tchotchke nation

game development blog, tear basin

[tchotchkenation]

i was tagged by @katherinemansfields for the “last 6 pictures” so here’s...4 pictures which are, from top to bottom, a house near the place i grew up that’s alsways 100% goes out for christmas, some buttons i made at a holiday party, some food from the holiday party, and the view from a hole in the side of a cliff i risked life and limb to climb to

[tchotchkenation]

[meangirlnurse]

i have no self-control

[meangirlnurse]

two people unfollowed me for this and honestly i don’t really blame them

[dromsjel]

“Sailing by Night” #drømsjel http://ift.tt/1VUCrml

[tchotchkenation]

Hi. I really really liked ten moons. Keep it up :)

Thank you very much! I will :P

[tchotchkenation]

recently released ten moons, a mood piece / moody game! explore a house, hear the sea, hear the night.

[lisa-rayner-deactivated20151211]

(via Tintu-Mon added 11 new photos)

“Respect to Nature.”

Humans adapting themselves to nature rather than forcing other species to adapt to us. This is what we must do in the Anthropocene. Trees are the most important three dimensional structures of many ecosystems, and they are the central design features of most permaculture gardens. They provide many products and services to other species, from housing to food (acorns, insects, pollen), shade and shelter from the wind. We ought to respect their importance.

[sansastarkofficialfanclub]

the man in front of me on muni is reading a magazine called skeptical inquirer which is discussing the fact t there is no reason to believe that a yeti-bear cryptid exists and also that curses probably aren’t real

[tchotchkenation]

this sounds like exactly the kind of magazine i would love.

CURSES : ALL THEY’RE CRACKED UP TO BE?

SHOCKING! NEW YORK - CHARLESTON LEYLINE WANING : WE ARE ALL VERY DISAPPOINTED 

RASH OF MINI-BATS IN IDAHO, OR VERY SMALL REGULAR BATS

HOROSCOPES : WATCH YOUR BACK SCORPIOS

[tchotchkenation]

  Hello everyone! This tumblr is pretty much abandoned, but I found this cool thing about creating portals in Unity, letting you create windows/portals into impossible spaces without a ton of messing around. Now, digging through the notes this is a first pass effort that could be further improved, *but* it looks complete enough to mess around with. Download the example scene and update it to Unity 5. Below is kind of a cheat sheet that I found after digging through it (for no longer than 30 minutes, admittedly)

For simple scenes (such as the ones found in StencilBasicRoom) the setup is pretty simple -- create a Quad that will act as your “window” to the room. Then, create a material of the type “StencilMask_1″. Then, for each object that’s only visible to the Stencil, give them the associated shader with the same number (eg. Stencil_01_Normal-Diffuse).

If you have a custom shader that you want to use for this purpose, create a copy of it, then at the top of the shader, after the “SubShader {”, paste the following, replacing the number after “Ref” with the number associated with the StencilMask.

Stencil { Ref 1 Comp Equal Pass Keep Fail Keep } 

I think this should let it work with the StencilMask_1 but I haven’t had a change to test this yet.

caveats : Objects hidden by this method will still cast shadows onto other objects, which means that you’re going to get some very weird artifacts if you have a ground plane that’s always visible with hidden objects on top.

Also, if you’re planning on creating a complicated scene with multiple windows this method kind of starts breaking down. The scene “StencilComplexRoomGrid” shows how you can do it -- Each cube in this scene has a similarly-sized cube called “_DepthMaskCube” that makes sure all the portals are drawn correctly on top of each other.

[czapbooks]

“Closing the Circle,” by Laura Knetzger, originally appearing in PUPPYTEETH 4 (2014). Buy it now at Czap Books.

[laurark]

I made this comic for puppyteeth about 2 years ago! Wow. I was so upset.

[getintherobot]

thanks to the americans i dreamt that tchotchkenation and i were a fake-married couple who were actually SUPER SECRET SPIES and nick fury was our handler and instead of having kids we just had spiders like more spiders than you would ever think possible and apparently my cover was teaching arachnology and his was tech support BUT IN REALITY WE WERE BUILDING SPIDER ROBOTS, WE WERE CONSTRUCTING AN ARMY OF TINY INDESTRUCTIBLE ROBOT SPIDER ASSASSINS

[tchotchkenation]

so i’m not on tumblr often but mj told me about this and THIS IS INCREDIBLE IT’S EVERYTHING I WANT OUT OF FAKE MARRIAGE

[ohdeargodbees-blog]

Antholojam is a collection of fifteen (!!!) browser-based games resultant from a month-long game jam based around themes from the Golden Age of Sci-Fi. Meant to be enjoyed in less than an hour apiece, each game pays tribute to its inspiration with a wide variety of engines, settings, and mechanics. Presented in their unadulterated glory:   Killing Time at Lightspeed: On a time-dilated voyage away from earth, one minute of your time can stretch for years back home. There’s only one thing to do: Browse social media, of course.   Tonight Dies the Moon: From the author of HORSE MASTER: THE GAME OF HORSE MASTERY, comes a Twine game about life during war between the Earth and Moon in the year 2000. Fall in love, subsistence farm, make spreadsheets, and wear colorful jumpsuits!   Steal My Artificial Heart: On an android moon colony, a brutal murder of a metal madam seeds mystery in a cobalt-collar bar. Piece it together in this beautifully-illustrated neo-noir whodunit.   Fire Theft: A government agent is sent to investigate a power spike in an industrial district, only to find a warehouse playing home to a group of runaway AIs working towards… Something.   Planet of a Poisoned Past: Discover the true purpose of your mission as a member of a research and mining team sent to extract Ultra-Steelium from an alien planet in the far-off year of 2003.   

Does Canned Rice Dream of a Napkin Heap? Two aliens, a robot, and a canine cosmonaut walk into a spaceport bar. Now you have to get them to pay for your drinks by sharing a tall tale of galactic intrigue to keep them entertained.   

Valkyries of Vela: Keep your rayguns at the ready and join the Valkyries in this intergalactic card-based dungeon crawler.   

The Absence of Is: In a future world where humanity has developed the technology to explore the fringes of consciousness, a group of researchers takes the first journey to record the afterlife.   

Intergalactic Ambassador: Negotiate with alien lifeforms entering our solar system to determine their intent, build bridges, or torch them outright.   

The Lost Chrononaut: Craft a unique story as you pursue your destiny in this card-based time-travel adventure.   

A Call to Mars: A signal from another planet brings Earth’s nations together to send five representatives to alien soil. Met with a desert out of a dream, how will they reconcile with their environment and each other?  

A Planet Wakes: Work your way towards a space elevator off a barren alien planet in this base-building terraforming sim.   

Voice of Vamana: An lifeless alien ship, the first proof that we are not alone in the universe, enters our solar system on a collision course with the sun… And you are the first person to intercept it.   

Orison of Mercury: As a deep-space miner, you are duty-bound to extract and deliver a payload with limited resources. Your computer’s interception of several anomalous transmissions may tempt you otherwise.   

Space Journey! A tabletop improv game where you and your friends star in a popular pulp sci-fi space exploration show… Where the director has lost the script. The show must go on!   Antholojam is available for free or pay-what-you-want, with profits distributed evenly between all the participating teams.  Special thanks to all the participants. Inspired by a conversation between Zoe Quinn and Jon Gomm. Cover by Elizabeth Simins.

[tchotchkenation]

I was standing with someone at a train platform -- we had to get to the other side, but the only way to get there was by walking over the backs of five trains, steel and matte in the low light.

Of course, when we stepped onto the first one all of them started to pull away from the station, smooth and silent, but with a weight to them that meant that they would never stop once, never even slow down once they started

We leapt from the first train to the second, but slightly staggered, so that the acceleration meant that we were farther apart than when we started, side by side. And again, and again, until on the fifth train, separated by the length of an entire carriage, the surrounding beginning to blur by and in the distance the end of the station, approaching.

"We need to jump together," they said, "on the count of three?"

On three I jumped, but I landed alone. They had hesitated, and had been carried downstream an incredible distance in that single moment.

I watched them running against the train, trying to reach the station, the train already traveling faster and faster, now they were only a silhouette of strain, of pumping hand and feet, and now the train itself a dot, vanishing into the distance and the horizon.

[forestambassador]

Within is a game about dreams by Ragekit.

Play Online

Why Try It: Visually striking architecture & shifting spaces; captures the feeling of wandering through dream worlds only partly in control of yourself.

Mood: Tense / Dreamy

Author’s Notes: "Within is an experimental videogame questioning the notion of space in a virtual world, where the player wanders in an ever changing place, chased by a mysterious figure It was developed during my master at the University of Art and Design in Geneva (HEAD), and it followed my master thesis who was questioning the notion of narration in videogames. Broadly : how to tell a story by interaction."

From the forest ambassador: If you liked Within, you might also like the previously-featured game A Cosmic Forest.

[suphinkos]

tchotchkenation !!!

[tchotchkenation]

I have to say as a programming nerd I love the dither effect used for the pursuer.

The game itself is pretty cool! Got caught the first time because I didn't want to climb the tower...The decision to force the player to use the arrow keys + mouse instead of the more traditional WASD + mouse is interesting too because it already forces the player into an off-balance posture.

Pretty cool example of the architectural horror genre.

[rozenn-blog]

Horoscope (•v• )/

[tchotchkenation]

horoscopes

shackled horse, shackled rider: unimpeachable decisions are brittle as winter leaves

two conjoined apples: you are doing too little of the right thing, or too much of the wrong thing

the wheel of eyes: watch the night sky while eating fruit

rattling teeth: question your motives for wanting to travel

two hundred and one shards of stone and glass: the end of an ordeal is an end in itself

steel covers, hollow book: a long-planned venture will lead nowhere

feast of bread and water: you will unwittingly pass on misinformation

rotten hand gripping rotten rose: light a candle in remembrance

the inverted horn: you are finding false security in uncertainty

the shattered silver tower: pass up the feast for the cold and empty air

buried fountain:  build something ephemeral

skyward-pointing signpost: you will breath more easily under the waves than above them

[tchotchkenation]

a movie of what I've done so far, since gifs won't do it justice!

fun fact : i've spent like a week and a half emulating a crappy smartphone camera.