The company I work for just released a new game on the iPhone today, and I think quite a few clocks would like it, considering all the hand-drawn art and animation in it.

It's about Tim, who's running in the big race, and every time he changes the track on his mp3 player he starts to daydream, and you play those dreams, which might involve kicking chickens in a barn, or blocking attacks from a giant pixelized ship inside a computer, or swimming through a giant aquarium. It's pretty imaginative, and has a lot of variety in gameplay as well as environments.

I was the Lead Programmer, and the game has Game Center support (achievements and leader boards). I'd actually love to compete with some clocks on this game; my Game Center id is SageClock.

Anyway, this game more than any I've worked on in the past deserves some love. Check if out when you get the chance. More info on http://www.tracklapse.com

Edit: Anyone who hasn't checked it out yet, the free Lite version is now available. You can check out the first two levels of the story mode for free:

Track Lapse ::: Track Lapse Lite

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...anyone planning to participate? It will be my fifth time participating. We've got a really cool group for it here in the Chicago suburbs.

For those who don't know what I'm talking about, Nanowrimo is short for National Novel Writing Month, an annual event where you try to write a novel in 30 days, during the month of November. You can find out more details below, or ask me questions.

http://nanowrimo.org/

I was messing around with Windows 7's built in Speech Recognition last night and it's works pretty well for the most part, especially for directly launching, switching, and closing applications while your hands stay on the keyboard. It's not too bad for web browsing either (except you have to use Internet Explorer to properly utilize it, blech).

Has anyone here had any positive (or negative) experiences with voice recognition? Is there any point in the future where you could see yourself using it somewhat regularly?

I redid my website, using a Wordpress backend, a custom theme, and adding some light jQuery touches to it. It's still not complete yet, but it's far enough along that I'd like to get people's opinions on it. Check it out!

http://www.briancable.com

Main thing I'm worried about is I keep thinking I made the font size too big, although I made the size decision after reading several 'best practices' typography sites. I know people tend to be scared by lots of text, though, and I'm afraid the size makes it look like there's more text there than there actually is.

Anyway, what do you think?

About time, right? More information here:
http://briancable.com/proximity-2/

Genre: Negotiable, but probably not a platformer (too many indie platformers lately, plus I've got a design of my own for one brewing in my head)

Platforms: Flash, possibly other platforms later. I can make games for any platform that doesn't require a devkit.

Release date: no fixed deadline, but probably at least a year depending on size of the project and me juggling this with other personal projects/school/work

Compensation: (revenue minus expenses minus contribution to cc fund) / (# of collaborators) ...don't expect much... goal is not to make money but to make something fun and cool that promotes the CC

Experience: Know how to use flash, be able to make spritesheets if we branch out to new platforms (and be willing to do the work to convert it...a lot of frame by frame animation will mean a lot of extra work, fyi), have some talent and developed a style, be able to stay motivated and finish the project

I had a lot of fun working with Munglai and Tritoch on games back in the day, and frankly, I miss getting on AIM and chatting about the design of the game and passing things back and forth to critique each other watching the game grow organically out of that process.

I've been a bit of a creative recluse since going back to school, and I want to fight that. I can make good games, but my art sucks and I have to trick people into actually playing the game before they realize the game is a lot of fun. I'd like to change that. I'd like to make something similar to Super Meat Boy or Limbo or Braid or Alien Hominid visually (obviously on a much much smaller scale; we aren't doing this full-time for a company like they are).

So yeah, anyone interested? I haven't been around the CC a lot lately so I'm not really sure what everyone's capable of. Post some samples, whatever. I'd be willing to collaborate with more than 1 person this time too, if the styles are similar. If someone has some coding experience and would like to help out, that would be cool too... would hopefully save me time and I could help you learn in the process.

And to everyone else: anything in particular you'd like to see for a new CC game?

-Brian

The guy who made the game Minecraft participated in a 'make a game in 48 hours' event and recorded his computer screen during the process. This youtube video is that 48hours compressed into 6 mins. He does everything from prototyping to menus to level design to sprite drawing. He does a neat trick for designing the levels quickly by using a bitmap file, with each pixel representing a tile and each color representing a different tile. Worth checking out.

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The game itself is interesting as well. It's a platformer where you're a guy who shoots little men who shoot at you that you can use to solve puzzles. You can play it here.

I've been sorting through some old archives and ran into an audio clip I made for Clock Crew Radio back in the day and it put me in a good mood again. It's been years and it's not on Newgrounds, so I felt like sharing it again for the new clocks or people who missed it.

Also, I'm in the mood for seeing some old clock stuff I might have missed in the past (especially if it was never submitted to Newgrounds), so feel free to post some old stuff for nostalgia's sake.

Strawberry Clock's Report on the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in 2005

Wow, didn't expect the game to be approved by Apple so quickly and easily. And what a coincidence it's released on Clock Day of all days! Proximity 2, the game I've been working on for iPhone since January 2009 is now finally out and available for the public (and the credits even mention the Clock Crew, and Leek, and Renegade).

I'm going to work on getting a gameplay trailer, facebook, and some social network promotion going on here in the next day or two, but for now, if you have an iPhone/iPod Touch, check the game out and give it a good rating/review if you could

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/proximity-2/id386110129?mt=8

Old (Xbox 360) trailer below:

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Anyone read any PKD? I didn't even know he existed until about 5 years ago, and now I've read about half of his bibliography now (like 16 books). If you don't know who he is, he's a guy who writes a bunch of experimental and psychological books and stories that Hollywood has been starting to convert into movies lately (Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Paycheck, Next, Minority Report, etc).

My favorites of what I've read:

Ubik
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Solar Lottery
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (basis for Blade Runner movie)

If you have read some of his stuff, what are your favorites?

Watch the whole thing. Quite a few cool uses for this, including very simple dynamic animation, and utilizing input from wacom tablets.

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I didn't think I'd get into it, but what can I say, I always wanted to own some classic cabinets when I got older, and this is the closest thing to it that I can afford to get right now.

Currently have Centipede, Lunar Lander, and Tempest. Might be willing to pick up 1 or 2 more of the existing collection depending on who has them and if the game is cool.

Will probably pick up 1-2 games with each new release. Probably will be all arcade games - the atari and intellivision games aren't doing much for me.

Anyone else into this, and want to compete for high scores and challenges, visit each others' arcades, etc?

Gamertag is SageClock.

The 2 cofounders of the company are fired by IW, Activision locks down the offices, employees claiming Activision has not paid any royalties to IW for the $1 billion they pulled in for Modern Warfare 2, IW's contract is about to expire and they may have been in talks to publish the series with another publisher.

Shit's gone bananas.
Source 1 Source 2.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/28/playstation-network-down-so-are-lots-of-ps3s/

Don't panic. Sony should have it fixed in a day or two. Might want to stay off your PS3s until then, though. I hear it's been corrupting save files in some cases.

Some people are saying it's a glitch in the PS3 clock; that there's something hard coded that says 2010 is leap year and today is the 29th of Feb when it isn't.

Anyway, just a heads up to hopefully save a couple of people from losing data or thinking their PS3 just died on them.

The developer wants people to design graffitti for them, and the ones they like will be put into the game.

http://www.ruffiangames.com/competition

Seems to me like they could use some Strawberry Clock submissions. Although if they get too many entries of SBC they might not go for it, I dunno.

...who's planning on participating this year? I'm going to make the attempt, but I've got one class that's been relentless with its homework this semester and I'm having trouble keeping up as it is.

I should have a local writing buddy though, so that's good.

Do you guys know what you're going to write about yet?

Happy Clock Day guys. I made the forum for you and moved a bunch of threads to it (but couldn't move any others, it gave me errors, so if the other staff want to take care of the rest, it's pretty easy to mass move all the red threads in general).

Wish I had time to do more for this Clock Day, but instead I had to move into an apartment and make enough money for college not to bankrupt me in the first month . I'll have to make it up to you guys somehow.

Looks like it was still a success though. Congrats everyone! I look forward to watching all of these movies.

It finally came out a month and a half ago and I just realized I never mentioned it on here.

NEVES Plus is one of 2 games I was working on before I was laid off, and it's the game I had the most influence on for its design out of all the games I worked on at YUKE'S. Its 2-4 player versus mode in particular is quite fun, and it's one of the few 4 player coop puzzle games out there. It's also the game that got the best reviews, by far, but since there was very little marketing budget, pretty much no one in the US knows about it, even though it's a solid puzzle game.

It's only $6 too. If you're into puzzle games and own a Wii I recommend checking it out.

Home page
Metacritic Reviews

http://kylegabler.com/WorldOfGooSoundtrack/

Nice of him to offer such a great game soundtrack for free.

Lately the weekend deals have been pretty hard to pass up. This weekend's in particular is pretty crazy:

75% off ($30 total) for 10 indie games: Braid, World of Goo, Crayon Physics Deluxe, Everyday Shooter, Audiosurf, Darwinia, Gish, Mr. Robot, The Path, and Blueberry Garden.

OR

66% off ($20 total) for 5 indie games: Braid, World of Goo, Everyday Shooter, The Path, and Blueberry Garden.

The last 2 I haven't heard of before but they look interesting. Technically I already own 6 of the games for one platform or the other (and 2 of them through Steam already), but even so it's still a great price to have them all easily accessible through Steam.

The ones I've played are all pretty damn good, especially for this bundle price, so if you don't already have these, I highly recommend you look into it.