I like Slamdance. I entered PuffBOMB last year, and was a finalist for the casual game award. Since then, I’ve been excited that a more “artful” game competition was beginning to take off. Winners receive a funky ugly dog statuette. Cool! Then a controversial game was pulled. Things are not going well now. It’s a real shame, and I hope something good comes from the controversy, rather than developing in to more Jack Thompson style heat for our industry....
I’m actively preparing for … some event. On my to-do list for this miraculous day, is cleaning up the web sites. Well, I’ve finished 1 so far, the Sykhronics web site. www.sykhronics.com It’s not functional, but I think it looks cooler/more professional than before. I’ll make it usable at some later date. Since it’s a new month, here’s a couple notable images from last month. The first is are a little sketch I did for each of my grandmother’s in their Christmas cards....
You see, what’s fun about big computers is… oh wait… there’s no fun here. Back sometime in ‘98, whilst I was working in a computer store, my fascination with big computer crap began. And I purchased this massive “Server” case, which was PC’s case for a couple years. Eventually, this behemoth of a case was “promoted” to an actual server, since routine maintenance/upgrades were painful given it’s shear mass. Then in ‘04, I had the brilliant idea to purchase the biggest, fattest Laptop mankind has ever seen....
I’m not going to pretend I got lots done. This month got off to a slow start. With Disgaea 2finally hitting our shores, and that inevitable peer pressure to play Oblivion, it seemed like the right thing to do. But mixed in to a reasonably large game engine re-engineering effort, which always seems to be 2 weeks away from bearing fruit, there’s been my little project of art research or training, or whatever catchy “make art better” phrase I come up with at the time....
I’ve got workflow on the brain, and a discussion about backups on IG got the brain juices flowing. The post is of similar quality and length to what I’d normally constitute a “blog post”, so I’m dropping it here so I don’t forget. It’s certainly not a surefire answer to anything, just a stroll through me solving a problem. The set up: SVN, a great tool for backups, versioning, and synchronization, can and should be used in all aspects of development....
I tend not to go off on news topics, but ‘ehh… today’s special. No doubt you’ve heard about Microsoft’s big news that’s making Indie developers all giddy. $99 a year to “activate” an Xbox 360 so that you can test your games on it. Sounds great, but there’s 1 little thing that could pose a problem for some. C# … Alright. Nothing against C# as a language, ‘cause I’m sure it’s a great and efficient once you get used to it....
When you haven’t updated in a long time, and you have a lot to say, where do you start? Apparently you don’t say anything, and you put it off. Or you invent some random topic and post, but that’s only when you’re in a weird mood. OK, some friends inspired me to draw a picture, so lets talk art. Art, and what I’ve been investigating for a 2D art pipeline....
I guess I’ve been involved in games a long time. Doing “amazing” things with “PRINT” on the Commodore 64 at the age of 9, and promoting a cheesy Zelda/Final Fantasy hybrid online at 16. Just to give some perspective, the year was 1996, and the game was called Legends of Tidal, a game the Internet has forgotten. Then there was all that game industry experience, but pshaw, nobody cares about that....
Well, I’m not going to let the month go by without posting something. After all, I have been doing much stuff. Not so much round up, but many many other things. The project progresses. We’re busy preparing a pitch-able playable of the game that we’ll be pitchely pitching to potential pitch-able people pretty pitching soon. I’ll have less riddles and more to say about that in a few weeks. Also, I’ve silently (and finally) put together a MacOS X version of PuffBOMB....
Yup, I’m a few days behind mentioning this, but this month’s round up is up. A personal favorite of mine, Titan Attacks reigned supreme, followed by the slick steam powered airship game, Steam Brigade, and the un-noted but equally as surprisingly quality Inlay clone, Mosaic: Tomb of Mystery. Fun stuff. As expected, I’m going to say things are going well with the game, despite the updates. Actually, better than well. Much Biz oriented stuff, which I’m going to have to sit on for a while....