Remember a while back when I told you all about Haluz 2? Well, Jay is Games reported on Wednesday that the second half - which was previously available for a modest fee - is now available for free!
Check it out at haluz2.net for lots of beautiful point-and-click puzzle adventures.
http://patterngame.com/ - Flash toy by
http://volcanic-penguin.deviantart.com/
After looking at the actual Chaos Game, it almost seems silly of me to insist this is chaotic. Regardless of any technical chaotic qualifications, it is mesmerizing. The subtlest twitches of the mouse send swirling sheres of various sizes into mad dashes to all corners of the screen, tracing intricate kaliedoscopic patterns to dazzle the eye. It ultimately follows a set structure at the center.
It’s along the lines of music visualizations at times, has the overt patterns of fractals at times, and all the enjoyment of diversionary point and click flash apps like TinyGrow, The Jackson Pollock emulator, Echogenesis, flOw, and the Grid Game (which incidentally I just got my best score ever on: 1579).
Many thanks to fellow author SlyFloyd for pointing this out.
Amanita Design, responsible for the two beautiful flash games: Samarost and Samarost 2, are now working on a full-length adventure game! According to the tantalizing site We expect to release the game in the 2nd half of 2008.
Right now the site only has the basic announcement, 2 tantalizing bits of delicious art, and a forum. The forum appears to be a little empty right now. I would strongly encourage anyone who enjoyed the Samarost games to pop by and give the Amanita Design team a word of thanks! Besides, the more talk generated in the forums, the more they might feel inclined to drop a few more hints of what’s to come! Nudge nudge, wink wink.
At Typorganism there’s a fascinating little tool that will take JPEGs sized 60×50 pixels and turn them into either letter or block style ASCII art in either color or black and white.
There are five sample faces you can play with to get a feel for what the tool can do: 3 male faces, one female face and one cat face.
There is also a picture upload option. I played with this tool for a moment and of course I had the perfect sample picture to test the tool’s limits.
I found the “Generate HTML” option slightly desceptive. Selecting this option with the color and square options will open a new window with a JPEG output of the Flash-generated image. Which is great for saving, but not “true” ASCII. However, if you opt for the letters option, this tool will definitely deliver!
Forgive the display, I can’t quite make it work the way I want. Below the cut to hide my shame.
Read the rest of this entry »
By now you may have seen the “seam carving” image editing video, demonstrating a new, kickass way of resizing images to retain the key elements and pick out threads that are “less relevant” to retain the overall feel of the original image.
Thanks to the glory of my del.icio.us feed, I’ve found a flash tool that will resize web-hosted images in this fashion. The tool’s author is still working on some of the more advanced features discussed in the video, but right now it’s really fun to play with the vertical and horizontal resizing.
Jay Is Games tipped me off yesterday that Haluz 2 is out. If you enjoy “casual gaming” at all, and you don’t have JIG bookmarked, then shame on you. But I digress.
Haluz and Haluz 2 are two gorgeous point-and-click puzzle solving games. (See also: Samarost and its sequel, Samarost 2 from the fine folks at Amanita Design.)
Haluz 2 shows improvments from the first incarnation very early on, with the introduction of “level codes”. Right now I’ve got 3 of them on a sticky note next to my desk so I can pick up after I leave work. The puzzles in the early stages I’ve played so far were simple, but Haluz 2 is a game of two parts. One is free online, and the other is a download which costs $9.99(us). Or for a couple more bucks - $12.99(us) - you can get the full version and the soundtrack. Given the lush soundscapes that match with the rich environment design, I would argue that the extra few dollars for the soundtrack is well worth it.
Visit haluz.eu to play the free online versions of both games. The option to purchase and download all of Haluz 2 is also there. Also check out the links section where the games’ creator pays homage to its inspiration, Samarost, and also provides links to a few other p&c games and the games’ music creator.
Some kids play in the sandbox. We play in the.... litterbox??? The RKNet staff is pleased that you decided to stop by. Currently this is a multi-author project, with a rotating cast of totally kooky characters. Contact giania [at symbol] gmail [dot] com if you'd like to play here too.
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