blog.thinkslow.net

Hi everybody, hope you started your day wonderfully (is that...

Thu, 09 May 2013 10:14:00 +0200

Hi everybody, hope you started your day wonderfully (is that english?)!

This morning while I am working on my little Mindwave game I wanted to use TexturePacker on OpenSuse but as it comes as a .deb and since I did not want to convert the .deb to a .rpm using Alien and preferred to know what was going to be installed, I did it by hand.

So here a simple how-to in case you want to do it too :

Download the Ubuntu 64bit version (2.40) there.
open the .deb
uncompress data.tar.gz
copy the contents of subdir usr/lib in /usr/lib64
copy the executable located under usr/bin in the folder you wish to install TexturePacker to
chmod +x TexturePacker
make a script to start it with the following command : ./TexturePacker —gui

That’s it! Then you can buy a license to use it or use the free essential mode.

Note : TexturePacker is not upgraded anymore on Linux since its 2.40 version but it can be used nonetheless with Haxe/NME using Philippe Elsass tilelayer lib using sparrow tilesheets so that’s not really a problem for us Linux Haxe devs :)

Hi again everybody. Since I’m preparing my next week...

Wed, 08 May 2013 16:56:00 +0200

Hi again everybody. Since I’m preparing my next week conference about Brain Computer Interface I’ve taken time to make my Haxe bluetooth driver up again on Linux to make it work with my Mindwave Mobile Headset.

So would you have any need of using this driver you can get it there : https://bitbucket.org/fnicaise/mindwave-bluez

Setup is pretty obvious :

get bluez development libs & headers and hcitool for your distro
make build or make build64 will build your ndll
then haxe linux.hxml will build a binary in bin subdir. (64bits by default, but you can change the flags)
then modify test.sh to reflect your Bluetooth address and launch it using sh test.sh
If you don’t get any error message and get awriting byte ok ? true it means it works :)

A few notes:

hcitool scan will show your mindwave but if that’s not the case make sure you push the swicth on the mindwave so that it enters pairing mode (fast blue led blink)
sudo hcitool cc YO:UR:BT:DE:VI:CE will try to setup a connection
If it does not work start hcidump in another terminal and launch the commands again to check for error messages.
If nothing works at all maybe your bluetooth service is not started. On OpenSuse you can launch it using sudo /usr/sbin/hciconfig hci0 up

Now to actually use this bluetooth driver with a mindwave mobile you can download the universal Mindwave connector I made last year : https://bitbucket.org/fnicaise/hxthinkgear

To try to get data from your mindwave mobile :

haxe linux.hxml
then switch your mindwave on
put in pairing mode (fast blue blink)
hcitool scan
Clean the mindwave contactors (not joking, that’s very important)
Put the mindwave on
And if your mindwave has been found launch ./bin/Linux
type choice 2
Now stay calm and you should see success messages as well as data incoming from the headset :

MindWaveMobile : Trying to connect…

MindWaveMobile : Connection ok

MindWaveMobile : Trying to get data…

eeg:{ eSense => { meditation => 0, attention => 0 }, poorSignalLevel => 200, eegPower => { delta => 0, highGamma => 0, highBeta => 0, highAlpha => 0, lowBeta => 0, theta => 0, lowGamma => 0, lowAlpha => 0 } }

That’s it. Of course you can contact me if you wish to have more information at contact at thinkslow dot org or on twitter

Please note that the bluetooth part can be tricky but I’ve already tested it on Fedora (fuduntu), Ubuntu (11.04, 11.10, 12.04) and OpenSuse 12.3 so it should work for you too :)

I will make another blog post later with my incoming project a little game using the Mindwave Mobile which I will showcase next Wednesday. I will then release the sources so you can try to play with Haxe + NME + your mindwave mobile on linux and have fun (note for windows and mac users, the hxThingear will also work for you since it uses the default Thinkgear Connector from neurosky )

[EDIT 13-05-2013] : Don’t know if I made myself clear, but hcitool scan is just there to check if your mindwave is nearby. You do not need to use it before you actually launch your application. But if you cannot connect to your mindwave use hcitool scan to check.

Both my linux laptops died two weeks ago. So I has to install...

Wed, 08 May 2013 09:45:00 +0200

Both my linux laptops died two weeks ago. So I has to install Linux again. And since I do multiplatform dev, I didn’t want to choose between booting on Windows or MacOSX or Linux.

So instead I decided to buy a small Intel NUC and install OpenSuse 12.3 on it. After struggling with the installation process (which thanks to UEFI and secureboot was not funny and ended by disabling both in the BIOS) I wanted to install Haxe. So here is a small how-to :)

1 - Get Haxe Official Linux Installer from Haxe.org

2- Decompress and Install it

3 - Now try to run haxelib. if it fails :

cd /usr/lib/haxe/std/haxelib/
sudo haxe haxelib.hxml
if libneko.so is not found > it is located in /usr/lib so do a sudo /sbin/ldconfig to add /usr/lib to your paths
sudo haxe haxelib.hxml
if you get this error “nekoc: error while loading shared libraries: libgc.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory,” install libgc
build haxelib again. haxelib is now compiled, replace the current 32bit version with the 64 bit version you just compiled.
Run haxelib. If you get “ Called from usr/lib/haxe/std/neko/_std/EReg.hx line 157 Uncaught exception - load.c(237) : Failed to load library : /usr/lib/neko/regexp.ndll (libpcre.so.3: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)” do sudo ln -sf /usr/lib64/libpcre.so.1 /usr/lib64/libpcre.so.3 and sudo ldconfig
now sudo haxelib setup. If it fails everytime with “This is the first time you are runing haxelib. Please run haxelib setup first” then sudo chown -Rv `whoami` /usr/lib/haxe

Then Haxelib works so you can install all the libs like NME and Hxcpp. I just compiled my Latest project and it works if I add a -64 to the compilation line :)

[EDIT]: For NME install alsa-libpulse plugin to avoid sound crash :)

Seed the first Pixel Gardening Simulation is available...

Thu, 02 May 2013 14:42:22 +0200

Seed the first Pixel Gardening Simulation is available there :

Windows
Mac OSX (10.7+)
Linux (32 bits)
Linux (64 bits) : coming next

It’s free :) Enjoy!

Done ! My game is finished and available here (windows)....

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 05:13:05 +0200

Done !

My game is finished and available here (windows). Mac and Linux coming next :)

You can also read / post the comments on the Ludum Dare page.

I AM E-X-H-A-U-S-T-E-D. I badly need some sleep now.

I hope you’ll enjoy playing :) ++

Or is it?

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 20:47:38 +0200

Or is it?

Afternoon Update : Sun Powa :)

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 16:25:37 +0200

Afternoon Update : Sun Powa :)

Hi everybody, Things are going well and even my bugs look cooool...

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 23:16:29 +0200

Hi everybody,

Things are going well and even my bugs look cooool ;) (video)

I hope to finish the game in a few hours and then concentrate on music and even more particles !

For Haxe + NME lovers, everything’s going fine so far. (NME 3.5.3 on windows )

From 4AM and for 48 straight hours I will be making a game for Ludum Dare 26 :) You can follow me...

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 02:31:56 +0200

From 4AM and for 48 straight hours I will be making a game for Ludum Dare 26 :) You can follow me...

fr : Mercredi 15 Mai à 18h30 j’animerai une...

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 10:35:00 +0200

fr : Mercredi 15 Mai à 18h30 j’animerai une conférence à Cap-Sciences à Bordeaux sur les interfaces Cerveau-Ordinateur en compagnie de Fabien Lotte chercheur à l’INRIA.

Pour l’occasion nous avons préparé une présentation des technologies actuelles, des domaines d’application et des dérives potentielles qui devraient permettre à toutes celles et tous ceux qui viendront de créer des débats animés ;)

La conférence débutera par un jeu que je suis en train de créer spécialement pour l’occasion.

La conférence est gratuite et sans réservation. Vous pouvez retrouver toutes les infos sur le flyer en PDF : https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7838262/BCI_Conf_CS.pdf

Bon j’espère vous voir rappliquer pour animer un peu les choses et poser des questions qui feront monter nos ondes bêta en flêche.

Et pour celles et ceux qui ne savent pas du tout de quoi on parle, voici un petit lien pratique

en : Hi all, as you may know I’ve been soing some experiments with BCI devices last year.

Would you happen to be in Bordeaux on May the 15th at 6:30PM I would be happy to see you attend to a debate on BCI and EEG I will animate with Fabien Lotte a French Researcher from INRIA.

We will show you what we can do with a Brain Computer Interface and what will/could be possible a few years from now.

The presentation will begin with a game using Neurosky Mindwave I am preparing for the event.

Of course it will be in french, but hey that shouldn’t stop you from coming : there will be a lot of pictures ;) No I’m kidding, but anyway now you now.

So it will take place in Bordeaux at Cap-Sciences.

Thanks for your attention Ladies and Gentlemen.

Now I am going to play to Kali’s ladder in order to rest a little bit before this Week-end Ludum Dare.

My friends from SpeakFabrik released a few days a ago some nice...

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 12:20:12 +0200

My friends from SpeakFabrik released a few days a ago some nice photos for the upcoming Strange Masks Trailer. You can see them there!

You can also follow them on tumblr :)

Enjoy!

Just found this article and by the way this blog from David...

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 15:13:43 +0200

Just found this article and by the way this blog from David Maletz, a part time indie developer. There are some very interesting toughts about motivations and other interesting articles and insights about indie development (like indie is not AAA?) .

I wanted to share it with you :) before I start to share new developments on the current projects…

You know, I’ve been thinking lately about many things...

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 14:38:56 +0100

You know, I’ve been thinking lately about many things while waiting for the teaser Strange Masks Extended from the fabulous Speak Fabrik team.

Launching Strange Masks has not been easy because I had a lot of things to do while there’s a lot I did not know. The main difficulty being getting in touch with people to make them aware that Strange Masks existed…

So, even if my wife and my children are my first supporters, friends certainly allowed me to get my head above the water.

Therefore I wanted to thank my friend in my very own way by making a new game. A game for friends. A game to celebrate friendship. A game to show how friends can help each other climb the highest peaks.

If you follow me on twitter you may have already spotted some pictures of an unamed rogue-like project. This is it: a 2 friends cooperative game.

And just for the geek factor: it is a 2 Player Cooperative semi real-time roguelike. - here is the limit of my English ;)

And because there’s nothing more enjoyable than playing with a friend in the same room, well you will play in front of the same screen.

That’s it. Have a wonderful day!

François

PS. for Haxe lovers, it is yet another Haxe + NME project.

Indie Knight’s coming! After a few days of holidays In the...

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 16:57:27 +0100

Indie Knight’s coming!

After a few days of holidays In the famous French Pyrenees Mountains with my Children, I have decided to take some time to re-introduce fun into my daily planning.

So here comes the Indie Knight, a small avatar which will allow me to share my experiences in a cartoon fashion while making me work my drawing - because obviously I am bad!

Enjoy!

Hi all and especially NME folks. With the new version of Strange...

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 10:29:52 +0100

Hi all and especially NME folks.

With the new version of Strange Masks, I encountered some memory issues with memory. So I decided to make some investigations which led me to correct these problems.

So here are some Memory Management tips.

always make some dispose / cleanup method in your classes to be sure you will do some memory cleansing. And call these methods ;)
whenever you call addChild it means that you will call removeChild and set your var to null
empty and nullify your arrays, lists, maps, etc…
call mybitmap.bitmapData.dispose() and mybitmap.bitmapData = null when you want to clean some bitmap (but it means you won’t be able to reuse it. Beware if you use some caching system)

Just these tips helped me to avoid a lot of memory consumption. I really mean it. It works right away.

And since this nothing new, here are the links where this data come from as well as some useful links :

Enjoy your monday!

Hi everybody ! What’s new? v1.0.5 desktop is ready...

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 11:19:00 +0100

Hi everybody !

What’s new?

v1.0.5 desktop is ready since Monday. But I am late on my planning.
iPad + Android is there waiting for me to compile and push it to my bêta testers. But I didn’t find the time to do it yet.
Strange Masks got a some good coverage last month but a very thin audience and I didn’t take time to push a real decent trailer…

So from these experiences what is going to happen?

Strange Masks Extended (1.0.5) will be released mid-March or maybe in April.
The Tablet version shall be released into the same time window.
Why so late? Because I want to take time to make a real promotion campaign, something worth the energy I put into Strange Masks. Because although I want to start a new project right now, I believe in this game being great for a very large audience and not just a niche. Hence the new version :)

This will allow me to take some time to think slow and stop rushing. After all ThinkSlow was created with this idea in mind and not just for game concepts.

This I realize now from my very first mistake: to make a game known I have to speak about it earlier…

Yet, my second mistake is to speak about unfinished things too early. Being Indie, my current planning is not solely based on my will to work but also on my personal / family planning which can interfere in many ways (not for bad though:)). So I have to learn to speak about things when things are ready. So that I don’t end up announcing stuff without releasing them and then become a vaporware reseller ;) Because I know that trust is hard to get but easy to lose.

So in case you haven’t followed my thoughts: from now on I will share earlier but announce later :)

I wanted to share these thoughts with you because who knows? It may help you too!

Enjoy, your day!

Pomodoro Power! Hi, while enjoying a sunday finishing Strange...

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 09:41:00 +0100

Pomodoro Power!

Hi, while enjoying a sunday finishing Strange Masks, I wanted to share with you the Pomodoro technique which can be found here. (all this of course during my pomodoro pause ;))

It was my friend Laurent who introduced me with this technique last year. And I must say that it has proven to be very reliable so far. I don’t use it every day but when I need to rush and yet have a very clear mind, it works like a charm.

I don’t want to spoil the thing because the guys of the Pomodoro team deserve to be known that’s why i invite you to spend at least a few minutes to learn more about it on their web site.

Enjoy you sunday!

Hi all, so it has been a very looonnng week and obviously it is...

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 17:42:48 +0100

Hi all,

so it has been a very looonnng week and obviously it is not finished yet.

What have I been working on this week? Strange Masks, again, for a final run, adding enough content and making it open so that players will be able to add their own content. Yeasss.

Strange Masks will now allow user content made with famous open source map editor : Tiled. Yessss.

I have also worked a lot on the game to make it more easy to grasp so that this version will be considered as ‘ultimate’ - meaning, no more refactoring but only DLCs (free of course).

This version will also make its way to the tablets since thanks to Haxe + NME, it will be the same.

Although it will not share the generous sales system (pay what you want). Rather I am going for a 100% free to play game with in-app purchases. I won’t bother making a free + paid app since it is now obvious Apple won’t support this anymore and customers don’t like it anyways. As for the android tablets version, it will use exactly the same mechanics.

I hope it will help me fund the upcoming projects.

So in the end, the desktop game will be the most generous offer you can have for Strange Masks and my favourite too. Although, I won’t ruin you on the tablets and the game will run maybe in a better way since it will allow for gestures.

But the market is different so I am just adapting myself to new constraints.

So once this new version is out and hopefully it will be next week, I will have a way to push new content in a more friendly way from time to time. I have already this funky addon which I want to work on featuring IndieStatik’s Chris Priestman’s funky music ;) And I want to work on other free DLC with other people as well, so don’t hesitate to contact me!

Anyway, starting from March, I will switch to my new project : codename Echo. Another very strange game. And yet another threat for your minds. Of course. You know me. I love playing with one’s mind ;)

Last but not least, I will share more data about web stores soon and I plan to make some indie store matrix to allow every indie player to know how much efforts are needed to publish games nowadays (and how much money you accept to share…)

Bye!

My Indie Nightmare, publishing Multi OS Games: Part 2

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 10:25:46 +0100

Hi,here’s an update of my previous article if you plan to publish your game :) 1 - Indie...

Being Honest… So a new review about Strange Masks was...

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 07:45:00 +0100

Being Honest…

So a new review about Strange Masks was done on OMG Ubuntu. I am happy with this one too even though the game scored 2.4 stars out of 5 which is quite low if you take a look at the very recent 8/10 of the praise from the other reviews.

But what interests me most is that every reviewer actually played to the game and gave his very own subjective feelings. And JOEY-ELIJAH SNEDDON, the reviewer took time to do this too.

Strange Masks being a very special game it is interesting to see the mixed feelings. I have experienced this when I was doing the bêta testing with players enjoying puzzles and others just disliking the whole concept.

In the OMGU review I can see that the author enjoyed the game but thought it was kind of deceiving because let’s face it: Strange Masks is very unique but there’s no grappling story no shiny visuals with lots of sparkling things and one may not like the soundtrack which I can very much understand. This is also not a AAA game nor is it a highly visually stunning game nor has it been marketed like other indie *stars* ;)

Like the author says : “But as fond as I was of the game during my time playing it I am not blinkered. Strange Masks is not a classic in the making; it’s not an undiscovered indie gem; nor is the game going to redefine any genres.”

And obviously this was what led to the low score.

But the hardest part is that even if you enjoy the game you have to struggle to find a way to explain to the player that he may either love the game or really hate it. And I think this can be amazingly difficult. How can you praise and warn in the same time? JOEY-ELIJAH SNEDDON actually did it.

So, it is a very fair review and really send the good message to the players: this game is peculiar and can be frustrating, And the most important thing is: it is a memory game! So if we remove the packaging ( sfx, gfx ) you may not enjoy it.

I thank the reviewer for this and encourage everybody to read the whole review here :)