UDK: Make The Next Gears Of War

November 5, 2009 by Jakob Griffith 41 Comments

Ever sat down from a long day of hacking and thought to yourself “I wish there was a cool video game out there made just for me. Better yet, made by me!” Today is your lucky day with the release of UDK – Unreal Development Kit.

In days of old, the only solution to satisfying your game creation desires was a cheap game making kit, or adding to the millions of Source mods. Epic has changed tables by now allowing anyone to use their engine (non-commercially of course) to create the game of their dreams; who knows, maybe even the next Unreal Tournament.

UDK is currently limited to PC, but plans are in the process for PS3 and Xbox360 development. For those who cant wait, we suggest checking out XNA. Whatever tools you use, ever made a cool game? Tell us in the comments!

[Thanks Kinigit]

Virtual Pool, Real-world Interface

September 21, 2009 by Phil Burgess 9 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Wc_DXGe2fQ]

Sunday we saw robots playing pool and an augmented reality pool game. Today we’ll complete the pool trifecta: virtual pool using a real cue stick and ball in another vintage video from Hack a Day’s secret underground vault. The video is noteworthy for a couple of reasons:

First is the year it was made: 1990. There’s been much buzz lately over real-world gaming interfaces like the Nintendo Wii motion controller or Microsoft’s Project Natal. Here we’re seeing a much simpler but very effective physical interface nearly twenty years prior.

Second: the middle section of the video reveals the trick behind it all, and it turns out to be surprisingly simple. No complex sensors or computer vision algorithms; the ball’s speed and direction are calculated by an 8-bit processor and a clever arrangement of four infrared emitter/detector pairs.

The visuals may be dated, but the interface itself is ingenious and impressive even today, and the approach is easily within reach of the casual garage tinkerer. What could you make of this? Is it just a matter of time before we see a reader’s Mini-Golf Hero III game here?

How To Build A Life-sized Electronic Game

September 12, 2009 by Mike Szczys 9 Comments

life_size_light_games

We’re very impressed with [Steve’s] Electronic Snowball Fight game. It consists of two life-sized players standing opposite of each other. Each can throw a snowball or duck, the object is to hit the other person and not get hit yourself. He’s utilized a lot of good building techniques that could be easily adapted to other types of game play. Continue reading “How To Build A Life-sized Electronic Game” →

Arduino + Hang Man = Hangmanduino

September 1, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 15 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCa8F8fbHLQ]

We saw this nifty little toy today and thought you guys might get a kick out of it. Its called the Hangmanduino, and as you can probably tell from the name, it plays hang man. This was an exercise in simplicity, you’ll notice there is only a single control for the entire game. We thought that the design was pretty cool, especially the single control. We weren’t surprised to see that this is actually the very same control we featured previously. You can download the code yourself from his website, if you want to make one of your own.

[via Flickr]

NES Workbench

July 24, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 16 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkuDaVadyOU]

[Miltron] dropped us a tip about his NES workbench. Knowing that when you get frustrated with whatever project you are beating your head against, you need an outlet, [Miltron] decided to build some relaxing NES fun into his workbench. He’s using a NES on a chip though any multi game-in-a-controller setup should work. He has gutted a PSone LCD and mounted it all together nicely so he can game at any moment. You might recall one of [Miltron]’s earlier projects, Das Uber Airsoft Turret. How long will it be before we see integrated LCDs into our toolbox lids or workbenches from the factory?

Multitouch Tabletop Gaming

January 18, 2009 by Eliot 29 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QflrIK-m4Ts]

Reader [Ramon Viladomat] sent in what he has been working on over the last year at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. Tired of see nothing but zooming map demos, he created a roleplaying game that takes advantage of the reacTable‘s multitouch interface. Along with multitouch, the reacTable also uses tangible fiducial markers to represent objects and as an alternative input method. Embedded above is a video demoing the interface and gameplay (starts at 3:43). The game lets you move your miniature through a virtual world. The surface shows you how far you can move dynamically as your action points regenerate and slowly reveals more dungeon as you discover it. You can pause the action and use gestures to set attack patterns. We really like this demo and would love to see someone build one using a popular tabletop game like Warhammer 40K. Embedded below is a demo of the associated map editor.

Continue reading “Multitouch Tabletop Gaming” →

Lockpicking Operation Game

November 26, 2008 by Eliot 6 Comments

[Moritz Waldemeyer], a favorite artist of ours, has a brand new project. He went wanting to design a 3D version of the game Operation. The piece he ended up with is called Keyhole Surgery. It’s essentially the laparoscopic version of operation. The player guides a metal key through the passages of a translucent block while attempting not to touch the walls. A counter on the side displays how many hits it has detected. The player with the smallest number wins. We love the modular potential of this project: the number of layers could be increased, the order could be changed, and more.