We were feeling a bit crafty this weekend again, so we broke out the clay brick and modelled our very own Pic. It was a nice way to spend a lazy Saturday morning, and the good news is that there's plenty of more clay, wire and paint...so I think it's safe to say there are more Pics to come (probably better ones too)!

If you're ever feeling crafty with Snapshot too, make sure you show us what you can do. We'll put it up on our blog and maybe send you something nice in return!

Dave and his sister redecorated our walls a bit this last weekend:


Each character is made up of about 200 foam squares bringing the total cost to about $20! Give it a shot if you have some blank walls. You can actually feel the classic inspiration emanating from the walls.

Hello again! This post is part two of a tutorial which introduces you to the basics of Adobe Photoshop's animation tool set. If you've never heard that Photoshop has animation tools, then I encourage you to do a quick read before jumping into this one.


A quick lesson in animation: there are two techniques to animating, straight ahead and pose to pose. Which you use depends largely on what you're animating. Straight ahead means you animate each frame sequentially one after another. Pose to pose, however, requires a bit more planning. You first draw the extremes, or the most expressive frames, followed by the frames in between those extremes.

In game development, I typically use pose to pose for cycle animations (i.e. run cycles, walk cycles, jumps, idles). Straight ahead I save for actions (i.e. climb, punch). For the bouncing ball we're about to do, we'll use pose to pose.

The Steps!
1. Let's get started: if you haven't already, open Photoshop up and create a blank canvas, let's say 256 by 256.


2. From here, we can open our Animation Pane. It can be found under Window > Animation.

3. Create 12 frames of blank animation. Once that's done, create a new layer and label it "blocking". On "blocking", draw a circle. This will be used to basically sketch out where our bouncing ball will bounce.


4. Once open, make sure the Frame option is selected. Also, uncheck "Propagate Frame 1" at the top of your layers pane. This option toggles whether or not any changes made on the first frame occur in all the other frames.

5. Remember that since we're doing pose to pose, we want to block out the extremes of our animation. For a bouncing ball, we'll say those are the highest and lowest points. Select the 6th frame, and move the Blocking layer to a high point on the canvas, or the highest point you want your bouncing ball to travel.


6. Now select the 12th frame, and move that same layer to the lowest point. For anyone a little more experienced out there, don't worry about adding any details like squash and stretch quite yet. We'll get to that later.

7. There! Both of your extremes are in place. Now, fill in the frames in between by moving your same "blocking" layer on each frame. At this point, make sure you play the animation occasionally, and make any tweaks necessary to give it a nice arc. Bounce a real ball if you have to remember how it looks! Keep in mind that any minor changes now, save you from major changes down the road.


8. I've found that a great way to stay organized is to have a folder represent each frame. Since this is a simple animation, create 12 layers instead and label them corresponding to each frame. Once you do so, make sure only the blocking layer and the corresponding layer are visible in each frame.

9. Using your blocking as reference, draw a ball on each new layer. Here's where you can take into consideration some of the principles of animation: squashing the ball when it hits the ground, and stretching it as it rockets to the sky.

10. Make sure you still keep it relatively simple, and play it often to see how it looks. Once you have each layer drawn and it feels good, you can make a second pass to add detail like shadows and highlights.


There you go! Your first Photoshop animation. You can save it as an animated GIF, an image sequence (one image for each frame), or you can use Retro Affect's custom animation exporter that puts each frame into a sprite sheet.

Here's the finished PSD used in the example for reference too.

Comment with any questions or tips you may have!

Last Saturday, Retro Affect attended Boston Game Loop 2010. Self described as an "unconference", BGL starts with absolutely no plan. Attendees spend a half an hour or so discussing topics they'd like to learn more about, and sessions form from those talks. The schedule is put on a board that morning and voila! You have yourself a one day conference, jam packed full of sessions that pique your interest.


On the outside it seems haphazard. However, now in its third year with nearly double the attendance from 2009, something is clearly going right. What makes BGL different is its flexibility. Often lectures became discussions, topics changed slightly (for the better!), and genuine experiences were shared.


We had the fortune of showing off (the new) Snapshot for the first time publicly! It felt great to show the game in motion to fresh eyes. The feedback has been incredibly positive and we can't wait to share more. In one session, we gave a tour of our proprietary engine (RAE) that Dave's been cooking up for the past year. Then later, we were able to talk a bit more design as we showed a room full of onlookers the first few levels of Snapshot. Don't worry! We haven't forgotten about our readers, a video tour of our engine is coming soon...


While the conference was without its share of kinks, it's still young and will, without a doubt, get better with each year. Keep an eye on Boston Game Loop!

Pun-free from here on out, I swear. Today we're participating in a collective commentary on game length and the value of media consumption. It's a topic that hasn't necessarily been at the forefront of debate, but still manages to creep into the most sane person's reasoning why a game "isn't worth [x] dollars".

For the majority of the game industry's short history, length has been touted as a measure of quality. Since every new game was the same sixty dollars, length, graphics and sound quality were decent, albeit overly-simplified selling points (Fig. A*). Fast forward twenty years into a whole new ball game.
So why do we still expect a certain duration of game play? Even from games that are free? It's hard to say and is certainly not limited to one culprit, but I suspect the rapidly diversifying market is a key issue. The iPhone, for better or worse, has opened a floodgate of development; flash portals like Kongregate and Newgrounds have made available free versions of nearly every game imaginable; and services like XBLA, WiiWare and PSN have embraced the small studio. The rise of the independent portal has paved the way for a whole spectrum of games ranging from $125.00 to FREE. Is it possible to line up every game based on length and draw any comparison in quality? Of course not (Fig. B*).
Our perception of what makes a game enjoyable is lagging behind, and when one fails to meet those expectations we retreat to those traditional measures. Consider a painting with too little paint or a canvas that's too small. Would you pass over a book because it didn't look as though it had enough pages? "It was too short," is likely pointing to a larger issue.

Make sure you check out these other perspectives on game length:
Ron Carmel of 2DBoy
Chris DeLeon
Dave Gilbert of Wadjet Eye Games
Cliff Harris of Positech Games
Martin of Broken Rules
Lau Korsgaard
Jeffrey Rosen of Wolfire
Chris Hecker

*These charts are probably not scientifically accurate

Last Friday, Dave and I were asked to speak with a computer science course at Inter-Lakes High School. We gave them a brief history of how we managed to stumble to where we are today, and explained things that they can do in order to make video games for a living. Half way through, we were unfortunately interrupted by a fire drill...it's been awhile since I've had to leave a building single file.


I had a phone call when we got to the parking lot, and took it a little ways away from the class so I wouldn't disturb anyone. A teacher actually came over and yelled at me to get in with the rest of my class. I even had to serve a detention, lame. Okay, I made the detention part up.

If you're a high school student (or early in college) reading our blog, then you probably already have a good grasp on the indie scene and know how to get started. In case you don't, I encourage any aspiring game developers to take a look at various middleware programs like Gamemaker, Flash, Unity...maybe some readers could comment on any tools they use too.

Also, get yourself to a traditional university after high school. I know those "game design degree in two years!" programs sound perfect (I almost pursued one myself), but you'll be much more versatile with a degree in computer science or the arts.

And as always, shoot us an email anytime with questions you have about making games. We love our jobs, and we love to help.

One more thing! Get your cameras ready, the next Snap-A-Shot Contest is a mere blog post away...

It's been a bit of a ghost town around here, hasn't it? Here's our excuse: we moved! From the sunny deserts of Arizona to the vast forests of New Hampshire. We're just now settling in our new office and rearing to go on Snapshot once again.



Development is in full swing, so expect some more screenshots, some more contests and perhaps even a video! We're incredibly excited with how it's coming along and can't wait to share it with you.

As a side note, we'll be attending Boston's IGDA meeting this upcoming Wednesday. So if you're in the Boston area, you should go too! I'll have a stack of Snapshot Art cards with me...

Some people ask us what we do when we're not working on Snapshot. I've been meaning to make a couple posts about the fun things we've been doing lately, but instead it's all going into one.

We play ping pong
Dave bought a ping pong table a few months ago. It wasn't too long before we heard that our friends over at Broken Bulb Studios had one as well. As game creators, a competition naturally ensued. Dave and I were pretty confident going into the tournament. Little did we know...we would be annihilated.

We play dodgeball...on trampolines
I was particularly excited about this one. We discovered an indoor trampoline facility nearby. Every Thursday since, we've gone to jump around and hang out with the Flashbang crew. I can safely tell you that a floor covered in trampolines is every single thing you except it to be and then some. Matthew Wegner snapped some photos of the awesome.


We play StarCraft 2
You should probably send us your SC2 identifier and we'll play some matches!

What a weekend. Over 15 people showed up, made some games, and ate some cake. There were some spectacular results. If you haven't checked out our RAjam Feed, you should probably do it now. There, you can find a great summary of all the different projects. We'll be posting some of the results in the coming weeks but in the meantime, enjoy some of the photos taken during the jam, courtesy of Matthew Wegner from Flashbang.



What game from the jam do you want to play the most?

It's true! We're hosting another game jam. This time in conjunction with Ludum Dare, an online jam. We're expecting a decent sized crowd, and more than a few awesome games. Make sure you check out our RAjam page. There you can watch us work, chat us up, and keep an eye on our project's progression.