Voxels are a little more complex to build, like they look.
Having fun with voxels. Or sort of voxels. This is, what the “Voxelart Project” is all about. You can select colored cubes and place them with the mouse. And build really nice voxel-worlds. I like that style.
Paniq is back. Once again with a new and absolute unique album, that is once again technically at a very high level. “From Zero to Hero” is some sort of concept album, dedicated to the German “Pirate Party“. It’s a mixture of techno and electro, that lends inspiration from game-music, music-experimentation and “pirate-music”, produced in a very compact way. The album is free for download, released under a creative commons license. So why hesitate? Download this album for free. You will get high quality mp3 and flac as well. Oh, you may have noticed, that we have the election here in Germany next week…
Time Fcuk was released. And it is abolutely brilliant. Great storytelling. Lovely gameplay. And full of details. A must see!
You can also read a little more about the background of Time Fcuk.
Yes, this is somehow a confusing title. What is Capitasim 2.0? It is the global-reaching money-machines, made by global companies we see today… according to Peter Barnes, author of “Capitalism 3.0“. I haven’t read this book yet, but it seems, that there are some interesting thoughts included, that are maybe interesting for Creative Commons enthusiasts. For example:
Common wealth is like the dark matter of the economic universe-it’s everywhere, but we don’t see it. One reason we don’t see it is that much of it is, literally, invisible. Who can spot the air, an aquifer, or the social trust that underlies financial markets? The more relevant reason is our own blindness: the only economic matter we notice is the kind that glistens with dollar signs. We ignore common wealth because it lacks price tags and property rights.
It’s time to notice our shared gifts. Not only that, it’s time to name them, protect them, and organize them. One way to do this is through common property rights.
He criticized the recent politic, to give the global companies too much institutional and property rights, while at the same time narrowing the commons. It seems, that we need to reinvent the wheel at this place, in order to build a new, updated system. In his words, Capitalism 3.0 is a new operating system for our economy. It preserves what’s best about capitalism while fixing several tragic flaws. Oh, before anyone asks. The book was already published in 2006.
Some thoughts in this book remind me on the discussion upon the “Kulturflatrate”, mostly from the perspective I’ve heard from the Green Party (please correct me, if I’m wrong) like that (the quote is from the book again):
What we need is a parallel economy for non-corporate art. Fortunately, models of such an economy exist. For example, there’s the San Francisco Grants for the Arts program, funded from a tax on hotel rooms. Since 1961, the program has distributed over $145 million to hundreds of nonprofit cultural organizations. It’s a prime reason the city pulses with free concerts, murals, film festivals, and theater in the park.
But the book would not be about capitalism, if the private sector would not be able to establish a system like that, too (well, that’s a guess from me now). Like private funding of the commons or the like.
Time to give a bit of worship to a absolutely well made free indie-game. Beacon (.zip) is a wonderful little platformer with the most remarkable feature, that is plays in the dark. Your guide your guy through this dark world and have to follow a “beacon”, a light, that shows you the way.
Beacon combines wonderful storytelling with engaging gameplay. It maybe is a total esoteric story, about light, darkness and death. Until you see the end (no I won’t tell you, go and have a play yourself).
From the beginning of the game you feel a strong desire to reach the end of this dark world. Some moments are a little frustrating, i.e. like playing the same scene over and over again, falling into darkness, not know where to jump off right. I also didn’t liked the uncertainty, how many levels there are still to solve (like is it a mini game? A small or a large one?). A mini-map, that gives an overview about the game progress in general, would be a nice thing to have, giving more confidence to the player, enlarging the gaming fun. I also also want to doubt the replay value of Beacon. Maybe some small tricks would make this game interetings, to “play” it into more than only “one” direction?
Anyway, a great game, that should be checked out! Let’s do not forget, that it was basically made for the Ludumdare 48-hours contest.
Nobnox scored again! I am sure, you all still remembering the ToneMatrix from Andre Michelle. Along with the guys at Hobnox they took the concept to a whole new level – and reinvented the browser-based music-tools once again. Here comes inudge!! It’s a very simple tools, fun to play with, but powerful as well. It is basically like ToneMatrix, but with more channels and instruments. Even a drum-section. Like with ToneMatrix it is almost impossible to do sounds, that are not sounding good or interesting. The 16-steps sequencer leads mostly to hypnotic loops. The best: you can very easily share your productions, post them on blogs or send them via email to your friends or other people working on a project. Cool stuff. Also for decent game-loops. Just check out my first loop.
Update: It seems, that there are some bugs, when it comes to saving and sharing to loops… My loop was not saved…
Update2: Suddently, the data was there. Maybe there is some time-lag at the “making data available”-server at inudge.
(via)
Update: This is going to become a neverending story. Apple rejected the app again, after some user figured out, how to hack into the BASIC-interpreter via the iPhone-user-interface. After fixing this “bug” developers at Manomio re-submitted the app again – hopefully praying to get the approval once again…
Good news. The official C64-emulator for the iPhone was released! The guys had a hard time to get approval of this app on the iTunes-Store (read here about more backgrounds).
The official news are: “After months of work and two formal rejections, we’ve worked directly with Apple to make the necessary changes to bring back one of the best selling computers of all time.”
The emulator comes with the games Dragons Den, Le Mans, Jupiter Lander, Arctic Shipwreck and Jack Attack and is available for 3,99 EUR. [Direct iTunes-Link] Bad news are, that now only official approved games will be able to load on the emulator. If you have a request for acertain game or program, that should be licenced, here you can send the request to the developers.
