Flash Forward Austin report
Lately I've been working on several projects for the site as well as scouring the Web and going through all the game submissions looking for something truly exceptional to share, though nothing has really jumped out at me yet.
However, yesterday I did look through all the results from the recent Flash Forward Film Festival that were just announced last week in Austin, Texas, and there are some exceptional items that simply should not be missed.
First off, in the game category, award-winning design studio, Preloaded in the UK, took home the prize for their stellar work on Death in Sakkara, a game you should play immediately if you haven't yet. Kudos to everyone involved there at Preloaded and at the BBC for commissioning the piece. And yet that game was released almost a year ago(!) BBC and Preloaded: come on, you've whet our appetites, we want something new! =)
Ferry Halim's latest game, Bugs, was a finalist. That's another name we haven't heard much from in many months. I hope to see a new Orisinal game soon.
Also landing finalist spots were two intriguing Web games you may want to check out: Guardians of Altarris, an elaborate Flash fighter with a rich and deep control scheme and very pretty graphics and effects; and Playdo Jam, a browser game played with a Webcam that tracks player movement and motion, and uses that for the basis of its gameplay.
Besides the highly revered "game" category, there is still much to peruse through all the other categories as well. Just to get you started, be sure to see Bendito Machine, a finalist in the "cartoon" category. And while you're there at Zumbakamera check out some of Jossie Malis' other work, especially Good Morning Isamu and also Pacha. Absolutely brilliant style and design. Gorgeous.
Samorost 2 was a winner in the "original sound" category. Thanks for reminding me about that one, as it definitely deserves another play.
And in the "technical merit" category the Flash Commodore 64 Emulator deserves a mention for it's authentic emulation of a playable Galaga game, even though the controls for the game were technically messed up on my Mac—pressing the [right] arrow moved the ship left—though that didn't stop me from scoring over 50,000 points. =)
And that should keep you occupied for a while. I'll try to get another game reviewed later today. Cheers!
Glad to hear that Orisinal was in it. I remember playing his games.
Congrats to Preloaded, for Death In Sakkara was a great game.
That controls for Galaga were also messed up on a PC.
Left arrow moved the ship right and space fired AND moved you left. Couldn't find any other way to move left or fire. Wonderfully nostalgic, though. First computer was a Vic 20. :)
fyi, the joystick controls are mapped to the num pad (2, 4, 6, 8), not to the cursor keys. the fire button is mapped to the space key.
Hi Claus - I selected "keyboard" controls when playing, and I do not have a numeric keypad on my laptop. There was no indication of what keys I was supposed to press.
The space bar did more than fire as iceinexp also noted above, it also moved my ship to the left.
I'm sort of used to find out key-configurations. I play galaga with the A for left, the right-shift for right and the Z to fire. But it seems that almost every key does something, so you can find out something for yourself.
jay, sorry forgot to mention. please select joystick in galaga, and everything should work ok with the key setup i posted above.
admittedly, the keyboard mapping in fc64 is not optimal yet, we're working on it.
Sounds great, Claus. I'll keep an eye on the project as it seems very promising.
Will it eventually be able to accept uploads of additional programs, for example files in .prg, .tap, or .d64 formats?
The emulator itself already supports loading .PRG and .P00 (the games we provide in the demo are all .PRG). Next thing i'm going to implement is .CRT.
.D64 is not difficult to implement, but we currently have no 1541 emulation in FC64 so if the game tries to load additional data from that image at runtime it currently fails silently.
I'm working on a community site built around FC64 that would allow you not only to load and save images, but also to write Basic and ASM programs, debug anything and rip/create artwork for a 64. All live and webbased of course. This is going to take a while yet though as i can only work on it in my free time.
ARGH Jay, how could you let me miss this? I live in Austin!
:(
ooh...sweet. Pandora's awesome. Thanks, Jay.
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