiDraw is finally about to start running. It’s tag-line explains the point quickly: KID FRIENDLY ONLINE DRAWING & MORE…
It is done with release-early/grow/release-often philosophy so first release will be very minimal - with simple “kubi” drawing.
I was checking out social networks/online (chat) worlds for kids lately. I didn’t like them much.. Then I discovered one reason why. The most prominent activity at most of them is consuming. By this I mean dressing up and customizing your character, gaining gear for him and displaying it out.
It’s more about what you get than what you do, more about having than creating. Maybe most of people are like that when they grow up and maybe that is more commercially successful. But if I will make a mmoie for kids it would be about creating not consuming.
Long time no write… just a quick update on what is going on…
We (my wife and me) released free flash game Bravekid Mini Solitaire. You can play it online here.
I am otherwise doing contract work most of the time (3 big projects).
TimeEaters.com has started.
We are making new Brave Kid Games webpage too.
—
and future? I will stay concentrated on bravekid games for a while… Kubi Online has finally recieved enought brain-cooking so I started to work on it serriously.
I had no time to write about a game that is almost finished.. you can find it here.
Watch the youtube videos on that page to see how to play.
I was looking for indie game videos on youtube and came to this. A backslash from the past (1987)… I haven’t seen it since I was a kid… Laibach’s video for song Life is Life… Laibach is the most controversial music group in Slovenia…
Did it confuse you?
Arsecast got a new episode + an interview with Moonpod’s Nick - go there
I opened a new blog called Indie Game Videos - go there too
What is an -Arsecast-?
It’s a series of podcasts about indie and retro remake games. It’s really great fun to listen too. The author probably escaped from something like monty python. I also like it because he knows how to be critical to games so it doesn’t get all soapy.
Slovenia (where I live) is mentioned in the interview too… Slovenia is small country so we genetically get very happy when anyone even mentions us no matter what he/she says
What is -Indie Game Videos-?
Exactly that.
Just a new update. Bugs got a little smarter, but IMHO much more interesting…
1400 tiny bugs - a test of speed mainly go play
400 various sized bugs - go play
I also now made Bugs classes in a way so I can easily extend to many types of bugs.. for now I have planned this ones “the curious type” and the “very afraid type”.. All source is again included.
//edit: new version - now things are getting some shape - go play
//edit2: if you wanna the much bigger thing that is growing out of this - here. You can register or just login with u: Dee Mo p: demo (and go to HOME INC and give yourself a health injection before taking a job because the person trying it before you might have used all the health - this is playable work in progress). I started to hate the fact that it’s about *shooting* beings… so I am thinking of making some strange twist to the whole thing… and another thing … it only works with browsers that support inline SVG… like FireFox and Opera (no MSIE).
Did my brain just fuzz off? No - it is just shortened title so it lacks some cruicial information. After 1 week of really constant contract work on some Java CAD application I said: “ENOUGHT!! It is sunday and it is middle of the night so I can do whatever I want to!“. So I stopped doing that Java CAD and instead of doing Alien Zze game (that I just have to finish) or Bushes (that I really just have to finish) or tinyIMS (that I have to polish some more) or any other thing that would be vise to make… I worked until 6 in the morning and made this…
Warning… althougth I like what I achieved in one night it’s still a little crappy piece which is only 5% of a full game (that I WILL eventually make). Go now and crush some bugs!
UPDATE (thursday morning): I took another night off and I have an updated version… you have four weapons now, movement is much better, effects are better, bugs have health resistance and weapons have different strengths too… Go here and try it… weapons are on 1, 2, 3, 4
Next thing I will try to do is make the bugs more intelegent and responsive.
