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How Poly Bridge's GIF Generator Turned an Indie Game Into a Reddit Sensation

Posted by samzenpus on from the a-star-is-born dept.

An anonymous reader writes: The creator of bridge physics phenomenon Poly Bridge discusses the rise of the bridge physics phenomenon in a new interview this week. Patrick Corrieri of New Zealand's Dry Cactus studio reveals the Reddit hit has sold at least 48,000 copies so far, but that its smartest feature, a GIF generator to capture all your successful crosses and crashes, only came about by accident: "Ultimately it was another independent developer, Zach Barth from Zachotronics, who pushed me to integrate the feature. Not only that, but he also gave me the source code to his GIF encoding routine so I could hit the ground running. That's what is so awesome about the indie dev community: a willingness to share and learn from each other, as growing together is much better than competing with one another."

40 comments

  1. link plz by diamondmagic · · Score: 4, Informative

    Slashdot, I know it'd violate your lovely tradition and all, but is it too much trouble to check your links before they go live?

    http://www.redbull.com/us/en/g...

    --
    Wonder what the public key field is for?
    1. Re:link plz by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

      Try http://www.redbull.com/en/game...

      --
      Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
    2. Re:link plz by diamondmagic · · Score: 3, Informative

      Hi, hello. I'm not sure what the difference between the links are, but hey, whatever floats your boat.

      And/or monster truck.

      --
      Wonder what the public key field is for?
    3. Re:link plz by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      It might be wise to do some DNS address modifications in our hosts file before we share links. We could ask the APK hosts file guy if he could contribute to this discussion and help us better understand how to implement a high-performance 64-bit compatible hosts file management software on Slashdot's article submission system. We really should find out what we're doing wrong here.

    4. Re:link plz by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hi, hello. I'm not sure what the difference between the links are, but hey, whatever floats your boat.

      And/or monster truck.

      An extra colon is present in the slashdot article link that shouldn't be there.

    5. Re:link plz by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      Wow, that is a lame looking game. No wonder the Republicans love it. It's made by morons for morons.

    6. Re: link plz by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Better a colon too much than a colostomy

  2. Correct link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Here is the working link:
    http://www.redbull.com/en/games/stories/1331742704256/poly-bridge-interview-constructing-a-viral-hit

    *mumbles something about editors and welcome to Slashdot*

  3. old news ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    seems that /. is late to the party like usual wasn't this bridge building Game GIF generator popular between 6 month and a year ago ?

    1. Re:old news ? by crashumbc · · Score: 1

      The buzz was slowing down so the developer paid dice to try and give it another injection of publicity.

  4. Zach Braff is at it again by andreas.hummelbrunne · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This developer doesn't get enough recognition. His games are always fun and good.

    1. Re:Zach Braff is at it again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      How is boring and uninteresting fun and good? You sound like a damn shill. Of course you're a shill. Those games are crap, and you should feel bad about trying to sucker people into wasting their money. Screw you and the rest of your Republican kind.

    2. Re:Zach Braff is at it again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hello.

      And bye.

    3. Re:Zach Braff is at it again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I got the joke, chocolate bear.

  5. What's reddit? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    And why should I give two fucks?

    1. Re:What's reddit? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Because Reddit is going to buy Slashdot... Why the hell do you think there are so many Reddit stories over the last few months?

    2. Re:What's reddit? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

      It's the place where people with psychiatric problems, who are in perpetual debt, can't get medical insurance and whose evil boss won't give them paid time off for an abortion - go to hang out.

    3. Re:What's reddit? by 91degrees · · Score: 1

      It's a website, and you shouldn't.

      Not all news items will be of interest to you. That's fine. I'd encourage you to ignore them and look at the next one.

  6. Really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Who the fuck cares? Who the fuck has time for this stupid shit?

    1. Re:Really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Those of us who are fortunate enough not having to work for a living?

    2. Re:Really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Shouldn't they be studying for the kindergarten entrance exam?

  7. This time in 3D! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    >rise of the bridge physics phenomenon

    Too young to remember Bridge Builder?

    1. Re:This time in 3D! by fisted · · Score: 3, Informative

      Came here to say this. Bridge builder was amazing.

      --
      CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
    2. Re:This time in 3D! by labnet · · Score: 1

      >rise of the bridge physics phenomenon

      Too young to remember Bridge Builder?

      And what about the multi platform game Bridge Constructor which has been out for years now.

      --
      46137
  8. 6 degrees by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Overnight sensation
    Raspberries
    Eric Carmen
    Busted while driving an SUV loaded (him, not the SUV)
    Boz Skaggs
    Silx Degrees

  9. Necessary gif: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The only GIF you need to see from this game.

    1. Re:Necessary gif: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > The only GIF you need to see from this game.
      > http://i.imgur.com/8FMfJLb.gif

      I chuckled.

      There's nothing new about these bridge building simulators, but it's cool that another generation is having fun with them again. (The guy who made the above gif not so much.)

    2. Re:Necessary gif: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's funny that they're using GIF when most image hosting sites are reencoding GIFs to MP4: http://i.imgur.com/8FMfJLb.mp4

  10. If you do something well, don't do it for free. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "as growing together is much better than competing with one another."

    Well sure, YOU are benefiting from it currently. But if you have a great idea, and share it, and others make money off of it, then you have nothing. You should be compensated for your hard work.

  11. Videos fail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The success of animated gifs, despite their horrible inefficiency as a video format, reflects the utter failure of websites, standards bodies, etc., to provide a simple, reliable way to deliver video to a browser. When I visit a website with a video, there's a substantial chance that it won't work - and it's almost certain not to work unless I enable Javascript and run whatever possibly-malicious code the website serves up.

    Animated gifs are simple, reliable, and - as far as I know - completely secure. I'm perfectly happy to lose a factor of two (or ten) in bandwidth in return for that peace of mind.

    1. Re:Videos fail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The success of animated gifs, despite their horrible inefficiency as a video format, reflects the utter failure of websites, standards bodies, etc., to provide a simple, reliable way to deliver video to a browser. When I visit a website with a video, there's a substantial chance that it won't work - and it's almost certain not to work unless I enable Javascript and run whatever possibly-malicious code the website serves up.

      Implied DRM is the problem.

      Good for the web: IMG SRC="downloadme.gif", right click, SaveAs. Use that underconstruction.gif on your own GeoCities website.
      Terrifying for the web: VID SRC="watchme.mp4", right click? SaveAs? Play it on the client's machine instead of streaming? No lag if it's too high-quality for your connection? The ability to rapidly seek instead of waiting for crap like DASH to make YouTube seeking a miserable experience? You can use a dedicated player to play back boring interviews of talking heads 20-30-50% faster? Oh, the horror!

      In many ways, the dumb old web of 1995 was better than the HTML5 future.

  12. Growing together is much better than competing by NReitzel · · Score: 1

    I couldn't agree more, however...

    Competition is also necessary. Just because one person (corporation, club, etc) does something well, does not mean that someone else cannot do it better. And the human tendency and corporate -mandate- for NIH means that good ideas tend to be enshrined.

    The beauty of open source development is that someone with a better idea can take an approach that has been elevated to axiom and improve it. If the original developers aren't interested in the improvements, well no problem. Just take the new approach to the universe of possible users, and let it compete with the golden child. If it is -actually- better in some respect, people will end up migrating.

    And being open source means, fundamentally, that "Gee, I can do better than that" can (and often does) end up as "Everyone gets to benefit".

    --

    Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.

  13. Misspelled Publisher Name? by manlygeek · · Score: 1

    I really enjoy Zach's games. I believe they are published under the name "Zachtronics" vice "ZachOtronics". Great games, especially SpaceChem!!

    --
    Be More, Be Manly, The Manly Geek Ubergeek Extraordinaire Blogger: www.manlygeek.com/blog Podcaster: podcast.man
  14. Stop using GIf by MobyDisk · · Score: 1

    Stop using GIF. GIF sucks. There are better options.

    On that note, why didn't browsers ever decide to support MNG or M-JPEG?

  15. before its time by argStyopa · · Score: 1

    Just to be clear, this was NOT the first, not by a long shot.

    Pontifex is still probably the 'purest' version of this, and IMO still the best in some ways. IIRC it's available on your phone now.

    But when Pontifex came out, there was no kickstarter/indie "community" nor a Steam to act as a marketing/delivery agent. The ecosystem really has matured, for sure.

    --
    -Styopa
    1. Re:before its time by bane2571 · · Score: 1

      Pontifex man, pontifex was my main time killer for a long stretch way back when, I bought poly bridge out of pontifex nostalgia :
      https://www.chroniclogic.com/p... - seems like they are still atround too and have released a bunch of follow up games. Hmmm, may need to buy some of these.

      Pontifex has more content than poly bridge and is only 1Mb!

  16. Browsing without GIF is the best by jader3rd · · Score: 1

    And here I disable animated GIFs in my browsers. The internet is so much more enjoyable without them.

  17. My favorite was Lemmings on Amiga by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think the best bridge building game was Lemmings on Amiga platform: https://youtu.be/9_hZHW6Ef1I

  18. Stop with the Redbull ads by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Please, for fuck's sake.

  19. Gif is a bad medium by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Gif is a bad image format and shouldn't be used.
    There are superior formats like apng or webm or png.