The Future of Ruckingenur

So here’s the deal: you all seemed to really like Ruckingenur, but there weren’t enough levels, and that’s a problem. A lot of you have suggested that I release a level editor but, as it currently stands, I don’t think that’s going to happen any time soon. Why? Because almost all of the effort that went into the game was designing, drawing, and implementing the levels – that’s why there are only four. So, in what it would take someone to make a set of decent levels, you could just as easily make a game from scratch. A new game. A better game! So, if anyone is inspired by Ruckingenur, I encourage you to create your own engineering game; we sure as hell could use some more. Be sure to send me a link to anything you make!

In the mean time, I’ll start working on the next installment of Ruckingenur. With more levels!

Thanks, Everyone!

Thank you to everyone who came here from Hackaday – in the past two days, I’ve had over 3000 downloads of Ruckingenur II, along with about a thousand combined downloads of my other games. Your comments have bolstered my spirits and my faith in the notion of Games for Engineers, a niche that I’m happy to serve. I just started a new job, so my life is a little hectic at the moment, but you can most definitely look forward to more Ruckingenur in the near future. While I may be the one making these games, they’re also about you: the people who play them.

If you want to be alerted to new games and products from Zachtronics Industries (which includes more Ruckingenur!), visit this Google Groups page and join the group. You’ll only receive emails on it from me, and only when I release important things that you might care about. Plus, you can unsubscribe whenever you want. It couldn’t be simpler!

If you have any feedback to send my way, such as ideas for new things you’d like to see, feel free to post comments on the relevant page or email me directly at zachbarth@gmail.com. I try to read all comments and respond to most emails, so go ahead and let me know what you’re thinking!

Thanks again, and have fun!

Spah's Sappin' Mah Sentry!

My new office is pretty boring and empty, aside from the five computers and their accessories scattered around. Thinking about decorations, it occurred to me that I had just about all the parts I needed to build my very own Electro-Sapper from Team Fortress 2!

It didn’t occur to me until after I started that I didn’t have anything to make the case out of, so I ended up using some leftover foam-core from WWA!, acrylic paint, and crystal clear spray enamel. I was able to print out a new scale for the meter using my laser printer, but couldn’t seem to make it print out an “ELECTRO-SAPPER” label that didn’t look awful. I ended up stenciling the text and the white details on, but didn’t have much more luck with that. As it turned out, I was also out of the components I needed to make a small noise generator to twitch the meter, so I ended up soldering an old battery powered FM radio into the circuit, which does a pretty good job of making static noises and making the meter move.

World War Failure!

I playtested my new tabletop game, World War Awesome!, last night. It wasn’t very satisfying.

It all came together into a fairly complicated and bulky game, which I think would have been okay if playing it resembled having fun. The Superpanzers, the only mechanic that I really liked in the game (and happened to be the only real major gimmick of the game), seemed to be one of the major problems. As I’m currently trying to get ready for work (I start next week), I don’t think I’ll be fixing World War Awesome! any time soon. Which, quite honestly, is perfectly fine by me.

In the meantime, here are the resources I used for the playtest.

Latest Version of the Rules
Frequency Board
Custom Dice Stickers

American Token Sheet
American Tank Board
American Tank Card

Soviet Token Sheet
Soviet Tank Board
Soviet Tank Card

Settling In

If you’re privy to details about my real life, you’d already know that I recently moved to Seattle.

If you’re not in the know, I recently moved to Seattle!

It’s been a little hectic with moving stuff from storage and putting together Ikea furniture and playing TF2, but I managed to get some work done on my latest tabletop game, World War Awesome!

If you’re interested, you can read the first version of the rules . (Warning: PDF ahead!)

Ruckingenur II

Now available: Ruckingenur II, the latest game in my Games for Engineers series!

In the style of the first Ruckingenur, Ruckingenur II is a game of “rock and roll” reverse engineering of electrical circuits. Unlike the first Ruckingenur, Ruckingenur II is a full game, complete with multiple levels, a soundtrack, and live-action video sequences. Help can be found inside the game. Download link below!

It’s worth mentioning that this requires Windows (or something compatible) to play, along with the .NET 2.0 Framework. You should also have the sound on!

Ruckingenur Movie Props

In case it wasn’t apparent from the trailer, I’m currently working on a sequel to Ruckingenur – Ruckingenur Two. I decided to tell the story with video cutscenes, so I needed to make some props!

They’re most definitely just stacked cardboard with art from the game glued on top, but they seem to work pretty well.

Coming Soon, Summer 2008

Rebar Knife

I made this a while ago, but never actually got around to posting it. I was trying to make a “sword” out of a continuous piece of rebar, but the handle ended up melting off in the fire. Oops. So, I flattened the bottom out and punched some holes through with a pointy steel rod, allowing me to carve out and attach a piece of a fallen tree branch to create a handle, which I carved smooth and applied some sort of wood sealant to. While it’s probably the best blade I’ve made so far, it’s sort of a moot point, as it was hastily made out of junk steel.

Mushroom Screws?

Like some sort of stoner, I was playing with a screw sitting on my desk when it occurred to me that they sort of look like mushrooms!

I’m sure I’ve made things that were a bigger waste of time?

Edward James Awesome!

I’ve been in the habit of making my own tee-shirts for a while – over the years, I’ve used iron-on transfers, stippled acrylic fabric paint, and even spray paint, although that didn’t work very well. I’ve been sort of fed up with not being able to make proper stencil shirts, though, so I bought some textile ink at A.C. Moore and, using a thin sheet of plastic, made a proper stenciled tee-shirt.

I used photoshop to make the stencil design; I took a photo of Edward James Olmos as Admiral Adama from Battlestar Galactica, cut the photo from the background, used the threshold function to reduce it to a black and white image, gaussian blurred the image to soften some of the lines, and then used the brush to eliminate any white areas within black areas. The last step is sort of important, because all of the black areas were physically removed in the stencil, and thus anything within them would be too. The end result was an image like this:

I printed the image at the size I wanted, traced it onto a sheet of thin, rigid plastic (this, to be exact) with a fine-point sharpie, and then cut out all the black areas with a hobby knife. The resulting stencil:

After making the stencil, I used a small roller (solid rubber, not the kind that holds a lot of ink) to roll the ink through the stencil, onto the shirt. I put a piece of cardboard between the two sides of the shirt to prevent ink from bleeding through from the front to the back, which in hindsight was a pretty damn good idea – I had to over apply ink in some areas, so a ton bled through. The stencil did a remarkably good job of keeping the ink within the lines, though, as you can see in the following picture:

Overall, an epic tee-shirt victory!

capAbility Games on the News!

We’re on the news! It’s only two minutes long, but features consumers from the Albany Center for the Disabled playing our game, Professor Kathleen Ruiz answering questions, description via newscaster, and an awesomely vague one-line quote from me. Damn right I laid out those constraints!

Tex Mechs

Last semester, I took a game development class – our project was a game called Tex Mechs. We used a large rear projection screen (6’ tall, 8’ wide) with a pressure sensitive floor mat and a Wiimote tucked into a more exciting enclosure to create a physically immersive, anime stylized video game. We ran it at the 2008 RPI Game Symposium and took home first place in the competition.

For now, I’m just sort of dumping content related to the project here – a video, a Flickr gallery, and a copy of the paper I wrote describing the rendering techniques I used to create a cel-shaded “anime” look. I’m waiting on some better videos, namely three full runs of the game, and will post them when I get them myself, perhaps along with more technical information.

Tex Mechs Rendering Techniques (PDF)

Tex Mechs Photo Gallery

Oh my! This could be interesting...

Upgrade Complete

In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve switched to a new content engine – Pivot, to be exact. Hopefully, it’ll be better than Drupal was. Everything isn’t quite finished yet, though; I haven’t finished the layout, and I have yet to figure out how to organize my content such that it’s easy to browse and read.

Regardless, expect more frequent posts about more trivial things, along with some new projects, all hopefully coming soon.