Bukkene Bruse
Agens AS er tildelt 200 000 kroner i utviklingstilskudd til spillet Bukkene Bruse fra Norsk Filmfond.

Spillkonseptet i Bukkene Bruse befinner seg i skjæringspunktet mellom interaktiv billedbok og spill, og formålet er å hjelpe de tre bukkene Bruse til seters for å gjøre seg fete. Bukkene skal som i eventyret over broen, og en etter en konfronteres de med trollet under broen. Den tredje og største bukken Bruse må stange trollet ut i elva for å komme videre. Bukkene Bruse er et interaktivt eventyr for nettbrett som iPad og Android-tablets. Spillets målgruppe er barn under 12 år. Planlagt lansering er mars 2012.

- Bukkene Bruse er et enkelt, men veldig sjarmerende prosjekt som forteller den velkjente historien om de tre bukkene Bruse. Prosjektet har en utypisk og fin grafikk og beveger seg i grenseland mellom spill og digital bok.
Kaja Hench Dyrlie, produksjonsrådgiver for spill ved Norsk filminstitutt.

Send inn din epostadresse nedenfor for å bli varslet når spillet lanseres!
Følg gjerne @BukkeneBruse på Twitter eller Facebook.

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We are happy to announce that the VG+ application has been awarded the “Best Paid App” during the Cross Media Awards in Vienna. This year’s XMA Awards is WAN IFRA’s (World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers) own award to honor the best news app solution worldwide. And VG+ won it!

The jury consisted of gurus like Mario Garcia and Roger Fidler from Reynolds Journalism Institute in USA. Mario Garcia himself has this to say about the VG+ solution:

“VG of Norway gives us everything we wish to have in an iPad news app: The brand extension that takes us to the familiar, with the extras that exploit the potential of this great new platform; great use of imagery; simple, distinctive design; multimedia; multigenre; in my view, BEST of show.”

VG+ beat a great deal of international newspapers lik Sunday Times, Die Welt and Bloomberg News. The app scored better on all jury criteria- both content, consistency in design, integration of components and business model.

Here at Agens, we consider this a great honor. We are thankful that the jury enjoyed VG+ as much as we enjoy making it. However, there is still quite a lot of progression to be made- and the drawing board is full of ideas. We are thrilled to work on such an exiting project together with VG, the most vibrant newspaper in Norway when it comes to adapting new technology.

Expect a new update to the open source FunGrid Flash game API within the conference!

Check out the FunGrid Blog for more information about FunGrid!

We are looking forward to dive even more into the latest of Microsoft technology at Mix11.
Read more about the conference at http://live.visitmix.com/

You:
- Are a 1st class iOS or Windows Phone developer with a beautiful mind- and an impressive portfolio
- Write stunning code that makes sense in a collaborative situation
- Are obsessed with application performance and pixel-perfect reproduction
- Are a curious creature, always eager to learn- and you wanna build tomorrow’s very best mobile solutions
- Have a highly developed creative sense
- Love demanding projects
- Aim for perfection in everything you do

If you’re the right person for the job, we can offer you an outstanding work environment, a smooth office with great lunch and nice hardware, flexible work hours, exciting projects with a great deal of user-minded software innovation, nice colleagues- and truckloads of great coffee.

Don’t hesitate to drop us a line- along with a few lines of code if you’d like to.

UPDATE: FunGrid is going to be presented at the FOTB 2011 Elevator Pitch

Agens proudly presents FunGrid!
FunGrid is a lightweight Open Source Flash AS3 game API for 2D/parallax scrolling or top-down perspective games. It’s based on the core code that we’ve built most of our previous games on.

FunGrid provides:

• Smooth 2D scrolling
• Renders just the stuff on screen
• Simple physics/collision checking

By now the focus for FunGrid has been to make understandable code more than extreme speed optimization, but that may change over time…
Feedback and suggestions are welcome!

- Create a GameGrid and define your viewport (“camera”).
- Add GameObjects to the GameGrid.
- Move around the viewport, and the GameGrid takes care of the rest.

GameObject – All objects on the grid are GameObjects. Visual objects with no collision possibilities or interaction may be regular GameObjects.
PolyLineGameObjects – A GameObject with a PolyLine. The PolyLine is a line of 2 or more points. One way of using PLGOs are for flatforms in a scrolling platform game.
PhysicsGameObject – A GameObject with simple collision physics. May hit and land on a PolyLineGame object and move on them. A platform game protagonist may inherit from this class.
ZoneGameObjects – A GameObject with a zone defined by a closed PolyLine of 3 of more points. Possible for other objects to check if a spesific point is within a zone.

Visit the FunGrid Blog for downloads and more information about FunGrid!

forward to some more days of Flash, skiing and interesting people.

My keynote is called:
Making Flash Games: Case studies, tips & tricks
The session will touch the following topics:
- The process of making a Flash game.
- Case studies from a couple of the Agens game productions.
- Game programming in Flash: Some code examples. Focus on 2D games.

If you are interested in Flash, and think skiing or snowboarding in the Swiss Alps sounds tempting, I really recommend to get your ticket now!

All sessions and speakers at gotoAndSki(‘Switzerland’);

Readers of “A theory of fun” (here’s an excerpt) will find this idea familiar. In the book, Raph Koster says: “Real fun comes from challenges that are always at the margin of our ability”. He’s talking about game design, of course, not work.

Two entirely different things? Of course not. The techniques and processes used in building a good game are based on basic human traits. A lot of the things we like in games are things that helped us survive the stone age. Working together? Fun! Having a mission? Fun! Competing without bloodshed? Fun!

A good, modern workplace will feed those needs for fun and challenge – and try to fit in some things that are fun, but not necessarily a job requirement. (At my job, we don’t do much running and jumping while working, for example, but company outings tend to be quite physical.)

The principles used for good game design, then, should be applied to good workplace design – and vice versa. We know how to build online communities; can we transfer those principles to task-oriented groups in the workplace? We know how to make people want to perform well, alone and in groups – can we use that to make a workplace more fun and efficient?

The idea that game design principles can and should be used to make a better reality is not a new one – but it definitely bears repeating. It was the point of Jane McGonigal’s 2008 GDC rant, “Reality is Broken”. If you haven’t seen it, you should. I’ll end this post with her finishing words, one of my favorite quotes:

“We can take what we’ve learned by making games and apply it to reality, to make real life work more like a game – not make our games more realistic and lifelike, but make our real life more game like – so that when people all over the world wake up every morning, they wake up with a mission, with allies, with a sense of being a part of a bigger story, part of a system that wants them to be happy.”

By using humans as game masters, puppet masters, on-the-fly story engineers, digital applications have the potential to become more entertaining, richer, deeper and more meaningful. Letting computers and humans work together, as a team, means they can both do what they’re best at.

Alternate reality games often use the latest technology, but at the same time, they leave plot and characterization to the human game creators. However, even with such games, the potential for improvisation and adaptability is still pretty much untapped. This isn’t for lack of competence; there are lots of people out there who have the necessary skills to create flexible and interactive stories. It’s just a question of creating game concepts that incorporate game masters, interactive storytellers, as a functional element.

True interaction with a human… requires another human.