Vitei – miguelMurat()

Mi 2014 empezó en Kyoto, rodeado de amigos y afortunadamente así seguí. Lo pasé bien con ellos yendo a tomar algo por ahí, cantando en el karaoke, yendo a ver templos, etc. Tuve la suerte de poder disfrutar de eventos como el setsubun, el hanami o también el precioso hanabi (o fuegos artificiales) del lago Biwako.

僕は友達に囲まれていて、２０１４年を始まってから、ずっとそうだったから良かった！来年は友達と一緒に居酒屋で美味しい御飯を食べたり、飲んだり、カラオケで遊んだり、お寺とかを見に行ったりして、楽しかった。日本の文化の色んなイベントを見に行く機会があって、面白かった。節分とか、花見とか、琵琶湖の花火大会も美しい。

I started 2014 with friends all around and happily it’s been like that all along. Last year I had good times hanging out with friends going to izakayas, karaokes, visiting temples and all. I was lucky enough to enjoy events like setsubun, hanami or Biwako’s magnificent fireworks (hanabi).

En Kyoto fui este año a diversos eventos centrados en videojuegos. Participé en las competiciones de creación de juegos GGJ2014 y LD30. Fui al BitSummit, donde jugué a muchos juegos indie en un ambiente estupendo, super familiar. Y no me olvido del Kyoto Indie Meetup que se hacía todos los meses además del VITEI Backroom GAME CLUB donde me lo pasaba genial tomando unas cervezas con otros devs. mientras jugábamos a juegos de ayer y hoy. Además, tenía ganas de volver a hacer jueguitos así que estoy contento de haber vuelto a hacer cosillas. ^__^/

京都で色々のゲームのイベントも参加して、いつもすごくいい感じだった。来年GGJ2014とLD30というゲームを作るイベントに参加した。そして、BitSummitでたくさんのインディーズゲームをやって、すごく良い雰囲気だった。毎月もKyoto Indie MeetupとかVITEI Backroom GAME CLUBでビールを飲んだり、ゲームをしたりの事も忘れない。パーティー以外来年もう一回懐かしいのゲームを作っていて、嬉しいんだもん！^__^/

I went in Kyoto to lots of videogames related events. I participated in game making contests like GGJ2014 and LD30, I went to BitSummit where I had the chance to try some cool indie games surrounded by lots of super nice devs, and I cannot forget mentioning the monthly Kyoto Indie Meetup and VITEI Backroom GAME CLUB where I had great fun sharing beers with dev friends while playing great new and old games. Can we copy this city dev atmosphere all around the world please? On a side note, I’m happy to be back on making games, I was missing it so much.

El estudio de japonés continuó como siempre siendo difícil. Hay un día cada semestre que en la escuela se elige a una persona por clase para hacer una presentación a toda la escuela de algún tema y yo fui el elegido. Hablé de reciclaje. También hice el examen de japonés “Noken” N2, pero lamentablemente me quedé a las puertas de aprobar (hacen falta 90 puntos) sacando un 86.

日本語を勉強するのは相変わらず、難しかった。いい方法がないみたいね。日本語学校の発表会でクラスの代表として、初めて日本語で劇場から発表する事になった。リサイクルについてだった。そして、７月の日本語能力試験N2を受けても、残念ながら結果は８６点で不合格してしまった。９０点は合格なんだから、惜しかった！結局スペインに帰国して、どんどん日本語がなくなっている気がする。>_< この記事を読むとそう思わない？

Studying Japanese was hard, as always, but I managed to do my first presentation in Japanese in front of a big audience about… recycling. There’s so much plastic in Japan. And in July I took the JLPT N2 exam which unfortunately didn’t pass scoring an 86 when 90 is required.

Y antes de volver a España, éste año también me recorrí 1000 km. de Japón en bici, estuve en Akihabara, en Tokyo, ayudando con un interesante documental haciendo las preguntas en japonés y traduciendo, y fui a Tailandia desde donde ya me volví.

そうだよ。貯金したお金がなくなってしまって、帰国したんだけど、その前チャリで1000キロの旅行やったんだ！そして、東京の秋葉原でビデオ作品を作っている友達に通訳者としてインタビューをするのを手伝ってあげて、面白かった。最後に、タイに行って、あそこからスペインに戻った。

So eventually I returned to Spain, but before that I did a 3 weeks trip around Japan by bike, I also went to Akihabara, in Tokyo, where I helped a friend on the making of a documentary interviewing people and translating. Very interesting experience. And last, but not least, I went to Thailand for a week.

2015

Ahora estoy aquí, pasando un poco de tiempo con los amigos, la familia, y disfrutando de la comida española, que no está buena ni nada. No obstante ya va siendo hora de ir buscando un nuevo trabajo. Trabajo que decidirá seguro qué tipo de año es este 2015.

今はスペインに居る友達と家族と一緒にちょっと時間を過ごしている。そして、懐かしいのスペイン料理もう食べて、美味しいよ！でも、仕事を探す時間です！どんな仕事に就くによって、2015年はどうなるのかな。

So here I am. Enjoying some time with friends and family and enjoying delicious Spanish food. However, it’s 2015 already and it’s time to find a good job. Depending on that I wonder what kind of year is this 2015 going to be…

“Qué será, será. Será lo que deba ser. La vida te lo dirá, eso y nada más.”

「ケ・セラ・セラ なるようになる未来はみえないお楽しみケ・セラ・セラ」

“Que Sera, Sera, Whatever will be, will be. The future’s not ours to see. Que Sera, Sera”

On the 25th/26th of January 2014 some cool developers met at Vitei‘s offices in Kyoto and spent the weekend making games for the Global Game Jam 2014. I went too, and along with two young japanese programmers we did this game. It was a great experience and I’d like to share with you a bit of the process.

So Kyoto’s Game Jam was kind of relaxed. While other people in Osaka where starting on the evening of the 24th we gathered at 9 a.m. on the 25th. We started by watching this video:

Then we started to discuss ideas on the whiteboards based on this year’s theme (“We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are“) and split into teams. I was involved in a discussion of a game that turned out to be this one. But since we where 6 people (4 programmers) talking about that game we decided to split into two teams. My team were two programmers and me. We thought about a few ideas and eventually we sticked with one to be able to start developing (at around noon).

The first thing I did was paint a few placeholders of background and the player so my fellow programmers would be able to work on the game and see results before any “final” art was done. After that I did the player’s graphics.

And then I struggled for a long time trying to get the right style for the background that was supposed to be like big random tiles that could fit with any other in a 3×3 grid. Eventually we did not do the random thingy but the final assets are indeed capable of that.

This ended up being the style used in the game

Since when you are stuck with something the best thing you can do is try and do something different, I changed to doing music. For this I used Garageband. The first music style that came to my mind (only god knows why) was THIS. But the music I did was much simpler than that. The moment I felt I got something I could hear repeated for long enough and not get too sick of it I stopped composing. Of course I would have liked to lengthen it and add a melody to it if we had had the time. Here is the main loop repeated 3 times.

After doing some animations of bullet impacts so you know if you’re getting damage or not and the death animation, I did some SFX. I recorded some sounds I made with my mouth or hands with my phone (which I bet was the best mic I was carrying) and then changed the pitch, added echoes, removed noise, etc. on Audacity. Here are the sounds along the original recording in a zip file. The death sound was made with Garageband as well.

Finally I did two screens on how to play and control scheme, and the title of the game (we didn’t have a title so I made something up a few minutes before the deadline!). So that’s the story behind Geometry Ikaruga Wars. I hope you liked it.

At 4 p.m. we did a short presentation of the games and after that we fixed a few things and uploaded it to the Global Game Jam site (again a few minutes before 6 p.m. that we where supposed to leave so it’s not the best upload ever I’m afraid ^^’). Anyway. Seems everybody managed to get a game working and I liked the concepts other teams gave life to. Amazing experience I recommend to anyone. ^_^

Tag: Vitei

My 2014

Global Game Jam 2014 – Kyoto