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Crayon Physics Combines Science and Puzzles
IamAHack writes "NPR covered a new game that seems like it would have great appeal to Slashdot readers: Crayon Physics. Quoting: 'A new computer game went on sale this week. It's not a blockbuster like Halo or World of Warcraft. There's no first-person shooting, no sports, no guitar, no microphone. Instead, there's a crayon. The game is Crayon Physics Deluxe. It's a simple, mesmerizing game created by a 25-year-old independent games designer from Finland named Petri Purho. "It's a game where your crayon drawings come to life,' Purho tells NPR's Melissa Block. 'You draw stuff and your drawings behave physically correctly. As soon as you release the last button, the laws of physics are applied to your drawing."' A demo is available, and Opposable Thumbs has a review of the game."
sounds like the author is
fan of the flash game Magic Pen.
Seeing as "behaves pysically correct" only really means that objects don't "merge" and gravity affects them as expected (although there doesn't seem to be any friction built in - it looks like slow rolling objects on a flat surface roll for a very long time!) - the game still seems good for kids who are learning about gravity and helps to illict their creativity/drawing skills as well. Looks good. Kudos to the developer.
How is this news? According to wikipedia, the game has been released on June 1st, 2007.
"Ever since the initial game was developed in the summer of 2007, it has managed to garner much press and acclaim, especially since developer Petri Purho revealed that he was working on a deluxe version of the game that would include improved physics and more levels. "
It Arrivieth Now.
It's pretty amusing you'd go to all the trouble to look at Wikipedia and not read the first paragraph of the article itself. That takes some dedicated ignoring there.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's new to Slashdot. You aren't coming off as trollish; you're coming off as a wannabe intellectual. I appreciated this post, and sent a link to several friends.
You know, there's a hell of a lot of people who don't routinely surf Penny Arcade or Slashdot every day who would probably enjoy this work.
As your username indicates: fail.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
It is about Crayon Physics Deluxe which was just released this month for the PC and iPhone / iPod Touch. (Come to think of it, such games would be a great way to waste time with a Touch or an iPhone)
Perhaps it's a maturity level far below my age, but I really want to get this game to see how many puzzles I can solve drawing penises.
We figured out a long time ago that it's easier to elect seven judges than to elect 132 legislators.
As the game is based on open source box2d physics engine, there are also other games with partially similar feel and game play. Crayon Physics was the one with the original idea, though.
Nokia Internet Tablet and Openmoko Neo FreeRunner owners might be interested in Numpty Physics: http://numptyphysics.garage.maemo.org/ & http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/rantalai/freerunner/numptyphysics/
That's probably the most creative computer game I've seen in years. Simple. Effective. Looks like fun.
Is this the game/level-version of Phun? ( http://www.phunland.com/wiki/Home ) Which is a very similar simulation, but instead in a sandbox format.
But the upgraded/final release came out just now and Penny Arcade covered that as well (just 6 days ago).
http://www.penny-arcade.com/2009/1/9/
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/1/9/
also you find what a rhombus is.
Relax. Have a muffin. Enjoy the show. --Slick, Sept 13th, 2007.
So it's like Fantastic Contraption but with crayons. Yawn.
It appears he has been completely ripped off with the program 'Touch Physics' for the iPod and iPhone. Before this article, I didn't know any better and bought the clone.
Gets the music but black screen.
Too bad the author did not develop the game multi-platform :(
For an independent game developer it is quite sad to lose the opportunity to cater an audience (OSX and Linux users) that is lacking (AAA) games and probably quite interested in this kind of physics-based yet casual game altogether.
@neonux
"You draw stuff and your drawings behave physically correctly. As soon as you release the last button, the laws of physics are applied to your drawing"
What happens if I draw a penis?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_in_the_Land_of_Chalk_Drawings
I remember watching this during Captain Kangaroo
I just downloaded the demo to try it out and spent an hour. It's like the old bridge building games. Fun with gravity! Not sure how realistic the physics are... but who cares? It's midnight Slashdotting :)
--------------------- -me, Crusher of those who are Foolish (don't be foolish)
Months ago, I installed Numpty Physics and a substantial portion of NP-complete (the levels that didn't crash) on the computers at a tutorial center. For reference, they run Windows, except for a Pentium II that I "donated," running Xubuntu.
Now, it's the most popular computer pastime among both the kids and the (high school, lower-division college student) tutors.
I haven't worked out how to introduce level editing to them, yet.
Have a nice time.
Penny Arcade ran that about a week ago. http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/1/9/
ceci n'est pas une sig
I got a copy of crayon physics on my touch, unfortunately it's extremely laggy and buggy and not something which is remotely enjoyable. If you're looking for something like crayon physics, i'd suggest touch physics. Same idea, but a lot more playable... Not to mention that it's $0.99 instead of $4.99
CP won a game award in 2008, same as World Of Goo (http://worldofgoo.com) -- both are awesome games, both promised to create a Linux client and both cost me $20.
Here's to hoping the small indie shops get more exposure. And even more hoping to them open sourcing their stuff after some time :)
If you are a guy - you are gay.
If you are a girl - there will be so much empty space around it on your screen it will look even smaller.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Hey awesome, free ad space! Please check out as well my anti-tetris that's also using Box2D: Brick Yard!
it really mesmerizes a gamer veteran like me. odd feeling.
Read radical news here
This seems to be a similar concept to the Line Rider game:
http://linerider.com/
I'm not sure which came first.
My two cents.
Great game. Totally got me hooked after trying the demo. However:
- Way too easy. Or should I say, way too short. I finished the full game in just over 4 hours. And 1 of those hours was when I got stuck trying to force the intended solution for one level, finally got angry and came up with my own solution (One of the rocket levels, ended up not using the rocket). - No, I was right the first time; way too easy. Once you find out you can pin stuff and lift the ball just using small 'lifts', it ends up being pretty easy and you don't need to conform to a lot of the preset layouts. Hell, a lot of the solutions don't require any of the preset 'furniture'.
- SPOILER ALERT - Last level is disappointing, simple and short. Was expecting it to go out with a bang but all I got was a whimper.
Overall, definitely worth the money but really needs to be tweaked a little.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
When this comes to Mac OS X, I will definitely be shelling out for it (although it concerns me a little that the Ars Technica guy had trouble with using his Wacom tablet with it)
Hopefully they'll be able to reuse the work put into the iPhone version to expedite its Mac incarnation.
I've played the older version before... the music is great. I found myself keeping the game running just to have that relaxing tune in the background.
I used the Crayon Physics demo to try Johnny Lee's whiteboard hack. I was primarily interested in the whiteboard hack and wanted something interesting running so I could watch different people using the IR pen I had built to see what limitations it had. The game drew enough people into it that they completely forgot about how they were interacting with it that I figured the hack as a win.
fwiw, I used a key ring led to house the IR Led and battery. It took about 5 minutes to swap the white light led with an IR led. My cell phone could see the IR led light up which told me I had done that part of the hack right later on when I had problems with a Broadcom Bluetooth driver.
over the winter break, I played it on the ipod touch and it has been adapted to the small screen pretty well.
'You draw stuff and your drawings behave physically correctly. As soon as you release the last button, the laws of physics are applied to your drawing.'
MARVEL at the way the virtual crayon material seems to adhere motionlessly to the virtual paper! THRILL as the virtual pigments simulate the refraction of light at different wavelengths!
The earlier demo had a pretty limited number of challenges so we've been waiting for this commercial release to come out. Kids 5 and up unanimously love it. Bought it immediately! Hooray for one-person-can-still-write-a-hit-game in this otherwise big budget, grand theft auto world!
After discovering Crayon Physics last week I found another similar game called Zany Doodle. Check out these amazing videos of many types of engines, and even fusion & fission done with Zany Doodle.
Okay, this idea is not so original. This concept was originally created my MIT in 2003 and was called ASSIST: A Shrewd Sketch Interpretation and Simulation Tool. At least give props where props are due, instead of making it look like they though of it all them selves. http://rationale.csail.mit.edu/index.shtml
There was something like this called "Fun Physics", from Knowledge Revolution, in 1988, for the Mac. (!) That eventually became Working Model, a 2D engineering simulator. Knowledge Revolution was acquired by McNeil Schwindler, the price of Working Model was increased by a factor of 10, and the game product disappeared.
This sounds like it might be similar Nickelodeon's ChalkZone series. (almost too similar, actually...)
I'm somewhat amazed and disappointed they never gave ChalkZone its own game though. Something in a vein similar to Drawn to Life, Magic Pengel or the upcoming Scribblenauts. (That honor went to Spongebob Squarepants, instead.)
It's too bad, since the show itself is basically a detailed manual for designing a very cool game concept. Crayon Physics definitely comes close to the idea, but would simply need to add a few elements of platform gaming to pull off a decent ChalkZone title, versus the current "Incredible Machine" approach. (Not that I don't love The Incredible Machine, of course!)
8==8 Bones 8==8
Nothing to see here. Move on.
you might want to check out a crayon physics inspired ds-homebrew game called "pocket physics":
http://www.tobw.net/index.php?cat_id=3&project=Pocket+Physics
For those without the proper hardware there is a flashplayer here:
http://www.return1.net/site/pp
so you can check out what others did with it.
ROMbus : Part of the computer that transfers game ROMs from the interwebs to your computers hard drive.