Now I´ve launched the first kickstarter project in US together with a friend there and some friends here in Germany. Its about an epic battle contest with RC controlled giant Robots based on LEGO Technic and MINDSTORMS. We also going to use autonomous Drones, and challenge us with races, missions, coop and much much more.
Our Kickstarter launch is next wednesday and we already have trailers and a webpage online, all informations you can find here:
http://www.freakwave.de
And now its time to go again, since 3 weeks we do marketing like maniacs ^^ And theres still a few days to keep on doing it ;-)
Have a nice start into the winter time ^^
Markus alias Rayjunx
Independent game development - FREAKWAVE
The official game development blog of Markus Geiger alias Rayjunx. Every few days new posts about card, table, tabletop, rpg, video games and other nerd stuff ^^
Friday, October 10, 2014
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Games now available at your global app dealer ;-)
Today my first two iPad apps Extra Fluffy and Pulse of Life are released in apples app store. Images, info material, and shop links you can find at www.freakwave.de.
Im very happy that everything about this first apps runs well, and I already have some bigger and specially even more interesting game for casual gamers under developing. The alpha version already runs and soon I going to show more details about it, just for a few weeks it have to wait in top-secret mode ^^
I wish you all a lot fun with playing the games all over the world ;)
Rayjunx
Im very happy that everything about this first apps runs well, and I already have some bigger and specially even more interesting game for casual gamers under developing. The alpha version already runs and soon I going to show more details about it, just for a few weeks it have to wait in top-secret mode ^^
I wish you all a lot fun with playing the games all over the world ;)
Rayjunx
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Raspberry Pi - Futter für die Nerds unter uns
Mein geliebter Raspberry Pi im Hosentaschenformat :-)
Bisher hatte ich noch keine Erfahrung mit LINUX sammeln können, wohl wissend das es verbreiteter ist als man allgemein annimmt und durch OpenSource wirklich eine feine Sache ist. Kurz darauf zeigten und erzählten mir unabhängig voneinander fast gleichzeitig zwei Freunde vom Raspberry Pi. Dieser Minicomputer ist nur so groß wie eine Scheckkarte und ist fertig aufgebaut für 30-40 Euro zu haben. Die Gelbe Box auf dem Foto ist eine optionale Erweiterung wie auch die Kühlkörper auf dem CPU etc.
Zum Einsatz kommt in ihm ein 0,7-1ghz Prozessor der lediglich 5Watt verbraucht, mit 512MB integriertem Arbeitsspeicher. Er hat ein Audio, Video und DVI Output, 2 x USB, SD Kartenslot und vor allem eine frei Programmierbare Schnittstelle für Input und Output. Damit werde ich bald versuchsweiße LED Lichterketten und Displays ansteuern. Und da LINUX wesentlich schlanker ist und zudem Versionen speziell für den Raspberry zum download bereit stehen, läuft die Kiste super, egal ob als Medienserver, Server, Steuereinheit für elektronische Spielerreihen, kurzum man kann alles daraus machen wonach einem der Sinn steht, bis hin zum Cluster Rechner.
Mehr Infos unter:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi
http://www.raspberrypi.org/quick-start-guide
Weitere Berichte und Versuchsdokumentationen folgen ^^
Grüße
Rayjunx
Saturday, June 1, 2013
Extra Fluffy and Pulse Of Life finished!
Today just a short update:
Both games, Extra Fluffy and Pulse Of Life are now finished and send to apple. In about one week I Hope to get the approval, and a few days later they will be available in all app stores world wide.
The homepage is also finish, including long videos about this games and others, and I will upload it a few days before release.
Many more games are in pipeline, and i already start testing what i may develop next.
So have a nice day! And keep patience, soon the games are available. And by the way, I still look out for new game testers.
Check www.freakwave.de
Rayjunx
Friday, April 19, 2013
Bug hunting
Do you know
about the crawling bugs hiding inside the source codes and bring the
programmers sleepless nights? I would tell you a little bit about it ;) There´s many ways you can breed some nice population of bugs inside your source code as programmer. I give small non programmer compatible example.
First in detail
You write a list with 10 balls flying around your screen for a little game. This list starts from 0 to 9, so 10 elements inside, because 0 gets counted as the first element in chain. If you forget that fact, and try to tell BALL[10] to move, you get a evil program error. But you find out quick.
If you
delete balls going out the field, and use a automatic rutine for that like
NSMutableArray, they fill the deleted ball with the next element. So after
deleting BALL[4] your list gets shorter and now BALL[8] ( Ball number 9 ) is
the last one. Sounds logic, didn’t it? But another more dangerous bug can
happen by make one small mistake that way.
You write a
loop handling all balls from 0 to the last element in list. And then maybe
delete a ball out of the list if its moving out the screen. Then you jump over
one ball in calculation!
Why? At the moment you delete for example BALL[3]
the highest ball in chain [9] replace his position, so the list now only contain
9 balls. But your loop after handling BALL[3] going to handle the next ball and
this is BALL[4]. Ball[9] who´s now in position of the deleted ball Ball[3] gets not handled this frame in game. Maybe that causes
no problem, but maybe in some constellations this bug happen just once a
hour in your game and can do everything, starting with a empty not shown image
for some frames, up to break the program by error. And the not every time happening bugs, you cannot reproduce the same way again and again, are very different to hunt down, like try to shoot a deer eating grass every day at the same time at a clearance ( defined position ). Its a simple job in opposite hunting down a wild leopard where you don't know when and where he´s located between the bushes.
Some funny story from "BLACK AND WHITE"
One time the developers of BLACK AND WHITE written about some funny bug they have had. Some big creature like a pet you can act with, walking around in game, you can try to command him, feed him etc. And one time in game he just run in cycles around, and they don’t find out why he do that first. They try long to find the reason, and finally they find out he was hungry, in the mode for finding food, and so he checked all other units around, and walking to the nearest… and they do not make this procedure precluding himself in the list of possible units to eat. So he just try to eat himself... ;)
Everything is just logic, but logic can be very complex, and even if you have great skills, sometimes a mistake happen. In opposite of this it makes you stunning if you write long parts of source code without checking or running it, and after finish it you see all is running like planned without any problems. Its like driving car to the next city with closed eyes, and arrive without any accident ;) But its already great enough if you can make the written code running just by read over it once again and fix small details in about 5 minutes.
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
A childhood epilogue
There’s a
reason back in my path why its so important for me to be a good father for my son. Its about
the things gone wrong, the things I yearning for as I was a children myself but
never got. Its most about the father I didn´t have and the mother who never
understand my thoughts.
The father I didn’t have
As I was
young I loved my father with every fiber of my soul. He was intelligent, able
to understand me, and he never inveighted me. He was soft, so I never have to
fair he telling me what i´m not allowed to do, and that’s why I loved him and
not my mother who somethings getting angry with me if I broke something for
example. That this weakness "not being able to be steady" would be his curse
later on I not realized at that age. As I was about 10 and gets interested in
so many things I want to share with him and spending time with him, a very evil woman found him and use him
like a toy. He knew that he´s going the wrong way, he knew hes not going to be
happy that way, and on long sight losing his own childrens me and my brother,
but he have had no power for withstand this. So I see him first once a weekend, once
two weeks, once a month and later once a year and less. But all the time he say
he plan visit us soon, spending time with us, and I believed him. Even after gets disappointed a
hundert times, till I was adult my self and for the first time I understand what really
happen. As child I try to show him what I do, my games, my thoughts want to
have feedback from a person I respect and be able to understand me, but he only
try to do something for his conscience, buy me some stuff and go away after one
or maybe two hours. I going the way I go, whatever happened, but it was not nice
to go it alone. I got a PC, I got a scanner and printer, all stuff I needed but I
was willing to change everything just for real time with my father, what I never
get.
After all I
understand whats real important, and I never go to be like that for my son. I
never can give him more attention then he deserves. I can buy to much stuff, or
educate to soft, but time I never can spend to much with him.
My loved son Ryu
The mother who dosn´t unerstand me
My mother was not like my father. She was not so soft minded. But do you know how it feels if somebody just do like interested and understanding but is not able to really understand you? She not mean it bad, but it makes no difference for my feeling nobody understand me, if I tell her i find my old Toy car, or I tell her I find a way to improve the system performance of windows about 50%, or inviting some very cool new stuff, she say anyway just "SUPER! and do you come to breakfast now?" This was not the reason why i lost contact with her now, she was just not able to understand, I just write about this because its the explanation why I start doing so much all my self and learned to power this without feedback and understanding from others. Even if this feedback of people understand you and your work in this world is one of the greatest things you can get after love and friendship. But you have to be able to energy your self at least for a while.
So please, all of you outside there, spend as most time with your children's, wife, and friends as you can. This is what really fill your live with sense and pleasure.
Rayjunx
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Remote controlled LEGO robot battle
All my childhood
long I play with LEGO, builded everything from spaceship to technic stuff like a
terminator arm moved by strings and handles. Then I stopped unless XMAS 2011
where I bought some remote controlled excavator which just fascinating me.
After building and tuning it I thought about the new electric parts LEGO used and what you can do with it. So a question revealed to me: If its possible
to build a remote controlled robot with reloading weapon systems, strong enough
to destroy the cohesion of other opponents just using the platform LEGO? Because
using real RC components for a contest like that making it enormous expensive and you need stronger weapons to fight, that you even risk hurting humans. About a half
year later and hours over hours of brick building I got the answer:
YES it’s possible!
What to do know?
The next
step would be finding teams for this contest, sponsors and support crew to
produce a media relevant show on TV or just for fun on YouTube. Then
the opponents can battle and join challenges, driving, racing, walking, battle with
mealy and distance weapons and so on. I also have a plan about a lot of nice
features for this show, how they control the vehicles etc., and till today I never see somebody not was totally
amazed by this first robot prototype. But now I just waiting for the right chance
to realize it in big style...
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