A new exciting experience!

In October 2009 I joined the great family of Specialmoves in London as Interactive Director! A big thanks to unit9 and Helpful Strangers  for the last 3 great years together!

No more programming for a while, now that I have some proper mustache is time to look creative and focus on research, user experience and interaction design!

This is the first public test of the 2D game engine – called giraz2d – that I am working on. This is a very early not optimized version. The test is meant to shows some of the camera capabilities.

There are five views on the screen. Each view renders all the visible game actors existing in the world into its viewport.
Each view uses the game actors’ Renderer component to render and display the actors. Also it is connected to one of the camera to define the actors relative positions.

The bigger view is rendering what the MainCamera. The View has a GameViewController attached to that controls and parse the mouse and keyboard input.

The smaller views on the side shows you different cameras output: (from the top)

1. Camera following the mouse with a spring
2. Camera as child of the big circle-cloud (note how the rotation of the object matters)
3. Camera following the small dot (no spring)
4. Camera following the small dot with a spring

Also you may have notice that the TV has set as “texture” the bitmapdata output of the following-mouse-camera. This creates a cool effect when you drag for example the small dot over the tv.

The engine is written in AS3, I took inspiration from Mike McShaffry Game Development book, Colby Williams cheezeworld engine, unity3D component structure, and many other interesting projects found around the web.

It uses components more or less in the same you would use them in unity3D. The physics engine I am using in this example is Erin Catto’s box2d (which is very cool) and in theory, thanks to the components structure,  you should be able to change it and implement the physics engine you prefer the most.

There is still a lot of work to do and if any of you out there is interested in the project feel free to contact me at riccardo.giraldi@gmail.com or on skype at riccardo.giraldi

Feedback and ideas are appreciated!

Hurray, Simple Machine’s project is picked up in the .NET showcase in this months issue!

We made it!

Simple Machines is site of the day today hooray!
That’s the evidence that physics can be very cool, so if you haven’t tried the whole experience yet it’s definitely time to give it a go! Who’s going to help Twitch this time?

view project

The FWA

Helpful Strangers has a shiny new website!
Go there and read about all our latest projects, useless news and maaany awards.

http://www.helpfulstrangers.com/

Based on wordpress, the site uses that fancy plugin called flutter which I definitely raccomend to everyone.

A microsite for the Museum of Science and Industry of Chicago to teach children physics in a fun and engaging way. Help Twitch, the reluctant hero of the site to construct machines out of a wide variety of objects and learn principles of Physics on the way.

We blend intuitive interaction, realtime physics simulations and storytelling to create an experience that will make you love physics.

msichicago.org

Agency: Museum of Science and Industry Chicago
Brand: Simple Machines

Interactive Director: Fredrick Avén
Tech lead: Riccardo Giraldi
Producer: Valentina Culatti Alisi
Art Direction and Design: Elena Lombardi, Anders Andersson, Fredrick Avén, Riccardo Giraldi

Interactive Production Company: unit9 / helpfulstrangers

Here it is! We are proud to show MSI Simple Machines!
Try the games, help Twitch and learn about Physics – and yes, you can also waste your day feeding Twitch with chocolate and sugar.

This is the very first project where our Swedish office – Helpful Strangers – has put its lovely hands on both the design and the development.
Four games, great characters, and lot of fun!

Twitch, one of the most adorables characters i’ve ever seen on a website stars this fantastic microsite done by Unit9 for the Museum of Science and Industry of Chicago to teach children physics in a fun and engaging way. But it’s hard not to enjoy even not being children anymore.

on adverblog.com

Simple Machines is site of the day today on THEFWA.COM  hooray!

Simple Machine’s project is picked up in the .NET showcase!

Spot the Bull and win Glastonbury tickets

A real bull. A real field. A real chance to win a pair of tickets to Glastonbury.
Guess (before 2pm) where Desmond the Bull will be at 3pm today and you could win tickets for you and a mate. Good luck getting a bullseye.

Agency: Poke London
Brand: Orange

Interactive Director: Alex Jenkins
Producer: Rakesh Patel
Tech lead: Riccardo Giraldi
Interactive Production Company: unit9

GotMilk.com for Goodby Silverstein & Partners earned a Gold pencil at the 2009 One Show!

view project

Oh, joy.  This month’s issue of Urban Magazine – as an exception edited by Fabio Novembre – contains an interview to Riccardo Giraldi by Maurizio Marsico in the column “Interurbana” (long-distance call).

read the interview

read the magazine (italian only)

The Jumpland website we developed as unit9 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Shonen Jump has been awarded bronze at Tokyo Interactive Ads Awards this year (2009) – category: cross media of an integrated campaign.

view project