The Blabbelon Welcome Screen

When you first arrive at www.Blabbelon.com, you’ll be presented with several features including the ability to login with your username and password. If you have forgotten your password, simply click the link for “Forgot my password,” follow the instructions and we’ll email a new password to you.

Use the welcome screen to login, retrieve passwords, or register. You can also read about other Blabbelon goodies and follow us too.

If you have never signed up before, the registration form is right there on the front page…and it only takes a valid email address. First time users will receive a welcome email with an assigned password which they can change later.

Refer to the Welcome Screen from time to time as we’ll post the latest information about new products and updates. Also, you can click the “Follow Us” tab to open links to our Facebook and Twitter pages.

Setting Up

The first time you log into the Blabbelon Web App, you will be presented with several panels in the user interface.

Let’s start at the top, or…, the upper right corner. There is a Log Out link, next to which is your currently registered name alias.

Click on your alias to open up Edit Profile options

Click on your name alias and you will open a dialogue window to change your alias, and very importantly, change your password to something that is more easy to remember than what was sent to you in a welcome email.

Edit your information and indicate whether each field if visible for others. You can change your password here.

At your discretion, you can also enter in more info about yourself, to give others more to know about your unique personality. We take privacy very seriously, and put control into the user’s hands by letting them specify which info fields are private or public at the most basic data point level. Note that Blabbelon will never use personal information for spam or other solicitations. Once you’re done, click the Change Password or Save Changes button.

Next, you can find a menu to choose your desired push-to-talk hotkey. This will be different depending upon whether or not you are using a Windows PC or Mac. Pick a hotkey and take it for a test drive by pressing it. Make sure you have your system volume turned up, and you should hear a simple comfort tone when you press on and off your hotkey.

Select a hotkey to use as your push-to-talk by selecting from the menu of options

One nice aspect of setting a hotkey is that you now have freedom to use other software, while the Blabbelon webpage is open in the background. For example, if you’re in a conversation with friends, but want to keep viewing a PDF, you can do so and talk by hitting the hotkey when you want to speak.

Of course, for those who don’t wish to use a hotkey, you can also click the large “Talk” button in the Blabbelon user interface.

You can also click the "Talk" button to talk to others.

Working with Blabs

Blabs are just like rooms, where people can gather to talk. When you’re first starting out, you can either create your own blab, or accept an invite to join one from someone you know. In either case, a list will appear of all the blabs that you can access. To the left of the user interface below the purple “Talk Button” are two tabs, one labeled “Blabs.” Clicking this will open a list of all your blabs, and is referred to as the Blab Center.

Use the Blab Center to not just exit and enter blabs, but also browse the various contents of who is in the various rooms.

To create a new blab, click the link labeled “Create new blab”

Click on the link labeled 'Create new blab'

You will immediately see a dialogue box to enter the name of your desired new blab. Once you submit, moments later, a blab will appear listed in your Blab Center.

To create a new blab, click on the button "Create New Blab" and enter a name

Within a few moments, a new blab will be create and it's name will appear in your blab center list

Clicking the name of the blab in your list will drop you into that room, and you can begin talking if others are present. You can now invite friends to join you in a blab by clicking on the +Invite link. Whenever you are inside of a blab, you will also see a link labeled “+SubBlab” which will again open a dialogue for you to enter a name. Sub-blabs are rooms just like blabs but they are “nested” so that member of a parent blab can see the sub-blabs and the people who are inside them at any time. They’re a great way to have private conversations without disappearing from other members of a blab who might also want to talk.

 

Create a subblab by entering a name. A subblab is a nested room inside of a parent blab.

Another way to add a blab to your Blab Center is if you are invited. Invitations to a blab appear in your Message Board and can be accessed by clicking the tab in the middle panel of the user interface, above the area for instant messaging. Clicking on the message icon in your Message Board will open it, and allow you to reply. If you are being invited to a blab that is not on already in your Blab Center, you will be presented with the option to accept. Moments later, the blab will appear listed in your Blab Center.

 

Invite to blabs

Blabs can be deleted and removed from the Blab Center by right-clicking their name. Upon doing so, a menu will appear with other functions.

Right click on blab names to open available functions

When the originator of a blab deletes it, the blab is erased forever, and for all those who are subscribers. Deleting a blab by a non-administrative member only removes it from that users list and unsubscribes them.

Lastly, note that all Blabbelon blabs have a unique web address that can be copied and pasted to others.

All blabs are web links, so you can copy and paste them to anyone

Adding Friends

Send friend invites either by clicking the +Invite link from within a blab, or by using the Friends tab where you will find a link labeled “Add a friend”

Once a friend accepts your invite, you'll see them in your friends list together with their online status

Clicking this link will open a dialogue to let you specify your friends email or alias. You can also specify a blab to invite to by either select from a list of existing blabs, or naming a new one.

You can invite friends to blab and create new blabs in the same dialogue

People who you talk to in blabs are not assumed to be placed on your “Friends List”. A friend invite must first be sent and accepted.

While interacting with others in a blab, you can access various functions by right-clicking on their name.

Click on the name of another person to bring up a menu of other functions

Using Instant Messages and Linking Media

The largest part of the Blabbelon Web App’s user interface enables people within a blab to send instant messages via text or to copy and paste web links.

Certain media, such as photos and videos from Youtube are handled for a better viewing experience. Media links in a blab are retrieved so users can see images directly in-line with other text. In addition, a “media stage” appears across the top of IM area that serves as a repository of all the media posted by members of a blab within a given session. Note that this media is specific to a blab session and is not persistent once you leave a blab.

You can add links to the IM chat and they will appear in-line with text. Media will also appear in a sidescrolling "stage" for easy viewing as text continues to scroll.

Clicking on media will result in image or video being displayed in it’s own lightbox within the Blabbelon system. The edges of the lightbox can be clicked and dragged to the desired position for easier viewing without obstructing other happenings in the IM area.

Certain links like Youtube videos will open within Blabbelon in their own lightbox. You can click the border of the viewer and drag it around.

Tokyo Arcade: First Playable Build

Ok folks, sorry this took me all weekend but it’s been a bit crazy. I’ve actually had this ready since last night but I’ve been tortured trying to figure out how to install a WordPress plugin from the Unity3D company that would make it easier to embed games to WordPress. After a lot of time lost, I discovered that WordPress plugins can only be used with privately hosted blogs

Ok but enough excuses…and on to the caveats lol:

1. This is a very rough first build. It’s got just one collectible item, and well, that’s all. We’re still working on a whole XP system to unlock more collectibles, the gallery and the in-game mail system.

2. You will need to click or copy and paste the link below into a fresh new browser window (that’s because I couldn’t get the plugin working)

3. If you don’t have the Unity plugin already, it’s pretty simple to click to link and it will download for you.

4. Our game is still not optimized for file size so it’s about 25 mb in size and it’s hosted off our own personal Dropbox account….so if you’re on a drippy web connection, you might want to go take a pee while it’s downloading

Ok enough talk, here’s the link:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3801106/Crane%2010-15-2010/WebPlayer.html

Comments and suggestions would be really helpful for us at this point.

 

The Tokyo Arcade Gets Music, Props, and an Environment

Couple of big days and we were able to generate a bunch of the UI and environments for the Tokyo Arcade. It’s getting there! Kyle also did some music for the gameplay scene and Gordon parsed it to play portions according to the various states of the crane. He also put in cool rotational controls to let people view the game box from different angles.

 

a control system to rotate the view into the game box

 

Grant took a bunch of reference images of Tokyo pachinko arcades from places like Akihabara and started to create the interior of the arcade.

 

Japanese Pachinko Arcade

 

The first pass looked a bit too much like a casino so he went back to the drawing board and came back with this little piece of magic:

 

a view out of Unity with various environment props built for the Tokyo Arcade

 

I had some fun building the gallery scene and probably spent waaaay too much time on it. Actually we just wanted a simple interface to let players view all the various items they had collected out of the game. A simple display cabinet would probably have been fine but I was having too much fun with it and modeled out a whole zen garden lol. Anyway, here’s a quick look at it inside of Unity.

 

The scene view in Unity with a gallery containing various items that have been collected

 

I also did some sketches of the typical support staff you would expect to see in a Tokyo Arcade.

 

Greetings from Akihabara Japan

 

These are typical ‘maidens’ that you would see throughout the arcade area of Tokyo, as they hand out pamphlets, promotions, and little packages of facial tissue. We figured a little manga rendition couldn’t hurt. Here she is in both bitmap and then vector forms. Still need a name for her.

 

Manga girl says, 'you have a point there'

 

 

More serious manga girl now in vector art. She'll be our little helper to give instructions and encouragement.

 

Grant then went to work to put my manga girl to life through a 3D mesh with a great animation.

Manga Girl in the Tokyo Arcade Clapping Enthusiastically At Your Success and Masterful Skills Young Grasshoppa

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There’s a bunch more, but you get the idea of how things are coming together. Bottom line is that we’re getting pretty close to finishing up. Gonna try hard to get a preliminary build of just the basic gameplay online this weekend. It’ll still be pretty rough around the edges but at least our fans can have some fun with it. Will probably post it on the Unity forums too. So stay tuned!

-Ed

Tokyo Arcade

Well folks, the week is progressing nicely and we’ve got a bunch of items created that can be picked up by the crane. Oh, and we’ve decided to call the game Tokyo Arcade, in keeping with the Japanese arcade theme. So here’s the basic idea: as you might have guessed, it’s a crane game so the focal point of gameplay will be to try and pick up various items from the box. Of course, that might get boring quick, so we’ll mix items in the box so there are occasional ‘gifts.’ Just to give you some background, a moderate craze in Japan is to try to collect various trinkets in machines that give out ‘capsule prizes’ or ‘gashapon.’

Once you pick up a gashapon in the Tokyo Arcade, you’ll take delivery of a special item in your in-game mailbox. This might range from another item to try to pick up in the game box, or a consumable ‘turnkey.’ So what’s the deal with this turnkey?

 

This is a turnkey, not a turkey

 

 

ya...it's a pig

 

Well, as you collect new items from the box, they will appear in a separate gallery area. We’re envisioning the gallery to look like a bookshelf containing a display of all the cool collectibles you’ve captured. But alas, these are but inanimate objects…unless of course, you can wind your toy and make it move with your turnkey! So if you’ve managed to pick up enough capsule prizes, you’ll have a stash of keys to deploy on your little figurines. Better yet…when you have a turnkey in your toy, we’ll let the player click a button to send an image with a special message to your friends to show of your latest prize.

Here’s an oinker I modeled in about 8 minutes (and it shows).

And here’s a kitty that has an armature in the head portion to bob back and forth.

Kitty animation

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Of course, Grant did many other, more impressive objects. In the meantime we’re off to making environments for the arcade and the gallery tomorrow. If I have enough bandwidth I’ll put up another post with those goodies. And maybe…just maybe, we’ll have enough of this game roughed out by the weekend to put up a playable beta. We’ll see. As always, comments, critiques and suggestions welcome.

-Ed

A Claw Is Born…and Some Game Art

Well the claw aspect of the game has definitely proven to be challenging. We’re using the latest beta version of Unity and the physics are still a bit erratic. Whenever we would move the piston, the individual claw elements would fling themselves out in unpredictable directions. We decided someone might lose an eye playing the game that way, so we resorted to Blender to build out some of the claw mechanics. We started by creating a bone rigging of the claw mechanism and added various restraints to make sure the joints would flex like a real bone:

Then we added a some animations to drive the key bone elements to get the following result:

Crane_Movement

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Voila! a claw is born.

Also spent a bunch of time going through a variety of art styles and themes. It sounds a little crazy, but we’ve decided to go with a slightly retro, Japanese game-show aesthetic.

Here’s some artwork to show you the direction we’re headed.

 

Mister Pinchy and the Claw, depicted as a Japanese cartoon

 

 

The Claw zoning-in on a pig

 

And here’s the texture loaded into the game box.

Crane Game Box Textured

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Next on the list of things to do will be modeling a bunch of trinkets and toys to fish for in the box. We’re thinking we can have a lot of fun with that, given the Japanese game-show theme. Everything from little animals to godzillas and hello-kittys (with slight variations to avoid copyright issues of course ). Will also try to think of ideas to make the crane game even more engaging and fun. Lastly, Gordon is working on putting it all together…the box, the claw mechanism with any items to grab and some kind of scoring system (maybe experience points?). It’s all good.

-Ed

Crane Game Anyone?

Towards the end of the summer, Gordon and Henrik came out and we all headed to the New Jersey shore. Of course, we hit the boardwalk and went straight to the arcades. Nothing better than a good ‘ol fashioned crane game to siphon all your quarters so you could, at the end of a small fortune, get a scrunchy bunny!

It was so much fun that we’ve decided to make a crane game ourselves. It’s just a start but decided we’d target a few platforms. Definitely iPhone, iPad and Android seem obvious choices, but we’re also feeling like a crane game could be great for those couch-potato moments when you’re surfing Facebook and want to get even more vegetative…because thumbing through other people’s walls and friends photos is too draining. Ya. So, we’re thinking maybe Facebook game…we’ll see.

We started off by modeling out a claw mechanism:

 

Here's a first pass claw mechanism using Blender

 

So we started trying to work out the physics of this thing and it’s kind of tough. After looking at a bunch of reference images and videos, it looks like the mechanics of a claw involve a piston in the middle that drives a series of pivots. We’re gonna try and pull that together so we can have a truly physics-driven game. More to come on this one…

In the meantime, we went ahead and cobbled some primitive geometries together for a game box:

Cranebox1

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So we’re plowing ahead!

Next steps will be to settle on an artistic direction that will be fun….carnivals, beach, boardwalk, arcade…all imagery to take into consideration. Suggestions welcome