Wonderland

Super Mario koopa shell mouse

The mat's horrible, but the MOUSE!

It's a USB ball mouse - bless - and $30.

Final Fantasy barware

I have a huge soft spot for silly drinks glasses, especially slightly frosted ones. You know the type? Bit retro. Look at these!

I like a lot. Over at NCSX.

Create your own Superhero Kit

See the theme emerging here... Here's one that involves only injection moulded parts, but is nevertheless a build-your-own. Things are getting so cheap that simply bundling lots of parts is a viable option these days.

See it here. Pretty sure I found this a few days ago via Superpunch and it's been sitting in an open tab since, ahem. Things are getting unbelievably busy over at MakieLab!

Personalised Superhero doll

Here's another use for zCorp-printed heads on bodies: usually they're bobbleheads, but in this case for £80 you get a printed version of your own head, plus a basic plastic superhero doll, a tube of superglue and a set of instructions.

Yep, you have to yank off the doll head yourself then glue on the new one...!? 

While I'm all for DIY and making, this is a little expensive for what you get: the difference in texture and resolution of the ABS injection moulded body and the sandstone-like zCorp print is going to be weird (you can tell I'm working in this stuff hey :-)), but worse, fragile too: you can't play with the end result. 

Still, who's to say what value personalisation? It's such a rare thing to be able to offer, there's not exactly a wealth of comparative data. We're certainly going to be finding out pretty soon with MAKIES; our action dolls will be in the same ballpark price range but they use probably 20 times the amount of material, will be playable with, and don't involve superglue, (with luck)...

Personalised Superhero doll (Thanks Chris!)

Defiance: the Show, the MMO

This is an old idea in the world of telly-and-games, and a really, really hard one to pull off: I'm kind of both amazed and not surprised that it's taken until 2012 to get it to happen. Enormous congrats to Syfy!

Defiance is both a TV show and a videogame with plot touchpoints that affect both:

With Battlestar Galactica and Lost now distant memories, there's a gaping hole in the "epic sci-fi" category on television. Enter Syfy's Defiance.

The television series is being developed in conjunction with a massively multiplayer online game, and the two will be launched simultaneously. They'll be connected by the same overall storyline, to the point that events from the show will play a part in the game, and vice versa.

Defiance is set on a future Earth ravaged by war, and will feature human and alien cultures attempting to rebuild civilization in a post-terraformed Earth.

Eeeeh. 

The only crossover I've experienced to date (I didn't play the Battlestar Galactica BigPoint game) was an early moment in Star Wars Galaxies where you get to find the huge dead dinosaur-bone-set that R2 & Threepio meet after their Tatooine landing. I stood there for ages, taking pictures like a tourist ;-)

It was magic.

American McGee's Red

She's actually titled Akaneiro: Demon Hunters, but it's pretty much what he did to Alice, done to Red Riding Hood.

Faaaabulous!

(SuperPunch found it.)

Snake The Planet

DIY levels for multiplayer Snake based on the furniture in the player location:

Very tidy. (Via HackADay)

GDC begins Monday, but in practice, today.

I'm in San Fran. There's that familiar, weird mouldy smell that all the houses have. The wafting smell of pot from shuffling walkers, and the legal marijuana place that our (superb) airbnb apartment is above. The bright, bright sunshine!

It's been too long, again, since I've had a chance to blog properly. GDC makes me nostalgic for times when blogging was central to my experience here; this trip is mainly about VC & funding meetings.

Raising money for an unusual startup in a recession sure ain't easy, but going by our one pitch on Friday here, it's pretty enjoyable: a sunny drive down to Menlo Park; a nice wait in a book-lined foyer with 3D printed art by Bathsheba Grossman (Lev "The Magicians" and Austin "Soon I Will Be Invincible"'s sister!) scattered about, and an immensely positive meeting with a chap who asked about life stories and who was wonderfully warm and chatty.

California definitely makes things lovely. Tonight: dinner with friends \o/

Good Things Come To Those Who Break Clay Pots

In amongst a bizarre amount of bacon-themed tees and frat style joke tees, is this:

It makes me nostalgic for good times past! Can't you just hear those pots breaking?

Level Up Lamp

Not only is it glowy yellow, but you switch it on/off by touching the base, and every 8 switches you get a 1-UP sound.

Oh the irony.

Spotted on the way to work this morning.

Playfic: Waxy's DIY text adventure engine

Waxy has made, and launched, a release of something he built with his 15-yo cousin: a DIY text adventure maker.

> What is Playfic?

Playfic is a platform for writing and playing interactive fiction. Interactive fiction (aka "text adventures") is a genre of game that uses no graphics or sound, but instead, uses text to tell a story in an interactive world.

Playfic is a way to write interactive fiction and publish it entirely on the web. Playfic uses a "natural language" programming language called Inform 7 that's easy to pick up and difficult to master. You're able to make your first simple game within minutes.

The old commands are like old friends, muscle memory. What a lovely project.

Via Waxy, ofc!

MakeGo

Our pal Chris O'Shea has made a app-toy, called MakeGo.

It encourages kids to build their own vehicle big enough to fit an iPhone, and then the app provides playfulness: sounds and characters to bring the vehicle to life. At which point you push it around the environment you've made too: creativity, fun, noise and device-nav, all in one bucket.

Great stuff!

Kalimdor built in Minecraft, to scale (attempt).

This was a real "you have to be kidding me" moment. Kalimdor - one of the Kingdoms of World of Warcraft, recreated to scale in Minecraft. Piece by piece.  (done using scripts, sez Luke)

Boggles the mind!

People love to build.

"I'm trying to create a replica of Kalimdor in Minecraft, and I want it to be the correct scale. I'd like to create the terrain first, so I need to compute the relative distances (in Minecraft blocks) between the different locations in Kalimdor.

If a Minecraft character is approximately two blocks tall, and if we assume the male Orc model is equal in size, then how many blocks is "one yard" in WoW?"

(Thanks Ed!)

 

Avatar BJD

My world is full of strange new things these days: toy-safe EN71 clear coating (SO amazingly hard to find a toy-safe one). Ball-Jointed Doll detailings, customs, OOAK (One Of A Kind)s, miniature clothing samples... you name it. What a journey it's been, trying to make a new toy from scratch.

We're so, so close though: some major hurdles to continue to wrangle include coloured plastics available for the SLS printing we're using, and how to make the finish dirtproof. But the doll stood, and balanced, on one foot today. There's not many dolls out there that can claim that: we've made an action doll ;-)

In my search for a paint expert in the UK who can help us with finishing & face painting dolls and action figures, I came across this Avatar custom from Lunar Pendrith, I'm told one of the UK's very best BJD "faceup" artists:

And while we're on blue, have a look at this amazing steampunky Blythe custom by Lawdeda:

Cute freckles.