Chris McCormick

update: Oh wow, I completely forgot that there is already an awesome indie game called Dyson, thanks for reminding me, Dan!

Here's another AsteroidsTNG prototype. This asteroid field goes on until MAXFLOAT before looping (I think) and it contains up to 2^32 unique asteroids. I had to remove the collision detection, so you can fly through asteroids, but don't let that stop you from exploring! Oh wow, I just tested this on Internet Explorer and it runs hellishly slow. Sorry IE user, whoever you are. :(

(click on the image to play)

I think if I was ever to turn this into a proper game, I would call it Dyson, after the physicist Freeman Dyson who came up with the concept of the Dyson tree, which I would hope to work into the game. A short time ago I had the great fortune of briefly meeting Freeman Dyson's daughter and tech luminary, Esther Dyson, source of the following great piece of advice:

"Fail cheap. Fail fast. Fail often. Always make new mistakes." -Esther Dyson

I am a huge fan of this philosophy, especially when it comes to rapidly prototyping software and games.

This game was written inside the jsGameSoup framework.

Writing games for javascript and the canvas tag feels a bit like being an eight year old again, trying to squeeze every last cpu cycle out of my parents' Apple //e. Good times!

• Google Android: GNU/Linux
• Palm Pre OS: GNU/Linux
• Nokia Maemo: GNU/Linux
• Amazon Kindle: GNU/Linux
• Sony Reader: GNU/Linux
• Crunch Pad (vapour ware): GNU/Linux
• Apple iPhone: FreeBSD <- :P

Anybody who started tinkering with GNU/Linux just for fun in their teens should initiate smug mode immediately, unless like myself your smug mode is stuck in the on position.

oh boy

Hunt is an augmented reality game. Players enter the game by downloading it onto their mobile, where it runs in the background all of the time.

Whenever the player goes into a public place such as a shopping centre or park, they become "in-play". They can also enter the "in-play" state by requesting a quarry at any time and the server will assign a geographically proximous quarry for them to hunt. A player will often be quarry and hunter at the same time.

In order for the player to claim a frag, they must locate their designated quarry in the public space and aim their mobile's camera at the other player. On the screen the quarry's unique icon will appear over the other player. Once the hunter snapshots the icon and player together, they claim the frag. The quarry can defeat this by doing the same to the hunter first. The snapshot must contain an icon with a clearly visible person beneath it to be a valid frag.

If a player is in a public place and they become a quarry, they will be notified by a normal mobile notification (sound, vibration, sms, etc.). If the hunter is within a certain distance, the quarry will be notified with a different "danger" sound.

A website tracks frags by player, area, etc. Frag verifications are crowd-sourced on the site or by email, sms, etc. Random users will be asked to verify the frags of other players.

This is a free album of breakbeats, bloop-bleeps, and guitars which I never properly released. So now I am. It is Creative Commons licensed, so feel free to download, copy, share it if you like it.

Enjoy!

It would be nice if a few more people hear it, so if you like it I would really appreciate it if you blog/tweet or whatever about it.

This album was composed with a type of old school software called a tracker early this decade, which was and still is often used to make video game music.

Thanks for listening.