- Autumn Sale and Steam Awards - 21 November 2023
During the Steam Autumn Sale, icosi-do is available at a discount of 40%! Also, don't forget to nominate icosi-do in the Labor-of-Love category of the Steam Awards 2023.
- On the potential benefits of hand gesture controls - 17 July 2023
As I've mentioned, I'm working on hand gesture controls for icosi-do with Tilt Five glasses, which includes quite a bit of testing. To some degree, I was surprised how good these controls feel (as long as they work as intended). That's not to say that my implementation works sufficiently well already, but I hope that it will once I can access the wide-angle head tracking camera of the Tilt Five glasses. Now I'm wondering: what makes hand gesture controls feel better than hand-held controllers? Before answering that question, it's useful to consider what is required to make hand gesture controls feel at least as good as hand-held controllers. The Power of Controlling Of course, the detection of specific hand gestures has to work sufficiently well. On top of that, many hand gestures will include some form of motion tracking, which has to be sufficiently accurate and fast to facilitate com…
- Patch V-14: Second test of hand gesture control for Tilt Five glasses - 2 July 2023
This small update includes another small test of hand gesture controls for users of Tilt Five™ glasses. If you have access to Tilt Five™ glasses, please try it out with the full game or the demo. Some instructions (only for Tilt Five™ users): In the Tilt Five™ Control Panel under "Settings", activate "Allow Camera Frame Sender". In icosi-do, the test of hand gesture control is activated under SETTINGS > AR GLASSES > GESTURES > TEST. Through the Tilt Five™ glasses, you should then see a red, low-resolution camera image below the puzzle. The hand gesture equivalent to a mouse click/trigger pull is an OK/ring sign formed by thumb and one finger. When recognised, the inside of the ring becomes green in the camera image. To be recognised, the ring has to be closed and the inside of the ring has to be of a certain size but may not be too large. (You may want to adjust the apparent size of you…
- ICOSI-DO ON SUMMER SALE! - 29 June 2023
icosi-do is participating in the Steam Summer Sale 2023 with a whopping 30% discount! And the demo is still free! In other news, I continue working on hand gestures for selecting rods when using Tilt Five glasses. Currently, the pointing is quite jittery, but it's getting there.
- More thoughts on hand control for Tilt Five users - 26 June 2023
Thanks to everyone who has provided feedback about the first test of hand control for Tilt Five users in icosi-do! (If you wonder: these discussions happened on the Tilt Five discord.) Here is a summary of my conclusions: 1) Performance matters: the approach of downsampling the camera image on the GPU and continuing the CPU computations with a 32 x 32 pixels image appears to provide a sufficient refresh rate for somewhat smooth interactivity. 2) The connected component analysis works quite well to detect whether thumb and another finger touch each other and thereby complete the OK/ring sign/gesture. The passive haptic feedback of this moment is a nice touch (pun intended). Of course there are limitations due to the single, infrared camera, but within these technical limitations, it appears to work very well. 3) The "head cursor", i.e. controlling a 3D reticle with head movements, doesn'…
- Patch V-13: First test of hand gesture control for Tilt Five glasses - 22 June 2023
This small update only includes a small test for users of Tilt Five™ glasses to see how icosi-do might be controlled with hand gestures (as suggested in my previous post). If you have access to Tilt Five™ glasses, please try it out with the full game or the demo. Some instructions (only for Tilt Five™ users): In the Tilt Five™ Control Panel under "Settings", activate "Allow Camera Frame Sender". (Without camera frames, hand gesture control is not possible. The infrared camera frames are sent from the Tilt Five™ glasses to the connected PC and analysed there to control the game.) In icosi-do, the test of hand gesture control is activated under SETTINGS > AR GLASSES > OK SIGN > TEST. Through the Tilt Five™ glasses, you should then see a red, low-resolution camera image below the puzzle. The only supported hand gesture is an OK/ring sign formed by thumb and one finger. This gesture represe…
- What I am working on (June 2023 edition) - 17 June 2023
On June 5, 2023, Apple has presented the Apple Vision Pro and with it a new "spatial computing" interface based on (among other things) eye tracking and hand gestures. While the keynote presentation had its controversial moments, the reports by journalists who were able to experience early devices were quite enthusiastic. So, this made me think: how could I integrate some of the features of this spatial computing interface into the Tilt Five version of icosi-do? To answer this question, let's step back a bit: At its core, eye tracking provides a direction in 3D space, which is similar to the tracked direction of Tilt Five glasses. The hand gestures potentially provide much more information, but the most basic information is just a single Bit: users are or aren't pinching with their hands, which is similar to pressing or not pressing a single button. How to build a user interface based o…
- Note about the music in icosi-do (for YouTubers and other streamers) - 5 June 2023
On YouTube, when you upload videos of icosi-do that include the built-in music, you might get hit by Content ID claims. That's because Bach's music is very popular and a couple of companies claimed copyrights for specific performances. Here is what you need to know: It is safe to dispute any Content ID claim related to Bach's music in icosi-do, because there are no copyrights on the 300 years-old music by Bach and the performance in icosi-do is not copyrighted by third parties because I programmed that performance myself based on sheet music. Personally, I got 4 Content ID claims on the music by 4 different companies, and successfully disputed all of them without problems. If you want to avoid the issue of Content ID claims altogether, you can turn off the background music under SETTINGS > AUDIO > MUSIC. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.
- Patch V-12: new button with old function and old button with new function - 20 May 2023
Another small patch polishing the interface for users of a single-button mouse: A "hint"/"undo" button has been added in the lower-left corner, which has the same function as the "X" key/button. In the tutorial, the "right arrow" button is now clickable in the hands-on parts of the tutorial with the puzzle. In this case, it has the same function as the escape key/button, i.e., it continues with the next step of the tutorial. The idea is that you can quickly click through the tutorial by repeatedly clicking that button. (It might also be less confusing than using the escape key/button to continue in the hands-on parts, but using the right arrow/"D" key to continue when text is presented.) Please let me know any further ideas to improve the interface for users of a single-button mouse, or other comments or feedback. Thanks!
- Patch V-11: slightly better layout - 16 May 2023
Only a tiny patch polishing the user interface: The left/right/esc icons have been moved slightly towards the centre to improve the layout for some aspect ratios (and the main text is a bit smaller to make space for them). The areas to click the left/right/esc icons now move with the icons. (Previously they were defined relative to the window). The bottom rod moves smaller distances for the credits such that it should stay inside the window for more aspect ratios. As always, please let me know any comments!
- Update V-10: support for single-button mouse, etc. - 13 May 2023
A new regular update featuring better mouse support! I guess it was about time to improve the mouse interface such that icosi-do may be controlled with a single-button mouse. (My excuse is that it took me a while to realise that a carousel-like user interface fits the game menu very well.) Other improvements in version V-10 (and in the demo): A bug changing the volume of the background music has been fixed. The use of Tilt Five's SDK is mentioned in the credits. As always, please let me know any bugs, comments, and feedback!
- ICOSI-DO AT PUZZLE FEST! - 20 April 2023
icosi-do is participating in the Steam Puzzle Fest with its biggest discount ever: 30%! If that's not good enough: try the free demo! In other news: icosi-do is now officially part of the Tilt Five franchise; check it out!
- Video about kal-toh - 10 March 2023
I found a YouTube video by @CertifiablyIngame covering the fictional game "kal-toh" (starting at 4:44). Very interesting, indeed! For more information about kal-toh, see its page on Memory Alpha.
- YouTuber Red Event Games plays icosi-do - 27 February 2023
YouTuber Red Event Games plays up to level 5+ in the first game. Special thanks for going through the tutorial!
- YouTuber Mariatxi plays icosi-do (in Spanish) - 18 February 2023
YouTuber Mariatxi plays through the tutorial and then up to level 5+ - with comments in Spanish. Thanks for playing on your channel!
- Weeklong Celebration Discount: -25%! - 15 February 2023
As announced yesterday, icosi-do has been officially included in Tilt Five's games catalog at https://www.tiltfive.com/games. To celebrate the occasion, I've started a weeklong discount of 25%! Oh, and don't forget that you can play the first 7 levels with the free demo! With or without Tilt Five™ Glasses! This might be a good opportunity to clarify the importance of Tilt Five for icosi-do: icosi-do would simply not exist without Tilt Five! While the actual game design was inspired by a fictional game from a popular TV series, my original motivation to develop and publish a game on Steam was to create something for the Tilt Five™ Glasses that I got as Kickstarter reward. You see, it's all connected.
- Happy Valentine's Day! - 14 February 2023
And today is not only Valentine's Day but also the day that icosi-do became officially part of the evergrowing Tilt Five™ games library at https://www.tiltfive.com/games! Tilt Five 💞 icosi-do: a match made in Unity❣️ Joking aside, there is even more good news to come soon! Stay tuned!
- Maris from GamerQuest plays and reviews icosi-do! - 12 February 2023
YouTuber Maris from GamerQuest plays icosi-do up to level 5+, which is pretty good for a first game! Thanks for playing on your channel!
- Patch V-09: higher volume levels, more credits, fewer AudioListeners - 3 February 2023
Another day, another patch: I had a closer look at the volume levels of sounds and music, and decided to increase the internal volume levels quite substantially. You probably want to adjust your volume settings in SETTINGS > AUDIO > SOUNDS and MUSIC. Also, I cleaned up the Unity scene by removing one of the AudioListeners. And last but not least: I added some more credits to acknowledge the authors of various assets that I'm using. As always, please let me know any comments!
- Patch V-08: fixed leaderboards, gray highlight color, and clipping in demo - 2 February 2023
This patch fixes three issues that came up when I was playing with COLORS set to off, i.e. in star mode and in x-bar mode. Hovering over a rod changes the color of the rod to highlight it. For gray rods, that highlighted color is now brighter, which shows more clearly which rod you are hovering over. In the full game, the leaderboards for star mode and x-bar mode have been fixed. (The demo doesn't support leaderboards.) Apparently, they had never worked, because the code that I was using only worked for one single leaderboard. Oops. In the demo, the near-plane view clipping of the cloned Tilt Five™ view was fixed. Unfortunately, I tried to update the app while Steam had world-wide connection problems. The demo updated fine, but it took about an hour to update the full game. Sorry for any inconvenience.
