ilomilo might still be in development, but the high-score rivalry in ilomilo Shuffle is already ongoing. Not so long ago our office high-score was beaten by tester KCShuffle, but after an heroic effort by our ninja-programmer Jensen the high score was reconquered and our honor restored…well, until next time someone manages to get a better score.
You can beat our high-score, but we will always do our best to beat you back! 
Our friends at the superb gamingblog GalaxyNextDoor asked me a few questions about ilomilo.
Brazilian videogameblog multitap interviewed me the other day.
If you can read portuguese Click here for to read the interview!
Even if you can’t read it, you should head over anyway as there are some new screenshots there.
Want to read the interview in english?
Why, here it is then:
Where did the inspiration for ilomilo and its art style came from?
Inspiration comes from a lot of places. It can be from everyday things
but I’m also inspired by artists such as Hundertwasser and Klimt.
There’s a lot of inspiration drawn from the world of animation. For
example i’m a big fan of hedgehog in the fog, cheburashka and russian
winnie the pooh.
What does “ilo” and “milo” mean? What are they?
ilo and milo are names, and ilo and milo are whatever you want them to
be. I like to think of them as represantions of two peoples minds.
What’s the main objective on every level? Is there an “end spot” to reach?
The main goal is to unite ilo and milo wherever possible on the level.
There’s no “end spot”.
There’s also other stuff to do on the levels, such as collecting stuff
to unlock secret things and stories.
Is there any difference in gameplay between ilo and milo?
They play exactly the same.
How many levels there will be in the game?
About fifty, including the super hardcore bonus levels that features a
lot of fun stuff that we haven’t shown yet!
Is there some kind of plot, story mode? What is it about?
There is a story yes. In fact there are several stories told in
different ways, on different consciousness levels.
But we would like the players to find out for themselves when playing
the game.
In the last trailer for ilomilo, you show some kind of 8-bit ilomilo.
Is that just a minigame, or maybe a standalone title (for XBLA)?
You’re talking about ILOMILO SHUFFLE!
It’s a minigame that you find somewhere within the main game. It’s more
of an action oriented game than the main game. It also has it’s own
leaderboard!
The game seems too cute, at the same time complex for little kids. Who
are you aiming to?
Everyone that likes fun experiences. To get through the main story is
probably not too complex for not so experienced players. But if you want
to unlock everything, play all the bonus levels and such you have to be
pretty clever. So there’s hopefully something in ilomilo for players of
all skill levels.
Certainly this is not the first new IP Southend is creating and
developing, but you have been more famous with remakes like Lode Runner,
R-Type Dimensions and Tecmo Bowl Throwback. What are the difference
between working in a new IP and a licensed game?
There’s a lot of differences. The bigges one is that there is of course
greater freedom when working with your own IP. Since we’re creating this
world by ourselves we set the rules on what is fitting in the universe
and stuff like that.
Most games from Southend Interactive are for Xbox LIVE Arcade. Another
one is being developed for Windows Phone. What about making or porting
games for iPhone or PSN (at least a PSP Minis)? Maybe WiiWare?
Tecmo Bowl was actually released for PSN, so we have experiences from
other consoles. There’s nothing specific going on for the platforms you
mention, but surely it would be fun to work with either some day.
Any news about the release date for ilomilo, or how much it will cost?
Releasing this year, that’s all I can say! We’re hoping to be able to
offer it at an affordable price point, but in the end it’s all up to the
publisher.
Besides the new trailer unveiled a few days before, I haven’t heard
from ilomilo or Southend Interactive at E3. Maybe you will show ilomilo
(and other games?) at gamescom?
There’s no specific plans at this moment, but ilomilo might be shown on
some upcoming events this summer and fall. We’ll have to wait and see.
Beauty of Games interviewed me about ilomilo. There’s new info there, and some new pictures from the game!
Click here for more details.
Yes I know, we posted about this earlier, but here’s the picture with the xbox controller and console in all it’s uncensored glory.
Here it is! The second and final commit comment episode.
This time some of my personal favourites are in the mix 
If you missed episode 1, please go back and check that one out first.
Disclaimer:
—
These are not your average commit comments. Most comments are really just informative, to the point and rather boring.
—
Ok then… On to the comments!
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Revision: 1136
Author: bper
Message:
won't you take me to... a funky town!
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Revision: 1207
Author: sfle
Message:
fish dog source
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Revision: 1210
Author: sfle
Message:
dogfish source
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Revision: 1233
Author: sfle
Message:
now the animation works. great stuff. varför skriver jag på engelska
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Revision: 1324
Author: bper
Message:
jump to the left in level select leads to an entrance from the right side at the prev stage menu
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Revision: 1370
Author: sfle
Message:
they've got an awful lot of coffee in brazil!
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Revision: 1743
Author: bper
Message:
nabbers not allowed in elevators!
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Revision: 1789
Author: bper
Message:
added dark void where dark cubes turn dark.
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Revision: 1800
Author: sfle
Message:
this is the door to hell and behind it bellman is lurking
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Revision: 1849
Author: jmal
Message:
Plunger moving cubes, now collides with stuff.
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Revision: 1899
Author: bper
Message:
Let's not walk when other char is bouncing.
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Revision: 2060
Author: bper
Message:
dark cube . flat faces. no wiggle
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Revision: 2124
Author: sjac
Message:
- Temp fix for render bug on certain PC's (removed rendering on PC's)
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Revision: 2153
Author: bper
Message:
less crash
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Revision: 2220
Author: mdah
Message:
Magic check in by Mike.
-All shaders rewritten
-All post effects now actually working on pc
-More cool stuff
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Revision: 2366
Author: dols
Message:
new stuff.
--------------------------------------------
k thx bai !
Ok, been slacking with this blog for a little too long, so let’s do a round-up of what’s happening in the project!
Right now we are working on a number of different things.
Martin is as usual busy creating (mind bending) levels.
Johan has finished some camerascripting, co-op stuff and is now working on touching up menus – fixing transitions, making animations for icons and stuff like that.
Björn coded behaviour for a new creature and a new placeable cube. He’s currently working on system to log data from user tests and system for unlockable secret stuff (and one of those secret things is awesome. Will return for more info when time is ready).
Carl is working on set dressing the levels – Placing and animating props.
Daniel have done a lot of new sounds – voices for creatures, storysounds, menu blips and blops. He’s also composed songs for the tutorial puzzles the story.
… And I (Simon) have been creating co-op specific assets, fixing and touching up the last menu assets, writing texts (manuals and boring stuff like that) working on the story sequences, and getting in some cameos from other games in to our game (more on that topic later…).
Fredrik and Kim are visiting GDC to talk with people and do some ilomilopimping.
Also! Some links! Clicky clicky!
1up has a preview on ilomilo! (… one thing though: the video is showing an unfinished level with no props whatsoever)
Swedish community loading.se has got some exclusive ilomilo screenshots!
Alright then, See you later.
While we’re on the topic…
At SouthEnd we use a versioning tool called Subversion. It is just one of many tools doing the same thing – managing versions of files.
I could go on and on about version control and configuration management. But I won’t. At least not this time. Let’s just say it’s a wonderful thing that makes it possible for us to work as a team.
This time I will bring up the social part of it. Commit comments.
Commit comments are messages that you write when you have made a change to a file in the project. The comment is supposed to briefly explain what you changed (committed). (As we speak, 2642 commits have been made to ilomilo)
These comments, along with a list of the files that were changed, are stored in a log than can be viewed by all members of the project. This log can be compared to a giant chat log of people talking to themselves.
Your average comment might look like this:
“Fixed: Scaled objects not culled properly”
This log, consisting of hundreds of little comments, will of course contain a certain amount of literary gold!
And that’s what this post is really about. I’ve hand picked a few of my favourites, and will present them to you in a series of posts.
(I bet you didn’t expect _this_ to be published, fellow SouthEnders…)
Here we go. Today’s selection is from the early stages of the project:
--------------------------------------------
Revision: 4
Author: eber
Message:
Initial commit
--------------------------------------------
Revision: 32
Author: eber
Message:
wtf etc
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Revision: 76
Author: sfle
Message:
animations for milo! 
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Revision: 107
Author: eber
Message:
Added first pass at collision grid IT'S SCREWY I KNOW! the directional mapping is not correct.
--------------------------------------------
Revision: 118
Author: mdah
Message:
Added: Shadows in Ilomilo (Iteration #1, NOT final!)
--------------------------------------------
Revision: 237
Author: eber
Message:
Removed: crap code
--------------------------------------------
Revision: 238
Author: eber
Message:
Added: crap code
--------------------------------------------
Revision: 318
Author: mgar
Message:
- Tears in my eyes...
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Revision: 400
Author: eber
Message:
Fixed: materials 'ballon' and 'ballonskirt' didn't exist
--------------------------------------------
Revision: 403
Author: eber
Message:
Added: super secret stuff...SHHHhh..don't tell anyone!
O_o
o_O
O_O
it's the custom bounce cube animation, to allow for unique/totally awesome jumps
--------------------------------------------
Revision: 444
Author: eber
Message:
Added: stuff before we get kicked out of the office
--------------------------------------------
Revision: 695
Author: mdah
Message:
Fixed: Children are now put in quarantine when picked up
--------------------------------------------
Revision: 700
Author: mgar
Message:
- GDC Candidate 1 (stand-alone version)
--------------------------------------------
That’s all for now. Stay tuned for the next episode!
Game development is a very collaborative process. The contributions to a game project like ilomilo come from people with widely varying skills.
Artists build 3D models that are brought to life by animations and textures.
Level designers, well, they design the quirky levels…
Programmers (like me) mess around with the code to make all parts work together.
What if you could visualize this complex process?
Well, we made an attempt, using the sweet tool “code swarm”.
The video clip below shows the history of ilomilo so far, as interpreted by code swarm. The dots represent changes made to the files in the project and the colors show different types of work. Green and yellow dots represent code changes, blue dots are graphics, red are sounds etc… The floating texts represent the people working on the project.
So, here you go!
One year of ilomilo development, compressed to a one minute incomprehensible video.
I don’t expect any of you to make any sense out of it, but it certainly is fun to watch.
To view the movie in all it’s full size glory, click this link (and set it to 480p):
ilomilo swarm
The big explosion at the end shows very accurately how Gordon (mgar) removed all files and then added them again.
ilomilo dev blog is using
WordPress to make all this magic happen
Entries (RSS)
and Comments (RSS).
