Very much so. A huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. It feels good - no, great. No, fantastical. Yes, fantastical! My eyes got a little watery on my last drive home from work, but not because I was upset. No no noooo, They were tears of joy, tears of being free from the frustrations and annoyances of working for people who refuse to open their eyes.
Speaking of work: we were in the process of finishing up the last bits of Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. I’ve been working on it for about a year now. It’s a great game and you should at least play the demo. Not many people realize this, but I pitched and prototyped the last 2 projects the studio produced. So for recognition I get to watch other people be flown around and interviewed while I’m told I need to stay late and come in on Saturdays. No thank you.
I learned a ton while working with a lot of wonderfully smart people. BUT, I’d rather have control over my life, be able to create my own work schedule, have the freedom to do as I please and develop whatever games I want.
That’s why I’m “going indie.”
What’s next you ask? Prototyping. Finishing some small games for you to play. Working on bigger games for you to play. And enjoying my life, my friends, and my family.
A short while ago we partook in the Wild Pockets bay area game jam. It’s a 24 hour competition where you get a team of up to 5 people and make a game as fast as possible. Our team was able to make 2 games which worked out quite well since we were able to share assets and scripts, effectively letting us work at a faster pace.
The 24 hours was quite grueling, but all the teams appeared to make it to the end. And they all made some damn impressive games. My favorite part of the event was watching everyone present their games at the end. Most everyone seemed to be really really tired, but in good spirits.
We ended working the entire 24 hours this year, but it paid off since we somehow managed to take first and second place with our two games.
Will we do it again next year? Hopefully we’ll just be judges…
Last weekend Wild Pockets put on a 24 hour game jam competition. For those of you who have never heard of a game jam it’s a competition where teams make a game in a short period of time. In this case it was roughly 20 teams each making their own game using the wild pockets engine in 24 hours.
This was my first game jam. They’re very exciting, tiring, fun, and are very good learning experiences. My team happened to win. We ended up making two games.
The Game Developers Conference is going on this week. A very awesome ex-coworker of mine lent me their pass so I had the chance to check out a couple sessions and walk the expo floor today. I won’t mention the girls working the N-Gage booth at all because it would be inappropriate of me. The two sessions I went to were quite good (as opposed to previous years’ sessions) and the IGF booth was cool to check out (as always). Continue Reading »
Just picked up a new macbook and downloaded Unity3d. Check out my first creation here. If you’ve never installed the plugin you’ll be required to do so. Try clicking on the chest once you’re up and running.
I’m really digging Unity, especially the power to link game objects directly to a script via drag-n-drop. Let’s hope I get some codes for the full version soon - this trial runs out in 27 days…
Behold, my first true Flash game. I’ve learned a lot, the colors don’t match, and many things could be improved. But I just had to finish something for once (Hazel, you’re still on my to do list, I swear). Continue Reading »
The music from the recently released Xbox live arcade game Castle Crashers has been released for download (I just bought a 360 last night so I could play this game, among many other games).
Play it, love it, get annoyed by all the shrubbery obstructing your view. It’s well worth the money.
Besides spending miniscule amounts of time on my side projects every week I’ve been listening to Silverburst. It just so happens they kick bootay. Listen to their music here.
There is now another distraction to keep me from working on The Hazel Chronicles. I am making a small attempt to learn flash and actionscript 3.0.
So far it’s coming along slowly because it’s so much easier to play GTA or rock band while I’m at home, but there has been some progress. It’s not really a game, although you can have a butt-load of fun playing it (not really).
