[blog.nealen.net.]

osmos won the 2009 D2D vision award at the IGF awards ceremony. yay! this all happened last wednesday. in the meanwhile, i’ve taken an overnight flight to chicago, where i have been busy judging the entries for this year’s SIGGRAPH conference. so for today (more to come soon), i can leave you with a streaming video of the awards ceremony. our part is around the 32 minute mark.

the awards ceremony was one crazy event. very professionally produced, and lots of fun. actually, we were nervous as hell, so the real fun started after we calmed down some time later. the definite effect this all had, is that we will continue making games. not sure how, when or what exactly, but i have a bit of a plan. and it involves me giving in and getting a mac. more on this in the near future. first though, i could really use some sleep.

our video game osmos has been nominated for three awards at this year’s independent games festival (igf)! eddy and i are on our way to san francisco this saturday to attend the game developers conference (gdc), the indie games summit, and the igf. the awards ceremony is on wednesday evening, and man, are we excited! we’re nominated for excellence in design, technical excellence and the seumas mcnally grand prize. it was also just announced that we’re nominated for the direct2drive vision award, and you can vote for our game in the igf audience award category, if you like what you see. if you’re interested in more details, some interviews and our general blog, have a look at the hemisphere games website.

a demo just appeared on valve’s distribution platform steam, where the full game will be available sometime later this year. if you click on the image left, you’ll see the (small) osmos logo in the list, on the steam frontpage along with things like left 4 dead and team fortress 2. so cool… osmos will also be available via direct2drive’s indie games portal. and while the demo gives a pretty good picture in terms of what to expect, eddy is hard at work on more visual experiments for the final version.

it’s also very much worth mentioning that a group of my very talented students in the tu-berlin game programming and design course are one of the igf student showcase winners! zeit² was developed over the course of a 13 week game programming and design course in the summer of 2008, and it is simply incredible what they have achieved in such short time. thanks to xna, the game runs on both windows and the xbox 360. xbox community games are not (yet) available in germany, but i am sure that the game will be up for grabs once germany is added to the list (hopefully in 2009). encouraged by this, and the overall quality of the games developed in my three courses in berlin, i am continuing this line of teaching (and possibly research) at my new position at rutgers university.

this all still feels too good to be true. we have been getting some incredible feedback over the past weeks since the igf announcement. our forum is full of constructive, positive reactions to the demo, and even rod humble found some very nice words to say in the comments of eddy’s gamasutra interview. rod is the developer of the marriage, which i (and many others) frequently use as a demonstration of just how strong the meaningful abstraction of visuals and interaction can be. thanks rod! and thanks to all of you who have continuously supported our efforts and my desire to work on this. it has been more rewarding than i had ever hoped, and i can promise that you have not seen the last of us. now that this kicked off, let’s see how far we can go. there are many ideas afloat, and so many nice platforms to develop for (looking at you, iphone). to be continued… cheers!

i’ve been meaning to write a bit about video games for some time now. to my great surprise, it took a rebuilt version of an old classic to make this happen. pac man C.E. has taken up large batches of my spare (and not so spare) time lately, and i think it will continue to do so. toru iwatani and his team at namco have managed to revive the good old ghost eater in a style similar to newer games such as lumines and geometry wars, and the result is nothing less than painfully addictive. for more info, check out the excellent review on 1up.com.

other games i have recently played, enjoyed, and can wholeheartedly recommend are gears of war, god of war II, crackdown and guitar hero 2. guitar hero 2 is great for two reasons (a) it’s fun, and (b) olga is addicted to it. she recently beat my career score on the worldwide leaderboards, making it impossible for me to simply stop playing. this is rather unfortunate, since i am way too busy playing forza motorsport 2 and the recently fixed motorstorm.

my fm2 lotus elise 135r. both the paintjob as well as the screenshot were created using in-game tools.

eddy and i gave the motorstorm time trials a go during his recent berlin visit, and they rock. in any case, i’m all about the races these days, which is a nice distraction from all the first- or third person action games of early 2007. but not to worry, there’s so much more on the horizon. i’ll be in san diego and montreal in the first two weeks of august, only to be welcomed by bioshock when i get back home. bioshock is the spiritual successor to system shock 2, which, to my great shame, i have never finished. september will greet us with halo 3, and the recent multiplayer beta was significantly more fun than i had expected. october is gta IV month. i’ve played all ps2 incarnations of the series, and judging from the trailer (and yes, the hype) this one should be good. ubisoft has some year-end fun in store for us with assassin’s creed and splinter cell: conviction. the assassin’s creed video footage looks awesome and really nails the visual style. as for conviction: a very good friend of mine is working on their physics and animation systems, and i can’t wait to see the results.

all in all, i’d say 2007 is (and will likely stay) a great year for video games.

in closing, check out what most video gamers look like, and the king of kong. we are indeed a weird (and mostly competitive) breed. we also like the fun. and some even enjoy making games. i personally also enjoy talking about games. for a glimpse of both the talking and the making, check out the class on video game programming i have been teaching at tu berlin this summer term. finally, this link will clarify the title of this post. shine get!

stefan visited us in berlin a few weeks ago, which generally leads to some hitting the town, and playing lots and lots of games. in this case i should rather use the singular “game”, since all we played all weekend was fight night. here’s us playing, the picture being heavily inspired by the penny arcade comic strip on the left.

i play games. lots of games. while i really enjoy many other activities, such as playing the guitar, snowboarding, photography, etc., nothing captivates my attention as much as a really good game. games are fun. period. online, offline, solo, with friends, whatever. i like games. and yes, i am an addict. in a good way, i think. and while this sometimes felt awkward in the early to mid 90s, when i’d listen to stuff like: “you’re a grown-up, why in the world do you play and/or like videogames?”, it has become fairly standard to indulge in the this pastime, independent of age. this development has even reached germany, although we’re still far from the craziness in north america and japan, which i guess is why they always get stuff first. meh.

and since it’s the title of this post, always remember that there used to be this great band k’s choice, and while they’re pretty much over these days, their old stuff is still great.

watch the video to see tetris (and its maker) in all its glory. i just stumbled across this great bbc documentary, which was linked from my beloved kotaku. enjoy.

[update. unfortunately, the video was pulled from google videos. it is mentioned on the tetris wikipedia site]

as many others, i was totally hooked on this game back when it got packaged with the original game boy. for some reason i never tried it on any other platform since then, although it has been ported and re-released widely. easy to learn, difficult to master, i guess that’s what does it for me.

so yeah, it’s not always fun and games. but, fortunately, sometimes it actually is! to instantly out myself as a gaming geek, i have been greatly enjoying penny arcade these past weeks. i remember reading them way, way back, i think on their second comic or so (thanks to my former roommate alex). if you know a bit about (video)games and like the comics you’re in for a treat. they’ve also published their early works in hardcopy form, and i’ve been re-reading them ever since they arrived in my mailbox. webcomics are cool. especially videogame related ones…

and, since i strive to keep up the fun and games, i’ve put up a jobsearch website recently, and am currently involved in some preliminary talks. but perhaps i should stick to my academic roots, which have also been mostly rewarding + enjoyable = fun. to complete this post, we have a nice new computer graphics website up at tu berlin, where i am currently in my final year of phd studies. if all goes well, graduation will commence sometime summer 2007. drop by if you’re in berlin. cheers.