One of his friends is the curator of Cubitt Art Gallery who run a project called "Everybody Draw" where they visit primary schools with big sheets of paper and get everyone to draw on them. You can see some examples on the Everybody Draw blog.

For the game jam, we were tasked with making games from the output of the most recent Everybody Draw - ideally age-appropriate for the 5-7 year olds so they could play the games that were produced.

After sorting through the huge number of scanned images I decided I'd try an old Golden-Axe style side scrolling "beat-em-up" but as it's for kids it's less about hitting things and more about ice cream. (One has to try to be positive).

The attacking aliens theme came about from the wonderful Lovecraftian alien-with-a-hundred-eyes. It's a shame I wasn't able to make the second day or I'd have put some more effort into the animations (make that train move across the background, and there's so much scope to animate the many-eyed-alien....). I might try and polish it up a little at a later date.

Now these games should manage to entertain a few children, but hopefully also on seeing their drawings turned into games it might just inspire some to give it a go themselves. Consoles and modern PCs don't lend themselves quite so quickly to making your own games as the Spectrum or BBC micro might once have (bring back magazines with game code to type in, eh? ;)) but with the proliferation of game making frameworks there's no reason these kids shouldn't be able to make their own.

You can play Golden Cone here and you can see all of the games made for the jam here.

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Play it here

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This month's TIGSource competition is "A game by its cover" - find a fake game box art and write a game for it (which puts poor Stomp! on hold for a bit, sorry giant-stomping fans)

I found this and decided to make a platformer where you play music by landing on the platforms.

So far it's very rough around the edges, but it turns a piece of music notation into a level, with trampolines and moving platforms for where the gaps are just too big to jump.

Aesthetically I'm pondering something involving flowers, though it remains to be seen if my modelling/texturing/procedural-art-generating skills will be up to that task...

Play the work in progress demo

Create your own level

Mock me on the TIGSource forum

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Managed to get some free time this weekend so I've made a start on a new game - Stomp!

Beginnings of an RPG where you play an unfortunate giant, shunned by society and suffering from a rather empty stomach...Not a lot of RPG yet - I've mostly been working on the general mayhem and destruction part of it. Built in Unity3d (sorry linux folks) and using frogames.net's protopack for the models (coz I'm lazy like that).

Inspiration for the game from Nic who suggested a falling giant game where you try and cause as much damage as possible when you land... that still might make it in :)

Click to the full article for the game...

Arrow keys or WSAD to move, mouse to look (yeah the camera's terrible). Left click to grab, right click to stomp. Shift to run.

Feedback/ideas more than welcome - feel free to comment.

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This weekend is Mini Ludum Dare number 19 - and I figured I'd give it a go: except for me a 48 hour code-fest weekend turns into a 4 hour code-fest evening and a couple of hours the next morning...

Still, thought I should try and code something anyway.

This mini-LD's theme was "Industry", which to me sparks images of factories, and therefore the ubiquitous Crate. Crates are in absolutely everything but how did they get there?

Fork lifts of course!

Though unlike most games involving crates this one actually uses pallets. WSAD moves the truck, R and F raise and lower the forks. Ctrl or left mouse button to change camera.

Load crates onto the waiting truck to score points.

Don't expect I'll be winning any prizes this time around...

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With virtual sucker darts of course, we* are not savages.

What can you do to make a shooting gallery more fun - add in some exciting bonus targets maybe? spruce up the graphics, get the presentation and the sound design down just right. That sounds like far too much effort to me, frankly.

So, I've taken a page (OK, maybe a stray apostrophe from a footnote on a page...) from the Infinity Ward playbook and gone for CONTROVERSY.

It's no no russian but hey, I just stuck a sucker dart on a baby's face!

Click through to the full article to play the game... This one's in Flash rather than Unity - reminding myself how much better Unity is at 3D but also maybe working on Linux.

* the royal we, naturally, still just my own deluded self writing these things.

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Well, people seemed to like shooting slabs, so I've put a bit more time into it and you can now shoot sillhouettes!

I've also added in some more levels - it gets faster as you go along.

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Everyone needs a good old ducks-on-rails style shooting gallery.. no?

Well, tough, you've got one.

Except given my artistic abilities it's not ducks, it's concrete slabs. Meh, you gets what you pays for.

Click to shoot.

Post your high scores in the comments if you're into that sort of thing.

(NB: requires Unity Web Player plugin if you've not already got it - sadly it's Windows/Mac only - no Linux version)

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I suppose I should probably post something here... this here Grumpy Ferret is what I'm calling the flotsam and jetsam that fall out of my brain while playing with Unity3D, JavaScript and Flash in an attempt to make something worthy of the name "Game"

One of these days I'll manage to cross-breed Syndicate with Civilization, Stalker, UFO and Dark Age of Camelot, fix the american spelling back to proper English *shakes fist* and CONQUER THE WORLD.

Till then, this is what you get.

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