Category: Videogames

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betaDwarf ITU Copenhagen Videogames

A day at Copenhagen Games

I have a confession to make:

Up until last week I had never seen any e-sports event. Not just that I hadn’t ever been to one in person, but I just seriously had no idea how big the scene was!

And now, after spending an entire day at Copenhagen Games with the awesome people at betaDwarf, I can say I’m amazed at all the craziness going on.

Starcraft II matches being commented live? Check.

Counter-Strike 1.6 teams full with their own jerseys? Check.

Booth babes giving away free coke and chewing gum? Check.

Lots of beer in Denmark? Check.

So what was I doing there? Capture every single moment on video, of course! betaDwarf had their booth in a very visible area, right next to the Snot! and World of Football booths, two amazing indie games under development right here in Copenhagen, and in front of the massive EA booth for FIFA Street.

And what was going on in our booth? You guessed! We were letting people play the latest playable build of Forced!

Forced is the new name for what was previously being called Faith of the Guardians, a co-op arena combat game in which up to four players will have to complete a series of challenges as gladiators.

Some of the people who stopped by and participated in our tournament to see which team achieved the highest score even walked out with Diablo 3 beta keys!

I’m sure you will be able to see what it was like at Copenhagen Games really soon at www.betadwarf.com, but meanwhile you can have a sneak peak with these pictures.

      

Categories
ITU Copenhagen Stupid things Videogames

Cake Wars! Or how to make someone’s birthday feel special =)

It all started with a cake by Tim Garbos in Corinne’s Facebook wall for her birthday (as seen above).

And what started as an innocent little monster cake with a Danish flag became a series of back-and-forths between some of us to out-do the other. A real cake war!

In came Samuel Walz’s improved version of the cake, dubbed the Cakemonster 4.2 (in a seemingly random version upgrade) with:
– More candles
– More strawberries
– Improved danish flag (more cozy according to Sam and possibly attracting Spanish tourists)
– Candles already lit

This upgrade didn’t go unnoticed, and soon after Kristín posted on Corinne’s Facebook wall yet another improvement!

This new sexier version of the cake was now up to Cakemonster 6.8 (Woah! These numbers go up fast!) and according to the official changelog it included:

– Make-up, it’s what every cakemonster needs to feel oh so pretty
– Bigger shoes
– Two extra creepy fingers on each hand!
– Engraved candles

Then Kayode (feels so weird to call him like that now when we all name him K.) allowed us to take a break from monster cakes and gave Corinne a different kind of drawing. Birthday laser included.

But alas, it didn’t take too long before the Cakemonster evolved even more! Now it went up to a more stable-looking version 7, courtesy of Freyr!

This version’s biggest upgrade was obvious: the Cakemonster was now together with its extended family! (With a lovely meme in the background).

At this point even Google joined the cake party!

Meanwhile I was deciding how to add my two cents for Corinne’s birthday, and seeing how I was in the 3D Game Art course at that moment it just felt right to take the cake to the third dimension!

Apparently the one who started this entire cake trend, Tim himself, felt up to the challenge. After all my cake was in 3D, sure, but it was not our dearly beloved Cakemonster! So here came the new 3D rendition of it by Tim!

Taking it personally (I mean, come on, Tim did publicly state that his cake was meant to beat mine!) I declared the Cake Wars and quickly returned this personal attack with the following picture with my cake angry and ready to cut the Cakemonster (9.3? I lost count of the version number already!) in pieces:

But it seems like you cannot simply take it against Tim’s cake and leave unscathed… His next move took it yet one step further! The Cakemonster could now move and do a backflip! Or a sideflip… Or… well, something that ends with lots of colorful lines! It lacked the several improvements made during the day, but hey! It jumps! And that’s awesome, right?

Ok, so he’s made the Cakemonster animated? Alright! I’ll take it on! I’ll make it interactive!

After all we’re Game Designers in here, so why not quickly learn how to do a simple First Person Shooter with the Cakemonster?

Of course a picture just doesn’t show the full thing, so why not give the game a try? It’s available here and it only needs the Unity Web Plugin to play!

At this point Tim had made me think that he was giving up and would not take it further (LIAR!), so I happily sat down… until an unexpected challenger raised up!

The duo of Samuel and Kayode surprisingly made this flash game based on Space Invaders, with with the Cakemonster (this time once again in its latest version) attacking… both Tim and me. Oh noes! Nice touch with the custom-made music, by the way! Of course you can also play it yourself here!

Were these two the winners of the Cake Wars? Up to now Corinne had received more than enough cakes and Cakemonsters to make this for her most delicious birthday yet.

But NO! That was definitely not the end of it! While I couldn’t stop laughing at the second Cake Wars game, Tim had inadvertently created something that could easily surpassed any digital cake! He made a REAL cake in just under 30 minutes!

Sure, it’s made out of an orange. But it’s still a cake with two candles! And two Danish flags! And it’s still a Cakemonster (11.7?).

That last sneaky move was performed 5 minutes before midnight, thus officially closing Corinne’s birthday. I gave up, I couldn’t reply on time and Tim Garbos won this Cake Wars.

And I’m sure this is one war that will go down to the history books 😉

Categories
betaDwarf Videogames

And here’s the third developer diary of betaDwarf! Now with 300% more crunch!

Poor Kristian Klie, he thought he could escape me and my camera and survive in betaDwarf without having a major role in one of the developer diary series I’m doing for them. Last time he had a class to assist in as a TA, but this time he just couldn’t run away. I made him host the third episode and get viewers to know a little bit more about the way people work here.

Programming, designers insisting on programmers, programmers taking a break, programmers talking about cabbages with musicians… (ok, that one is NOT in the video, but I can assure you that it happened!).

Oh! And did I say musician? Yes indeed! Special thanks go to Fredrik Häthén for providing a very amusing monologue about music. And coffee. And Totoro… And well, countless other things that just didn’t make the cut for this video but might pop up some other day.

But of course also to the entire betaDwarf team! Weren’t it for the craziness that you all provide, these videos wouldn’t be the same!

So here’s the latest video! Please share it, tweet it, like it, comment on it or anything that comes up to your mind!

Oh, and as an extra, here’s a company picture! (In which the photographer had to be photoshopped in…)

Categories
betaDwarf Videogames Videos

betaDwarf Developer Diary #2 is out!

It’s been a little bit longer than I had originally planned (the idea is to produce these videos at a faster rate) but yesterday I recorded and edited the second episode in a series of videos for Danish videogame developer betaDwarf.

If the first video introduced you to some of the dwarfs working, at that moment, in a small space at the University of Aalborg in Denmark, this new episode has CEO Steffen Grønning showing you their new offices: an awesome house full of concept art everywhere you look that is fifty times more cozy than the former. Heck, just the kitchen itself has received a tremendous upgrade! It also gives programmers a new meaning for the term “caving” as you will see.

Once again I have to thank all of betaDwarf for giving me this opportunity that is definitely helping me improve my skills with the camera and editing, as well as learning how an indie videogame company runs (they recently had their first anniversary!)

So go ahead and enjoy the video in all its HD glory! And don’t forget to leave any comments and suggestions on what you want to see for the next episode!

Follow betaDwarf on Twitter and Facebook, as well as on their website Betadwarf.com!

Categories
ITU Copenhagen TV Videogames

Oh look! It’s Bender… in 3D!!

I’m taking the 3D Game Art course at the IT University of Copenhagen this year… though I’m not really registered for the course (I can still attend the classes). And we were asked to build a robot in 3D by using ONLY primitives. No modifiers, no textures. Just plain colors and basic shapes.

So I decided to make Bender from popular TV show Futurama.

I know it’s not perfect… but it’s as far as I could get by using the restrictions imposed and my still limited 3D modelling skills 😛

Categories
Me Music Videogames

Playing the Tetris song on the piano

I recently got a keyboard! Yey! It’s a Yamaha Piaggero V-60, nothing too fancy, but still packing quite a punch for a portable keyboard!

After 5 years without having a piano with me (since I was living elsewhere, my good old trusty Yamaha Clavinova is still at home) I can finally start playing the piano again! My technique is pretty much rusty, making mistakes at all moments, but I think that with practice I can still catch up and improve from what I could do earlier (which was not that impressive anyway).

So to celebrate I decided to record a short video of a videogame theme. One of the most recognizable ones: the Tetris theme! Also known as Type A for those of you who played the Gameboy version of the game, it is based on the Russian song “Korobeiniki”.

The audio has awful quality, and my playing it is not perfect, but I did play it by ear (no music sheet). Also this idea came moments after waking up, so I was totally unprepared for a proper recording… But anyway, the point is that I wanted to upload a video playing a videogame song on the piano, and here it is!