Qwertyuiopia

Candace and Joel’s Country Wedd’in is of course primarily an actual wedding, but then there’s the game.

The “32-bit-wedding” is a computer game that has been sent as an invitation for the wedding of Joel and Candace (who have asked me not to disclose their last names). It has been quite exciting working on this project for a number of reasons, like the fact that it was all manageable with a free software toolset, that the scale and requirements of the project made it just the kind of challenge I felt I could wrangle next and, last but not least, working with the couple (well, Candace was the mastermind behind it all, but Joel is the game’s star) has been really fun and gave the whole production a personal note, and a character-centered structure. So, without further ado:

The game is comprised of three cartoon sequences and two levels, one of which is side-scrolling and one fully three-dimensional, where Joel is sent by his spouse on a quest to find their engagement ring. It has been designed to be pretty straightforward, in order to not aggravate non-players, and also comes with an option to play itself. It runs on the blender 2.49b game engine (2.5 was a bit too young for production purposes when the project began), and all of its assets have been created with free software: namely inkscape, the gimp and makehuman.

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Neverball isn’t a new game, but has for a long time been one of the cutest open source games one could possibly have on a desktop computer.

Well, on Feb 2 2009 version 1.5.0 came out, bringing the game’s development out of a long hiatus. The new version sports a huge list of changes, which bring the game to a whole new level of “polished” production-wise.

For those that don’t really know what I’m talking about, Neverball is a 3d platform game, where you roll a ball to collect coins by tilting the platforms it’s on. Along with it comes a mini golf game based on the same engine, called Neverputt. Its attractive and simple design and simple object physics make it a game everyone, regardless of age, operating system or processing power can enjoy (well, almost). In some way you’re lucky, since it’s probably good timing to be checking it out for the first time. 

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