It feels like it’s been years since I updated this blog. I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this, but my steady job is in web development. We have spent the last few months putting some serious hours in to replace an existing system that just was a band aid patch on top of a band aid patch. And sure enough, release week comes and you make band aid patches to the new system in non-critical areas while you work to keep the overall structure in tact and react to the diminishing stream of critical and cautionary error reports.

Fortunately there aren’t too many band aids and criticals are steadily going away. It’s actually kind of funny when you have been tracking an error with no hope of finding, then all of sudden someone gives you just the right information and you are able to recreate the error for the first time. I never thought I’d be so happy to see something I coded throw an error.

So in short, yes I am gloating a bit, there are a few lingering errors still in the system, but minor enough that I can step back and breath for a bit. And in the coming weeks updates on The Gateway Circle should come to life again. Jay Jay and I are gearing up to push a little and see if we can get some serious off hour programming and development going.

So yay, my web development sucks much less today, and yay, I’m going to have free time again!!!

Work has kicked into deadline mode, so progress has been slow. It also doesn’t help that I’m modeling, as that always takes me a long time. And as I was coming to the end of one of my models I realized I forgot the doors and windows, and now I need to go back and get it right.

But here is an updated shot. And progress won’t be hastening until about mid-December when we finally reach a nice milestone at work. And since I don’t have multiple hours at a time to commit to anything, small simple models are exactly what I am spending my time on.

I’ll keep this post short and sweet. I actually have a few minutes, and I think I am about to tackle an anvil model and see what I can do for the rest of the smithing items.

This week has been fun so far. I managed to get a couple scripts running simply and properly, and I got a nice little graphic done. Modeling is like anything else, it’s fun for a little while, then you realize you suck at it. But this one came together fairly quickly, and while any artist could easily pick out flaws, I am quite happy with the results.

Alright, last week I shot up a quick demo of the stats roller. This week I have an early screen shot with some placeholder geometry still in. I am simply using Unity, it’s better than the engine I built (duh), and really helps me with areas I struggle in. So here is the screen, this is the first level, I have the storyline for this in my head, I seriously need to get it on paper before I loose it.

I have been reading tutorials about making trees, something that has been very difficult and time consuming in a standard 3d editor. I found several good resources, not to mention the new tree editor in Unity 3. It took me a few tries to get all my textures right for tree editing, but once I got started it was seriously easy and fun. The leaves texture was based largely on a tutorial I found at Andy Zibits web page.

So the Maria story is off until I start getting bored again, I am currently on a role and I hate to interrupt progress, no matter how enticing the alternative is.

The fog was thick in the air, she could only tell when the mob passed closely by. She had been running and hiding most of the night. Having no business being there with a husband and child at home she was cursing her decision to listen to Agaitha Winerek. “I clearly remember telling her with the trials and all, but ooohh no, she wouldn’t listen. Oh Maria, twill be so much fun, the cider, the stories, and not a soul will be the wiser.” Through the panic Maria blushed red with the realization of how silly her muttering sounded. What started as a night of fun with the cabin fevered mothers turned into a nightmare of deadly proportions. Her mind wouldn’t stop racing around the events that lead to this moment…

Just after dark Maria kissed her husband and child goodbye, grabbed the lantern her husband handed her and left out to meet the girls. They had grown up together, gotten married about the same time, and with Maria’s addition a couple months ago, they all had children. Growing up they had always met in the woods behind the old church, lit a fire, and told stories to see if they could scare each other. It had been years since they had been out there, and they were all as excited as they were cautious. A year ago a homeless woman was seen eating a rat, and was later caught scaring kids with the eyes and tails. What started as a simple case of disturbance soon escalated into a plague of convenience convictions and vigilante justice. They all knew know one was safe, was the nostalgia of it all was far too enticing.

One by one they showed up around the campfire, each one more giddy than the next. After they all greeted each other and settled down Cynthia Hamlin started things off with a ghost story that had some promise but got way too sappy to hold it’s once haunting edge. Then March Engel stood everyone’s hair up with a story that was way to close home. After a long silence March broke through the eerie silence with her all too common laugh after scaring the fool out of everyone, which always led to a host of laughter. Everyone was slowly quieting down as Agaitha stood to tell her story. Agaitha’s stories always started off slow, with lots of dramatic pauses, probably the only reason escaped. At about the third mouth gaping stare we heard a rustling. We were scared for just a moment, when Cynthia pointed at that March wasn’t in the circle. March was infamous for sneaking out of sight and scaring everyone, with a smile on their face, story time continued as they eagerly awaited the obvious.

Agaitha was nearly finished when they heard a rustling, odd, they usually never heard her coming. March flew out of the woods in a blind run running falling over Cynthia. They all shrieked and fell apart in laughter, it took few seconds for March to catch her breath and finally speak above noise what she had been frantically mouthing since she arrived. “Run”, she shouted as her finger pointed back toward the church. A light fog was settling in and through it they could see the tint of torchlight. Someone had seen them, they were coming…

My dedication for this site is about to change. New job, student loans, kids, and life in general makes finding any spare time for development complicated. At best I may dig up 6 good hours in an average week. That makes it very hard to stay focused, and makes the goal just that much more long term. So an idea crossed my mind that might turn out to be as fun as it is embarrassing, and the time impact would be minimal. That idea is to do live story lining right here on the blog.

The idea is to write back story for games I am or will be working on, as a way to keep things moving forward when it seems like nothing is moving forward. It will also challenge my writing skills and hopefully improve them. And I don’t expect every week to be epic, but I hope it proves to be entertaining.

Not going to get too wordy, here is a design shot of what I am doing for the competition going on right now at RPGDX. This is going to be old-school, and I will post a demo of what I get done. There are a lot of promising entries this year, be sure to check them out.

Well, this adventure has certainly been a humiliating experience. I honestly don’t know the best way to say this, in which it comes across as cool, or acceptable, or whatever, but there is a bottom line. I lack the talent and focus to finish a game, I do. And I have all the respect in the world for those of you who have accomplished this task. And I had seen these games as my ticket to a small amount of fame and fortune, which always ended in furious disappointment. I couldn’t even give Choppacide away for free. Failure is a sobering thing, once you’ve had time to back away and assess the damage. What God has literally shown me through this is that the little talent I have obtained is not mine to be prideful of, and that my pride and desire for recognition has completely destroyed every one of my projects. If I finish a game from this point on, the credit ultimately belongs to God, and I would also like to give credit to all those who have pioneered this industry before me. I am honestly a bit uncomfortable in this post, no one like religion in their face, but I was even more uncomfortable not posting it, knowing this had to be done. So for anyone who took me as condescending, or arrogant, please accept my apology.

The Rampant Coyote posted an excellent article on game size, which has prompted me to write a quick article on some things I have noticed with my recent gaming.

Games – Too Big, Too Hard?

For years I have been working full time, and going to college full time, while trying to spend time with my wife and four kids and working on games in my spare time, which left very little time for actually playing a game. During that period of time I almost completed Final Fantasy 3 on the DS making it to the final boss, and alas the world was left in peril due to my untimely death. So now that I am working one full time job putting my hard earned degree to work, I have had time to actually play games, like an hour every night!!!

The first game I pulled from the backlog of unfinished games was Chrono Trigger for the DS. I enjoyed almost every minute of this game, with exception to a lot of the add on quests that came with the DS version, but they were optional so I did what I wanted to do until I got bored with them. Then I got back onto the original side quests and beat all but a handful without having to reference a walkthrough. Each one was creative, and most came with good story bonuses. Then after many hours I took on the Black Omen and pretty much ran straight through from there to the final battle with Lavos.

It took me three nights to beat the final battle, putting the DS on suspend (love that feature) but slowly learned the what needed to be done and took it with patience. The battle felt epic, it was far from impossible, but seemed like it at times, and really challenged my nerves. After it was all over I was given an incredible game ending, and I might eventually play through this game again on the beaten mode.

After that I grabbed Suikoden for the DS, because I remembered the story line in that game to be quite good so far. I played on it for about a week or two, but the constant random battles just wore me out, Suikoden went back on the shelf, and now I am playing another game entirely.

For me Suikoden became more work than fun, and since it is wildly an amusing waste of time, I don’t find it necessary to explore the game further. But Chono Trigger had very little filler content, and I could explore without constantly being punished for doing so. And Chono Trigger is by far the harder of the two games, but it’s balance and intrigue kept me going, and I hardly noticed that it took me about four weeks of hour long play sessions to finish, I just couldn’t put it down.

So, that has been my recent experience, I like to jot this stuff down as I still do a bit of game development to break up the web development tedium.

Before I start in, believe me, I like the movies but wouldn’t consider myself a huge fan, or put this movie in my top 10. But it is a vampire movie (which I enjoy, Bram Stokers #1), and has earned itself a massive and dedicated following. While I liked the movies and absolutely loved the soundtrack I just couldn’t get into the spirit of Twilight, until I watched the second movie. Now I am not certain, don’t quote me on this. But I am about 3% sure I saw him. I believe he was part of the vulturie (or however you spell that), I believe they did their best to edit him out, and I beleive they divulged deep secrets into the reality of vampires existing among us today.

Everyone believed him dead, but I now know he un-lives as a vampire, and I will forever be part of …

Oh yeah, I’m a fan!

My wife was at the release party last night, she won that bottle and a few other things. She hasn’t woken up yet to see that I’ve fixed this for her, but I’m sure I’ll be the first to know when she does. Anyway, it’s fun to do an off the wall post every now and then, but I must hurry and get back to my anticipation.

Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Twilight or Earnest. I enjoy parodies of even my favorite movies and singers. This is in no way meant to be offensive, it is just for fun that I do this.

Today I was going to announce a game I have been scheming on for a long time, but when I googled the name this time I found a development studio founded in 2009 that has that name for their company. So for now I am code naming the game “Goat Cheese” and will divulge a few of the details.

Goat Cheese concept art.

• Goat Cheese is a party based RPG focusing on the story of one town
• Up to 4 in your adventuring party
• Almost every NPC is a recruitable character on condition
• Lots of dialog based on your chosen party adding to replayablity
• Optional boss fights with the right party
• Every ending is a game ending, just go home and roll credits
• Humor based story line with multiple outcomes
• Start the game over with your saved character
• Desired Target Platforms: Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad

The design has multiple authors and I am teaming up with a friend to make this game happen. The timeline is a year in our spare time, give or take a few months. Just to show you how serious this game is I included some early concept art. So in the mean time check back from time to time for updates and if you have an iPhone go check out my current game, Choppacide EU.

For a couple years now I have been working on programming an RPG. I started out with one idea which I ran with for a year before realizing I would never complete it with my current schedule. So I tried to simplify everything and start anew, but that RPG quickly got large and out of hand as well. I then jumped onto an iPhone project and finally finished a game, then finished a side scrolling RPG for a competition, then came back and made another RPG combat engine prototype which I am holding onto for a rainy day.

So now I have several partial RPG’s, including one half started 3d game (need more cash first) and no more college waiting on a degree so I can job hunt. So after running aground financially on 3D I decided to review my old design docs and decide on a way to mix them up and finish an RPG. I am still finalizing the design doc and prototyping a bit and getting pretty close to having something that looks fairly impressive. I am also toying with the idea of teaming up with an artist and a sound and music person. I was always hesitant to drag someone onboard before due to my inexperience, but I have learned a great deal over the last two years and feel much more confident in what I can do. And with college no longer a time factor I have been able to accomplish in a week what took me a month and a half in the first competition.