Cat M's Blog

Mermaid Updates

2012-02-12T18:35:00.003-05:00

Slow going.... but getting somewhere? ;)

AltDevConf: Effective PR, Marketing & Community Management

2012-02-12T16:59:00.001-05:00

Effective PR, Marketing & Community Management in the Indie Games Space

by Erik Johnson

Why This Stuff Matters to Indie Devs

Exposure: People need to have heard of your game in order to buy it
Reputation: (with press, peers, customers)
Longevity: People are ready to support you in big ways, if you can get their support, it can help you stay in the industry

Establishing a Community

Build a connection with openness, respect and accountability

Ocean Marketing debacle - this guy was a jerk to his customers, and he and his company got destroyed on the internet: don't treat your customers like dirt
Control yourself.

If you think you're going to respond poorly, cool off. Don't take things personally, which can be hard if you've poured yourself into a game
Learn to drop bad habit defense mechanisms
Don't respond to trolls

If you respond correctly, you can establish a connection
Use trackers like Google Alerts. Keep your eyes open for comments about your company/game
Long term consistency will result in community members being evangelists for your company - word of mouth (organic marketing)

Create & Maintain Community Landings

Website, blog, forums promote discussion between players & between yourself and players
Be active, give your community new information
Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Reddit, Google+, IndieDB, N4G
Decide which ones make sense for your game

Give Members Reasons to Stay

Open development - share information about process, how game is coming along
Public alphas/betas
Wolfire Games (http://www.wolfire.com/) as example: 1-2 updates a week, always video logs. Gives community something to get excited about
Get a feel for your community. What are they into? Be creative, interact with them

Contests, game nights, book clubs.
Seems tangential, but strengthens community. They want to hang out with each other
Are they testers? Modders? Content creators? Give them options to their tastes

Seeking out Mention & Coverage

Online publications are a good place to start, but you can also look to print media, podcasts, local media
Reach out to industry peers know - it's a friendly industry, people will want to help you out if you're making something cool
Research where to locate a potential audience. What publications cover your audience? Who will be the most open to talking about your game?

Dealing Specifically with the Press

Be unassuming - They probably don't know who you are and what your game is about. They are helping you by covering your game, be grateful
Be frank - avoid PR speak. Journalists get a lot of that - being forthright will make it easier for them to talk to you
Be generous - Tell them you are available any time for interviews. Give exclusive screenshots, provide download keys that they can give away to their readers.

Organic Marketing

Open development - blogs, forums, alphas, wikis for extensive details. Give them lots of landings to browse.
Crowd sourcing concepts can be really effective

Players can point to something and say "I suggested that, and was credited" - they will tell their friends
Be mindful of how you process feedback

Word of mouth (best thing ever)

Minecraft is a great example - Youtube played a HUGE part in Minecraft's success

Drawing up & Building an Effective Marketing Plan

Malleable marketing throughout the process. Need to be able to tweak plans
Trial & Error - experiment. Usually most of the things you're going to try aren't very high risk, so you have room to find what will work best for your game
Know what's appealing about your game

Might be something you didn't expect
Critical that you understand in order to effectively market it
*Note on trailers: Get to the meat as soon as possible. Don't start trailers with long-winded intros

Trust your instincts!

Take Risks, Get Creative

No risk, no reward

Humble Bundle (when it started) is a good example of a risk that paid off (pay what you want). Right now it's leveled off, but keep your eyes open for opportunities like this in the future - you don't know what's going to catch on.

Experiment with pricing - bundles, sales, promotions

Ideal to tie it into game content (but be careful, because it can backfire)

SuperCrateBox - tracks collective number of crates for all users - content is unlocked for all users when milestones are reached

Loyalty discounts

Know When to Shut Up

When have they had enough?

Know when you've reached the saturation point - try to stop before that

Press members don't want daily updates - maybe fans do. Keep your audience in mind
Let players discover some things for themselves. If they find it, they'll want to pass it on.

Major Items to Consider

Price point

How does your game compare to everyone else's?
If you participate in sales/promotions, will you be able to make enough money?
Be honest with yourself about the content you've created and time you've spent

Platforms

PC/Mac has a lot of options.
Some rules about contacting distributors:

Need to make good first impression
Don't do it until you're ready, you might only get one chance

Other Routes for Exposure

Exhibiting - conventions, festivals

Risk/reward. It's expensive, but can really pay off. You get a 1 to 1 interaction with your players - collect a ton of knowledge about what's working and isn't, what's confusing, etc. if you have a keen eye
Good idea to do when your game is already out - so they can see it at the convention, and then immediately buy it (instead of forgetting about it)

Kickstarter

Also sites like http://www.indiegogo.com/ & http://8bitfunding.com/
Kickstarter is all or nothing, so be realistic about how much you're asking for. Figure out how much money you need, and how much you really think you're going to get for your idea. If you don't think you can make that much, don't do it.
Can get a ton of attention if you have an idea that is really creative

Overarching Themes

Be accountable, be upfront, don't be a dick

It goes a long way if people know you're not bullshitting them

Staying involved with the community gives you more opportunity to stick around as a presence in the industry
Be willing to take risks
Know when to adjust, or even be quiet.

Q&A

Q: Is there any fallout from launching a Kickstarter campaign and failing to meet your goal?

A: With Kickstarter, it's all about your concept. Be honest with yourself - will the concept and idea sell? Something to think about - if you don't hit it big, it's like a mini marketing bubble for those 30 or so days, which can be very stressful. In general, don't enter the arena unless you're very confident. Also, there can be fallout if your game/app really wasn't in a state to be shown yet.

Q: How do you go about setting a Kickstarter target?

A: Research! Look at how projects succeed or fail. Figure out how much you need, and if you don't think you can get it, don't go on there.

Q: Should you avoid PR speak altogether, or are there some circumstances where it's ok?

A: Avoid it altogether. For everyone. It doesn't belong in the indie game space. You know when you're talking to someone that is actually knowledgable about a game, and customers respect that. If you're getting interviewed, you should be able to answer questions. If you have someone outside of development is that is doing your community management, get them as involved as possible in what you're doing, so that they are knowledgeable as possible.

AltDevConf: Intro to Producing for Mobile

2012-02-11T16:32:00.001-05:00

*02/12/12: Updated with notes from today's repeat of the session.

Intro to Producing for Mobile: How to "Go Indie," Actually Ship an App, and Not Die

by Evangeline Marzec

What's the Point?

Make money. You are a company, not just a game/app. In order to keep making new apps, you need to have a sustainable business. You are now an entrepreneur.
You will go through 100 good ideas before you find a great idea (so it's a good idea to be sustainable while you are working towards that great idea).

Strategy

Define success
Define failure
You will need a Plan B. Also C through F.

Two strategies.

Sink all of your time and money into one big idea (high risk)
Make a lot of smaller, lower risk apps

Think about how much risk you are able to take on

What Do You Have?

Make your constraints work for you

Work to your team's strengths. If you have a great writer and a great artist, don't make a finance management app - make an interactive children's book.

Work within your effective capacity.

Don't expand your capacity to fit your idea - constrain your ideas to fit within your capacity

Once you're profitable, you can start growing your company to tackle bigger ideas

If you have 4 months of money left in the bank, you need to ship something in 1-2 weeks. It takes time to start seeing money from an app (app approval takes time, getting money out from it takes time)
Plan for 30 hours a week of time for each person working at your company. Realize that unexpected things come up.
Effective capacity is different than maximum capacity! Your goal should not be to constantly work at maximum capacity, you will not work well.
You can do less than you think you can.

Pick a Product

Great ideas only.
Toolset will define your product.

Example: Started out using Unity, but it constrains you to working on 3D games only - which are more expensive. Ended up switching to Titanium.

Assume everything will take 2X as long and cost 2X more than you think it will
Money is a finite resource
You can work a maximum of 50 hours a week before you start making mistakes
Assume that someone else has had the same idea for an app as you. Search the app store for similar products.

If you find something similar to what you're planning and it's good but not making money, come up with a different idea.

iOS is the best market - users spend more money. Kindle users come in 2nd, Android users spend a lot less.
Concentrate on one platform at a time. If you are successful in one market, then you can port it to another - but don't waste time porting it until you have proven its success.
Kindle is a very different demographic than Android and iOS.

What Do You Need?

Money

It's about $2k to make a phone app, and $7k to make a tablet app
Consider hardware costs
Consider opportunity costs (the amount your team members could have been making if they hadn't quit their day jobs to work with you). You need to consider this number to decide if something is actually profitable.

Tools

Get off the shelf tools wherever possible
Don't make tools unless you are planning on selling them
Get things for free where you can!

There is a lot of free analytics software

Look for new tools every 6 months or so. Look for low prices, and tools that have good support

People

You need someone that knows how to code
Outsourcing isn't cheap or easy - you will spend a lot of time managing outsourcers

$20-30/hr for a good experienced outsourcer - better if you can find someone near you that maybe has less experience, but is willing & able to learn

If your business has breaks built into it (2-3 months off between products) consider using contractors. Be careful about labor laws
If someone is critical, put them on payroll
Get a bookkeeper. It's a bad idea to do this yourself unless you have experience with it. Budget $200/mo for this
Consider getting a good talent agent - a single point of contact you can turn to if you need temporary support (an audio engineer or marketing person).
Pay people immediately - not at the end of the pay period. It will help keep them on your side when things inevitably go wrong.
It's helpful to have a lawyer, but don't spend more than $500 on one.

Unless you are licensing IP, in which case you need a good lawyer

Produce

Use agile. Or some sort of structured production methodology. It will help you stay on top of things, stay on track, and prevent feature creep.

Pivotal Tracker is a good free tool

Keep on top of what everyone is doing

*Note: Sound effects: http://www.soundsnap.com/ ($249/yr for unlimited sound downloads)
Usually takes 15min per person per day to keep on top of things

If you can afford to hire someone for marketing, do it - if not, make it everyone's job!

Market your company 1st, and your app 2nd. Your message can get lost if each press release is highlighting a completely different name.

Keep records

Data backups! Dropbox, external harddrives, DVDs
Security? As an indie startup, you don't need to worry about this as much as you should worry about keeping data backups.

When Success Happens

Assume it's short term. Usually apps have about a 2 week spike, and then drop off shortly
In this case, the first app was the best selling. It made about $1k in the first month, then $200-$300 each month after for the 2 years after. It took $15,000 to make, so it will take until 2015 to be profitable. The next 2 apps they made barely made any money at all in their first months. Cannot assume that all apps will bring in the same amount of money.
Use caution when going to friends and family for monetary support, because they instantly become business partners who will expect to have a say in your business. Choose them wisely.

When Shit Happens

It's important to set up failure conditions in advance
On a project level, have a set amount of time and money you don't want to exceed. If you start going over one or the other, you have failed. It doesn't matter if you've already put in 60% of your money, you need to pull the plug.
Reconsider your business strategy every 6 month or so
Come up with win/lose conditions for company success.

"Out of money" is a bad lose condition. Don't quit when you're under, quit before that.
Examples of lose conditions

When your balance is at a certain amount of money
If you haven't met your success criteria in 3 years

"Quitting" can mean different things. It could mean completely stopping, or turning app making into a hobby. In this case, one person works outside of the company full time to help support it.

If Nothing Else:

Pay yourself. Give yourself enough to live on - but also to afford small luxuries. (e.g., not buying socks for 3 months, but being allowed to buy whatever groceries you want). It's important to be able to keep your stress level down.
Invest wisely. Go through 100 good ideas first, throw them out. It takes time to make a knockoff as well as an original idea, so make sure what you're making is worth it.
Get a mentor. Someone that can help you with the business side of it, but also just to help provide a sense of perspective.
Do what you're good at. "You can't out Amazon Amazon." Use your unique perspective to your advantage.

Q&A:

Q: Doesn't pursuing a "small bets" model (small safe projects as opposed to one big gamble) go contrary to what most game developers are trying to do?

A: It depends on your purpose in being a developer. Small bets are more sustainable. Know that 1-3% of apps are "hits," which generally means that you make enough off of them to stay in business.

Q: Elaborate on the $2k as a minimum cost it takes to ship an app.

A: It takes between 3 days to 2 weeks to make an app - which is time that you are not getting paid. Lots of small costs, ($70 Washington state business license, $99/yr Apple developers fee, etc). Consider the cost of hardware, even if you already own it (so factor in the cost of you iPhone, even if you already owned it, would have bought it anyway).

Q: How do you juggle 1.5 jobs?

A: No social life! It's helpful to choose a day job that you don't hate (doesn't drain you, and you can keep using some of your brainpower thinking about your company). Gatekeep your time. Learn how to delegate tasks (for example, if there isn't time to approve the storyboards, just trust your teammates.)

Q: How do you start marketing on a small budget?

A: Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, Press releases. Can use talent agencies to help with writing press releases. In this case, found it helpful to meet with agency for one hour a week. Make updates to your blog/Twitter/etc PART of your job, and make sure that everyone is a part of it. Twitter wasn't as helpful, since there wasn't time to Tweet 10x a day. Do what you're good at. If you're an artist, post art. If you're great at writing, write press releases and blog posts. Press releases should come out when an app is released, updated, or featured.

Q: How do you test to see which ideas are worth pursuing?

A: User testing. Find your audience, and get the app to them for feedback. (In this case, went to local libraries, got librarians' input, got it into the hands of 4 year olds, etc.) One suggestion is http://www.usertesting.com/ - About $85 to have 5 people look at your app and give feedback. Useful for people outside of Seattle or Silicon Valley in places where it's harder to have user testing.

Q: What do you think about using equity stakes as a means of paying employees?

A: You're going to have a really hard time finding an experienced developer that will work for equity stakes! It's a valuable way to get people working for you to feel involved, and potentially get better work from them. Use if for culture and retention, but do not use it as a means of payment. When you offer it, acknowledge the fact that it is currently worthless, but that it is intended as a way of making them feel involved.

Q: Are there times when it's better to release apps?
A: Have seen bumps in sales around November & August - but also increased competition. Also think about if your app is seasonal or not. The Jabberwocky app did very well around Halloween, and the soccer app did very well around the World Cup.

Q: How do you get money when you're starting out on your own?
A: Kickstarter can be very good. Having a day job is helpful, or doing stuff on the side to make money. In general, start with the cheapest, simplest app first and prove that you can execute. Then people will have confidence in your ability to follow through, and will be willing to invest in you.

Q: What would you suggest for a beginner who is looking for team members?
A: Prove that you can do the work - show that you can follow through on something. You will probably need to have a specialization (art, programming, etc), so make impressive things in your area of expertise. This will impress people into wanting to work with you, and they will also want to impress you too.

Q: Is it a good idea to target a specific audience? For example, "color" vs. "colour"?
A: Piccolo saw success by targeting other markets than the US. Most indie devs target the US, so doing this is a way to set yourself apart from them. If the European market sees that you are targeting them, they are more likely to buy your app.

Q: Is it possible to get success through press releases when your app has been out for a few weeks?
A: If you're making a press release after your game is already out, it's not really enough to say "we released this app." You need to be creative and tell a story with it, that will catch a journalist's eye. Make their job easy for them - if you can show that there is a story there, they will be more inclined to print it.

More book

2012-02-05T16:59:00.002-05:00

Slowwwwly doing things. :) Trying to make the 1st page of each section more interesting. Still not set on a style.

iBook Style Exploration

2012-02-02T22:08:00.002-05:00

Playing with the idea more. :)

iBook Exploration: Mermaid

2012-02-01T16:42:00.004-05:00

I keep telling myself I need to just stop thinking and start drawing this thing.. but I went ahead and played with another potential style anyway. :)

Global Game Jam 2012: Endless

2012-01-29T20:20:00.001-05:00

Our Global Game Jam 2012 game is complete!

>>Click here to play!<<

About: This game was made in 48 hours for the Global Game Jam. This year's theme was this image:

The image is the Ouroboros, and after kicking around a lot of ideas about snakes, we gravitated more towards the idea of an endless loop. Our concept is simple - you are trapped in a loop, and each time you complete the circle, the track changes a little.

How to Play: Use your cursor to drive the ball of light up, down, left and right. Hold down the left mouse button for a boost. Survive as long as possible. The level dims as time progresses - collect the lights to bring the brightness back up.

Team:

Me (Art)

Issam Khalil (Engineering)

Chad Layton (Engineering)

Suresh Malakar (Engineering)

Video:

Screenshots:

Here is our official GGJ 2012 site: http://globalgamejam.org/2012/endless

Global Game Jam 2012 - Saturday

2012-01-29T00:11:00.001-05:00

Here's some of our progress from today!

We definitely have a playable game at this point. We're just missing audio, a leaderboard and some menu stuff.

Global Game Jam 2012

2012-01-27T23:56:00.001-05:00

The GGJ is underway!! This is my 3rd GGJ, and I'm super excited.

We got the theme around 5:45 and spent the evening brainstorming and coming up with a design. We even started messing around a little in Unity to visualize what we're thinking of. We headed home around 10:30 (the labs at our site run from 9am - 11pm, so no crazy hours for us unless we do some stuff at home). The plan is to have the game at a relatively finished state tomorrow might. Our design is simple enough that it should be possible.

Some pictures. :)

iBook Mermaid

2012-01-25T16:55:00.003-05:00

Slowly figuring out how this should look.... :)

More Rough Pages

2012-01-24T22:04:00.004-05:00

More thumbnails.

iBook: Super Rough Layout

2012-01-22T17:07:00.002-05:00

Here are the first couple of sketches in terms of progression for the French language learning iBook I'm making with a friend!

The writing is all placeholder, and the final will be written entirely in French. The mermaid is looking for a conch shell, visiting different locations along the way. Kids will be introduced to specific vocabulary words at each location, and will take a small matching quiz to reinforce the words they have been shown.

Mermaids!

2012-01-19T22:04:00.001-05:00

After the Apple announcement today, my friend Jenni and I decided it would be fun to make a French language learning iBook for kids. The basic idea is to make a short story with interactive elements.

We're thinking about doing something with a mermaid, so I did these sketches to start thinking about a visual style.

Robot!

2012-01-01T16:36:00.002-05:00

Just because.

Game: Winter Migration

2012-01-01T14:55:00.001-05:00

Winter Migration
December 2011

>>Click the image to play!<<

About: I made this game for my mom for Christmas! She's been pitching this concept to me for a long time about a bird that is too tired to fly, and realizes that he can ride on the roofs of cars. It was made specifically for her phone. I did all of the art and scripting.

How to Play: Click on cars to fly to them. Red cars are fast, blue are medium, and gray are slow - but all three slow down after you've ridden on them for awhile. Try to get to the finish line as fast as possible! ..The quit button doesn't do anything since it's a web build. ;)

Time Frame: I started before Thanksgiving, but the majority of the work was done in the week before Christmas.

Screenshots:

Girls, Inc News Clip

2011-12-21T17:26:00.003-05:00

Hey! Here's the local news coverage of the Girls, Inc Summit I participated in today! There's no footage of me or Marcella though. :)

http://capitalregion.ynn.com/content/567835/girls--nano-summit-held-at-ualbany/?ap=1&MP4

Girls, Inc Stuff

2011-12-12T00:18:00.001-05:00

RPG Puzzle Progress!

2011-12-10T22:09:00.001-05:00

After our brainstorming session last weekend, we got in our first full day of work today!

Here are some mock-ups! Enemies will advance from the right, and engage whatever hero they run into first. Heroes will fight them by default, but you can also select your hero to use a special power. The meat of the game is sliding your heroes around in the 8 available spaces so that they are in the best strategic position against the approaching enemies at all times.

Some rough character class concepts:

Getting started on some models:

Currently, enemies approach from the right, auto engage heroes, deal and receive damage, and you can slide heroes around on the grid. Not too bad for one day. :)

Girls, Inc Continued...

2011-12-08T09:01:00.001-05:00

Some more!

Girls, Inc - continued...

2011-12-07T21:26:00.001-05:00

Update on Girls, Inc stuff. Lots more to do!!!

Girls Inc, WIP

2011-12-05T21:18:00.001-05:00

I'm doing another presentation for Girls, Inc this year and these are some drawings for it. The Geisha isn't done... but I felt like posting her anyway. More stuff to follow!

(Last year when I did it I made these images.)

Game Jam 5: The Island

2011-11-21T12:47:00.001-05:00

We (me, Issam, Chad, Suresh) made another game!

Summary: Run around the world taking pictures! You may take pictures anywhere you want to build your gallery, but to complete the game, take pictures at all of the ‘picture spots’ (represented by yellow star effects). (Warning: We didn’t actually add an ending…. so all you’ll really get from collecting all of the picture spots is a sense of satisfaction.) You can also take pictures of anything you think is interesting.

Controls:
Movement: w, a, s, d or arrow keys to move, space bar to jump and double jump
Camera: Go into picture mode with ‘c,’ use the spacebar to take photos, and and view your gallery with ‘g.’

Play a single player game by pressing ‘Start.’ You can also play multiplayer! (Doesn’t change gameplay, you just run around in the same world)

Multiplayer setup:

Create a server by pressing ‘Start’
Give your IP address to whoever else wants to play with you
(if you’re like me and you don’t know how to find your IP address – go to the cmd window and type ipconfig. The IPv4 number is your address)
Joining players should type the hosts IP address into the field on the start screen, and press ‘connect’
We’ve tested up to 7 players at once… I don’t know if there’s a limit.

Click on this image to play the game!!

3D Platformer Progress...

2011-11-20T19:42:00.001-05:00

Game Jam 5 is done! We just need to make a final build and host it. Expect an update early tomorrow!~

Pitch: RPG Hero Battle!

2011-11-17T23:15:00.001-05:00

RPG HeroBattle

Summary: Createyour own RPG hero and pit him or her against 3-6 of your friends in a contestof strength and skill! Complete short missions to increase your character’s level,build your score, and earn money. Use in-game and real-world money to buy itemsto boost your own capabilities – or make things interesting by using items tohinder the progress of your competitors! The hero with the highest score at the end ofthe competition will be deemed the champion.

Platform: Mobiledevices!

Hook (as devs): Use real-world money as an offensive weapon against your friends!

***This is a rough idea I had and I would love feedback! Right now the shell of “RPG Hero” is pretty liquid – it could really be all sorts of things. The main concept is the idea of using real-world money as an offensive weapon against your friends. I thought this could be a new type of motivator to spend a little money.
Just imagine the possibilities – your friend is on a date, and you and the other competitors can spam him with $1 ‘urgent missions’. ***

Create Your Hero:

Choose a name and class (mage, thief, warrior)

Class determines offensive and defensive capabilities

Use the character creator to customize a look for your hero

Choose Your Opponents:

Choose 3-6 friends that you will be competing against
Set duration of contest (minimum of 1 day, maximum of 7 days)
In-game “coin toss” (or maybe rock, paper, scissors?) determines who will namethe country in which you are competing
The winner of the contest becomes the champion of this country, and has a badgeadded to his or her in-game profile

Receive Your Quests: (more Quest concepts at bottom of doc)

The meat of the gameplay, you will receive quests tocomplete during the duration of your competition.

They will be spaced out depending on the length of your competition. Forexample:

If you are competing over 7 days, you will receive 2-3 quests a day by default
If you are competing over one day, you will receive 1 quest every 2-3 hours
Maybe you can specify times of day that are off limits? For example if you goto school or your job doesn’t allow for short breaks. J

For the best possible score, complete the quest soon after you receive it! Ifyou wait too long, the quest will be considered a failure. (Negative repercussions?)
Quests are a variety of short bursts of gameplay (2-3min max). Examples:

Slay as many monsters as possible 2-3min
Find all of the treasure chests in 2-3 min
Find your way through a dungeon in 2-3 min

Battle for Supremacy!

All quests increase your level and give you money to buyspecial items
Level:

Basic minimum offense/defense boost
Unlocks different abilities automatically
Maybe a branching skill trees allow you to build offensive or defensive powerin your own missions, or boost offensive or defensive power against your fellowcompetitors (so your strategy totally depends on the play style of youropponents)

Items:

There are several different types of items you may purchase with in-game moneyor real money (see below) or find on missions:

Items which act on your hero:

Boost offensive power in game to help you on your missions
Boost defensive power in game to help you on your missions
Defend against attacks from your competitors
Give you advantages in specific types of quests. Examples:

HUD which leads you directly to the map in dungeon quests
An AOE attack which you can use a limited number of times in the enemy hordesquests

Items which act on your competitors’ heroes:

Weaken the offensive power a select competitor for the duration of one mission
Weaken the defensive power of a select competitor for multiple missions
Add an extra mission for a competitor to complete
Decrease the time limit in which a competitor may complete a mission
Remove a select item from a competitor (only items which act on their ownoffensive or defensive capabilities)
Knock a competitor down a level

Score & Rank:

At the end of the competition, the winner is determined by a score which ismade up of multiple factors:

How well you did on your individual quests
How much time passed before you completed each quest/if you let any quests falloff

Badges

At the end of each competition, heroes will receive various badges for how theydid overall (a la Rock Band). Examples:

Monster Slayer: Most enemies defeated over the course of the contest
Treasure Hunter: Most treasure chests found over the course of the contest

All stats for all heroes will be on display throughout the course of thecontest

Boost your Odds(Microtransactions)

Use real-world money to purchase additional items

Items which are available with in-game money will be naturally weighted towardsitems which affect your own character
By using real-world money, you will be able to purchase more items which affectyour competitors – and yes, fight dirty.

Notifications

All adversarial games are best when you know what yourcompetitors are doing! Notifications will be sent to your phone:

Whenever a competing hero completes a quest or purchases an item
Whenever the ranking of heroes changes
Whenever a hero uses an item against another hero

Notifications will include images of your characters (funny!)

After the Contest isOver…

You will lose your level and score
You may keep your customized hero and hero name, if you wish
You will keep any badges that you have earned, which will be displayed in youruser profile

There could even be an overall leaderboard for number of wins, or number ofdifferent types of badges

Some Quest Concepts:

3D Platformer Progress

2011-11-16T21:58:00.001-05:00

Tonight's progress:

I made a village.

We realized that fog hides my skybox.

Chad played with networking. :)

VV Game Jam: Fear the Whale!

2011-11-15T14:14:00.001-05:00

The VV Game Jam was this Saturday!! We had 14 hours (soft deadline) to make a game. The theme was Upside-down.

Our team was my usual game jam team (Issam, Chad, Suresh), plus Tim Tillotson. We used Unity.

Knowing that we would be demoing the game in one of the meeting rooms that was recently updated with a giant flatscreen monitor, Suresh had an idea about having a game with components which ran on the monitor as well as our iphones/ipads. We brainstormed a number of ideas around this concept - a Star Trek concept (yes, another one) where different devices displayed different information (navigation, weapons, etc), a sort of AR scavenger hunt (using the Virtual VV I created a few months ago) where the leader (monitor) would send people through the office to neutralize ghosts or something using the phone's GPS to update his map.

We decided that it would be best to pursue a pretty standard, proven-out style of gameplay so that we could focus on the technical side of making the devices all work together - so we went with a 3 vs. 1 shooting game. For the subject matter we resurrected an old idea about whaling: the concept being that whales are actually trying to destroy the world, so the Japanese are justified in whaling (I had made a particularly distasteful joke after watching The Cove).

The gameplay is 3 fishermen vs. 1 whale. As a fisherman, you flip your device upside-down to sent out a radar signal to find the whale. (Where the theme comes into play)

The rest of the description is taken from Suresh's VV blog Post:

We created a single project that would run on all devices and the PC. When you load the game, you choose what you are, the TV, a fisherman, or the whale. The TV is the host, while the fisherman and whale are clients. Tim set up a matchmaking server, so technically they all connect to a game specified by name. Thanks to Unity we were able to deploy the same game to an iPhone 3GS, iPad1/2 and an Android Tablet without too much trouble, there were of course rendering discrepancies and performance problems on certain devices, but everything just seemed to work across the board!

The TV:

On the TV we show an overview of the ocean. We draw all the fisherman boats but not the whale. The idea is that the Fisherman have to hunt for the whale. They have the ability to send out a sonar ping, which will send a message to the TV to send a sonar signal from their current location. If a whale is in the nearby vicinity, the Whale’s last location will appear as a red blip.

The Fishermen

The Fisherman get a 3rd person view of their boat and their surroundings. We tried to make the view more occluded, by adding in fog, but we had trouble making it work on the mobile devices as well as it did on PC, so unfortunately you could see the whale from pretty far away. The Fisherman can move with the motion controls, tap to shoot projectiles, or turn the device upside down to send out the sonar ping.

The Whale

The Whale gets a top down view similar to the TV but zoomed in. The Whale can move and shoot like the Fisherman, but they have slightly more responsive motion controls. They also do more damage to the Fishermen than the Fishermen do to the Whale.

Video!

Fear the Whale!!

2011-11-13T15:12:00.001-05:00

From our Game Jam yesterday. 14 hours to make a game! I'll post more about it later.

Android & Vertex Lighting

2011-11-06T18:41:00.002-05:00

Today Issam got our game working on an Android tablet -

We also figured out how to do vertex lighting. :)

Mountain Trail - Progress

2011-11-05T18:14:00.004-04:00

Mountain Trail

2011-11-03T23:34:00.002-04:00

Starting to get some rough art. :)

There's a World....

2011-10-30T18:01:00.001-04:00

Game Jam: 3D Platformer - Progress

2011-10-29T18:34:00.002-04:00

Next Jam In Progress :)

2011-10-27T22:36:00.000-04:00

Weekly Game Jam 4: To Boldly Go...

2011-10-02T20:01:00.000-04:00

Game Jam 4 is done!!

To recap, at the end of week 3, "To Boldly Go..." wasn't looking too hot, so we decided to take the basic concept and make a new game. In the end, the only thing we kept from the original was the space theme. :)

>> Play the Game!

Click the image to play.

Goal: Survive as long as possible, skirting obstacles to boost your score.

How to Play: Click in the direction you want to go with the left mouse button to move. Use the right mouse button for a boost. Various obstacles harm you in different ways - the planets have gravity which pulls you in, supernovas can either kill you with their initial explosion, or repel you outwards into space, space squids latch onto you and must be shaken off or they will destroy you, and various enemy ships and bases will shoot to kill.

Features!

- - Practice level for beginners

- - Online leaderboards – shows you the overall leaderboard,and a ‘peer leaderboard’ of the scores closest to yours

- - Death Markers – see where other players died inthe level, and what killed them

Time Frame: Sunday 9/25 - Sunday 10/2

Team:

Issam Khalil (Engineering)

Danielle Cerniglia (Engineering)

Chad Layton (Engineering)

Suresh Malakar (Engineering)

Cat Musgrove (Art)

To Boldly Go... Preview.

2011-10-01T20:50:00.000-04:00

Just adding some finishing touches! The game will be up before the night is over!!

Space is brutal.

Preview

2011-09-25T22:19:00.000-04:00

Weekly Game Jam 3: To Boldly Go

2011-09-25T19:25:00.004-04:00

...was unsuccessful!! So we changed the design, and are making a much better version for Game Jam 4. :)

Here's sort of what it looked like:

You fly around and look for planets in a hex grid space.

This is what the level looked like. I made 50 unique planets!!!

By Saturday night we had something working - but it wasn't fun at all, and we figured it would take a lot of time to turn it into something fun - so we completely retooled the design, and that's what we're making this week!

Sneak preview of new direction: The tone changed considerably, so I decided to switch up the art style to match.

Weekly Game Jam 2: Dungeons & Dorks

2011-09-19T11:28:00.001-04:00

Game Jam number 2!!

I like Chad's description:

This week we tried a new take on a little known but classic game (in somecircles). You play the role of a pewter miniature swept up in an ill-conceivedD&D adventure! Well worth a play through if for no other reason than theepic voice acting. Just click to move and interact with theworld.

You definitely need to play with sound on! And I’m afraid wedidn’t localize anything. Sorry non-English speakers.

Our team make up was the same: me, Chad, Issam and Suresh. I still did all of the art, but this time I also wrote the script! (Although there was some ad libbing - like the Voyager section). We worked Sunday (just brainstorming), Weds, Sat - and carried over to Sunday this week.

Click the image to play (PLAY WITH SOUND!)

Hero

2011-09-14T17:17:00.003-04:00

Sneak preview continued!!

This post just made me notice the conspicuous absence of the part of the shield that holds it to his forearm....

Sneak Preview

2011-09-11T20:43:00.001-04:00

Preview of what's coming up next.

Weekly Game Jam 1: Sushi Runner

2011-09-11T09:12:00.002-04:00

Some friends and I made a game this week!

Click image to play!

You play as a fish that is trying to escape a sushi restaurant. Jump, slide, boost and brake to avoid obstacles on the table, as well as obstacles that fly at you.

Leaderboard is here.

We started it last Monday (Memorial Day), and mostly worked on it Monday, Wednesday and Saturday. I did all of the art, and some amount of messing with prefabs in Unity. All of the design was collaborative. :)

Team:
Issam Khalil
Suresh Malakar
Chad Layton
Me!

Music is from the Naruto Soundtrack.

This is how we celebrated Saturday night:

2D in 3D

2011-09-09T14:08:00.003-04:00

Goofing off. It's Goku!

Design Challenge: One Button Control

2011-09-01T22:21:00.000-04:00

So I noticed this design challenge over at Gamasutra and I wanted to try it! The criteria was to create a game with a single button input - then write it up in a doc of up to 500 words and 3 images.

Just this week I started watching Star Trek: The Next Generation for the first time, so this idea is clearly based on that. ;)

Title: Prime Directive

Premise:

You are a starship captain who explores the universe, seeking to discover, experience and catalogue the unknown! Learning about alien races is your highest priority, but you must follow one strict rule: learn as much as possible, but do not interfere in their culture or development.

To accomplish this, you must use all possible clues to interpret their values and act in a way which does not offend them – but be careful, you also must also be mindful of the values of your crew.

Gameplay:

On each planet, you encounter a new alien race. There is a brief introductory scene in which you learn a bit about them before they interact with you. You then will face multiple scenarios – in each, you have 2 seconds to press the ‘action button’ to execute a predetermined action.

The time it takes you to press the button, or not press it at all, determines the reactions of the host species, as well as the crew. If you should displease all of your alien hosts, or all of your crew, you fail the mission. If you can keep a balance between the two, you have succeeded, and may count the alien race among your allies.

Scoring:

2 scales are represented at all times – one for the crew, and one for the alien host. The timing of you action can fall into ‘fast’ (within the 1st second), ‘slow’ (within the 2nd second) or not at all. Each ‘+’ and ‘–‘ adds or subtracts a point from the corresponding scale. When the bar drops to zero, you have lost support from that group. A follow up scene will explain the results of your action.

Examples:

Thunderions of Burning Rock Alpha Tau

- Introductory Visual: A violent, war-loving race. Furs, and heads adorn the hallway. A warrior loses at arm wrestling and is violently dragged out of the hall. The leader is flanked by giant, snarling dog-like things; he pats one on the head.

- Example Scenario: You are invited to dinner! Before dinner, you are given a kitten. Kill it?

o Fast: Aliens ++, Crew -- “Displays of strength are always valued!”

o Slow: Aliens -, Crew -- “Indecision is a sign of weakness on this planet!”

o Don’t: Aliens --, Crew ++ “You have insulted your hosts! Take what you are offered!”

Largeriants of Ikki-Centre V

- Introductory Visual: They are giant ants!

- Example Scenario: You meet the queen. She looms over you, expectantly. Make eye contact?

o Fast: Aliens --, Crew +

o Slow: Aliens -, Crew --

o Don’t: Aliens ++, Crew --

Whispits of Hadentia

- Introductory Visuals: Ghost like, slow floaty species. Very dark room, which is lavishly decorated.

- Example Scenario: It’s dark in here. Turn on the light?

o Fast: Aliens --, Crew ++

o Slow: Aliens -, Crew +

o Don’t do it: Aliens +, Crew -

Comicon Challenge - More Progress

2011-08-29T22:48:00.002-04:00

Still progressing slowly, but I'm still working on it. ;)

Comicon Challenge - Action Shot - More Progress

2011-08-25T22:15:00.002-04:00

I promise I'm still working on this, just being slow. :) I got some feedback from my coworkers and tried to calm the camera movement down a little on the action shot - but I still think it's too much. Also, no one was really buying Catwoman knocking the Hulk down (including me), so I changed it up:

Walker Boys Unity Tutorials - Lab 1: Point & Click

2011-08-21T16:27:00.002-04:00

As I mentioned earlier, I was between projects this week at work, so I decided to buckle down and dig into Unity using the Walker Boys Unity Tutorials. I started last week with the somewhat flimsy C# knowledge I picked up a few months back by reading this book and learned a TON about Javascripting - culminating thus far in my first lab!

Play it Here!: Lab 1 - Click on objects to destroy them (some take multiple clicks). Get 30 points to win.

Here's my info sheet for turning it in:

NAME: Cat Musgrove

TIMEFRAME: For Lab 1 specifically, worked on & Off Thurs 8/18 - Sunday 8/21 (maybe... 16 hours total?)

PROJECT DETAIL:

Followed videos closely to create a "Point and Click" game - where you click on objects to destroy as many as possible in a set amount of time. You have 20 seconds to gain 30 points. Started with project setup and asset creation - making prefabs for each object & explosion (created explosion using particle system in Unity).

Scripted player controls - ray is cast from mouse to detect collision with enemy objects. Each click lowers the counter on the enemy objects, and when they reach zero, they explode. Each enemy has variable for how many clicks they take to destroy, as well as how long they take to respawn. Enemies move to random positions on game start, and when they explode (renderer is turned off for a certain amt of time after they explode). They also choose a random color within an array of colors that you can set within Unity for each object.

Scripted score & UI. Created Main menu, win and lose screens (each had their own script). Added audio to game.

Worked on my own (without videos -- but with help from Issam) to complete the "On Your Own Objectives" which included creating additional enemies, adding 'shooting' sound, making the sphere's respawn time random, making the sphere flash before exploding, and making a square that moved. For the random respawn time I learned about coroutines and how yield WaitForSeconds reacts when you put it in the Update function directly - so I created some workarounds to not keep initializing the same script. For flashing I dealt with the same issue. For the moving sphere, I learned how to use transform.Translate with Random.Range. I also set up invisible walls around the boundaries of the screen, and learned how to use object collision to trigger events.

SOFTWARE USED: Unity & MonoDevelop

FINAL THOUGHTS: I learned a lot in a week! I'm still running into issues with Syntax, but I think I'm able to at least start looking in the right places, and think in the right sort of order. I asked for Issam's help a lot, but it was usually Syntax related - where I was on the right path, but little things were keeping it from working (example - having the moving cube run into the level boundaries - I didn't know I needed to have a rigidBody collider on the cube in order to use the OnCollisionEnter function.. that sort of thing). I look forward to the next lab!

TIME BREAKDOWN:

Mon - Weds (~8 hours a day):
Watched Intro to Unity & Intro to JavaScript Videos, took tests.

Thurs (~5 hours):
- Followed videos for project setup, asset creation
- Followed scripting videos for:
   - Player Input
   - Player Raycast
   - Random Position
   - Click Loop
   - Respawn Wait Time

Fri (~5 hours):
- Followed scripting videos for:
   - Random Color
   - Counter (Score)
   - GUI HUD
   - GUI Menu
   - GUI Win/Lose
   - Touch Ups
   - Audio Setup
- Followed video for learning how to create build
- Started "On Your Own" Objectives:
   - Add audio effect on mouse click
   - Started to create a random spawn time for the spheres

Sat (~ 4 hours):
- "On Your Own" Objectives:
   - Finished adding random start time for the spheres
   - Add 2 additional enemy shapes
   - Made sphere blink for 3 seconds before exploding

Sun (~3 hours):
- "On Your Own" Objectives:
   - Made script to make MoveCube move randomly across the screen
- Created site for hosting files, uploaded everything & did written description!

Walker Boys Studio - Unity Course - Finished JavaScript Pt2!

2011-08-17T16:29:00.000-04:00

Hooray! Next I get to start working on a lab!

Comicon Challenge - 1st Pass

2011-08-16T22:36:00.000-04:00

Well, layout/1st pass, really. :) I'm so glad it fits into 10 seconds!

I'm really excited to animate Hulk's run - he's going to be like, this oncoming freight train of mass!!

Comicon Challenge - Action Shot WIP 1

2011-08-15T23:20:00.000-04:00

Making some progress. This is the main action shot - once I get it figured out I can start adjusting the other shots to lead into it better.

Right now too much of the action is getting lost in the camera movement - but it's a start!

Walker Boys Studio - Unity Course - Progress

2011-08-15T16:50:00.001-04:00

Hooray! I passed the 3rd Exam! (I forgot to take a capture of Exam #2)

I'm between projects right now, so I spent the day at work doing part 1 of the JavaScripting section of the Walker Boys Unity course. I felt like a lot of it was review, which is a good sign that the C# I was beginning to learn a few months ago stuck with me.

It was funny though, I would say this section took me a total of some 6-8 hours - and then the exam was only 10 questions long! I had tucked in for what I was expecting to be a long, hefty exam. :) Yes, I am disappointed that I got one wrong. ;)

Comicon Challenge - Still

2011-08-14T21:53:00.000-04:00

Making progress. :)

Demo Reel 08/11

2011-08-14T18:47:00.002-04:00

New demo reel!

Cat Musgrove - Demo Reel 08/11 from Catherine Musgrove on Vimeo.

Comicon Challenge - Thumbnails

2011-08-13T22:14:00.000-04:00

Probably not legible to anyone but me, but here are my thumbnails! I chopped them up and stuck them in Premiere and I think it'll fit into 10 seconds, but it might be a tight squeeze.

Comicon Challenge 2011!

2011-08-13T18:55:00.001-04:00

I'm going to enter this year's Comicon Challenge! Basically, for animation, the challenge is to pick a hero and a villain and have them fight - so I'm pitting Catwoman against the Hulk! I know they're not from the same universe, but the overall theme for the challenge is "Alternate Universe" so I'm not too worried about being correct. I also doubt in real life that Catwoman would ever be able to get a hit in on the Hulk, but it's my animation and I'll do what I want! :) The full rules are here.

Here are my characters (you can only use modified bipeds + a few extra polys to add things):

Here is my progress thread.

Jordu Schell Workshop

2011-08-13T10:14:00.000-04:00

Thursday and Friday at work we had a Jordu Schell workshop at VV! Basically, we watched him create something beautiful out of clay for the first day (I'm pretty sure magic was involved) and then the 2nd day we all floundered around and tried to make something of our own. ;) We also got to watch him paint his sculpture. It was incredibly inspirational, and it's crazy how much you can learn just from watching someone work.

Here's what I made. We worked from about 1:30 - 6pm on Friday. He's about 4" high - working like that totally exhausts your eyes (and this is coming from someone that's on the computer all day)!

Maybe I'll work on it a little more before I fire it. I was thinking about giving him a beard. :)

Walker Boys Studio - Unity Course

2011-08-12T10:13:00.000-04:00

So I found my way to the "Treasure Adventure Game" website the other day, and I found out about this free online Unity course by Walker Boys Studio. So far it's really great! I just finished the first lesson and exam, which consisted of about 60 videos explaining the ins and outs of the software + some practice time. The exam was mostly multiple choice, some matching, etc to check if I had a grasp of the basics.

I'm particularly excited about the course because it's designed to take a novice scripter to a 'confident' one in Java. I'm looking forward to digging into it!

Ultimate Kinect - Progress

2011-06-22T22:43:00.000-04:00

Making some progress. :)

Ultimate Kinect

2011-06-20T23:24:00.001-04:00

So this video isn't going to make a whole lot of sense yet, but I wanted to post what I was working on!

Watching the Microsoft presentation at E3 I thought it was interesting how so many of the Kinect titles were on rails games. The more I thought about it, the more I decided that on rails experiences seem really fun to author - you're taking away the player's ability to choose where to go, so you can take him anywhere, and pull off a lot of things you can't do in standard 3D world games. You can also switch up his situation whenever you feel like it - so you could something like starting with an FPS where you're using your hands to aim, and then switching it over to a soccer game, where you're using your feet to kick. Granted, you have to build all of those mechanics and make them all work... :)

Anyway, I was daydreaming about it, and I thought it sounded fun to mock up a rough idea for a Kinect title that does this - the mechanics stay basically the same through the entire game, but you travel through a linear path of different genres of game. You start with a puzzle game, then it's a zombie killing FPS, then your weapon gets taken away, so you have to kick the zombie heads at the next enemy (like a soccer game), and maybe you even end up with some dancing and racing in there somehow.

I've gotten to the soccer transition so far, and then the video stops - there are at least 4 more sections that I want to mock up (soccer, high fives, dancing, racing). As far as the actual gameplay, it would be score based. You would replay the same sequence each time, trying to improve your score to beat friends. For each segment of the game you get a score based on how many guys you hit, or how many of the same colored puzzle pieces you can take out at once, etc - and if you reach a certain score you unlock the 'bonus' extra puzzle level or extra 15 zombies which also increase your score. Also if you fail to reach a certain score in 3 segments, the game ends (like Sequence in Geometry Wars). As far as Kinect goes, I'm trying to keep the input mechanics for each section as similar as possible to make it realistic if I ever decided to make it into a game. :) As part of the mock up I was thinking I'd video tape myself doing the corresponding Kinect actions to help clarify gameplay.

I'm not really sure if I would attempt to make it into a game - it really depends on whether or not I can make this mock up engaging, and seem like something that might be fun to develop further. Also Issam is really excited about the release of the Kinect SDK... so maybe ;)

PS - I'm really going to try to make an effort to start actually finishing some of these projects that I've been starting! :) Sorry for all the jumping around - as most people know, it's a lot easier to start new things than finish old ones. Going to try and break the habit.

Fridge

2011-06-11T23:45:00.001-04:00

Making a weight tracking motivational thing to stick on my fridge! I'll explain it more in a later post. :)

Marathon

2011-06-07T22:50:00.000-04:00

More progress. :)

Vlympics: Final Round: Geometry Wars

2011-06-07T13:40:00.000-04:00

The Vlympics are over, and the champions are: Mos Eisley Spaceport!!

Here's how the final round worked:

Members of opposing teams competed against each other one on one. Mos Eisley on one TV & Alan + the Touring Machines on the other. Gameplay was standard: 3 lives, 3 bombs. Players played until they ran out of lives. Whoever had the higher score won a point for their team, and whichever team had the most points won. Teams determined the order that they went in, and who they matched up against from the opposing team. If we had encountered a tie, each team would have elected their strongest players to compete head to head for the title. (As it worked out, the final 2 players definitely had the most intense match.)

Pictures once again taken by Mel Holtzman.

Here's the overly dramatic speech I gave beforehand. :)

Hello Friends.

It’s been a long 5 weeks, hasn’t it?

You’ve worked together and against each other to complete fantastic trials, which tested your mind, your reflexes, and your competitive spirit.

You’ve raced through epic worlds of yarn, run from dinosaurs, and battled against each other using the avatars of giant, spandex wearing men. You’ve built mighty towers, deciphered pictographic runes and even shot each other in the face.

But as extraordinary, nay, impossible as these trials sound when taken out of context, they are not uncommon for us - for we are game developers. This place of fantasy is our domain, and we are lucky.

It is my sincere hope that through the palm sweat and bloodshed, you've learned something about yourselves and your peers. I know that you've seen - through the joyful cheers of triumph, and the bitter, pathetic tears of defeat - that we all have one important thing in common: we love games.

Let us celebrate this fact every day, and continue to work together to create these fantastic experiences - for ourselves, and for the player.

And now, let’s see what we all came here to see: a beautiful and historic event. Let's watch some ass kicking.

..and the teaser comments leading up to the game reveal:

Tonight’s final round is a game that has been called “pure and simple”

Said one reviewer, “Your television and brain will explode with glee.”
…another likened the effect of the visuals to the glory of the “skyline on the Fourth of July”

It is a merciless game, where any small distraction will result in imminent death.

A game that is perhaps single-handedly responsible for the success of Xbox Live Arcade,

I give you... Geometry Wars!!

I am looking forward to the next Vlympic games!!

Game Jam Weekend - Marathon

2011-06-05T22:06:00.002-04:00

Issam and I did a mini-jam this weekend (but without working crazy late) and made a marathon game! We came up with the concept Fri night and worked Sat & Sun. It's semi-playable right now, but we're thinking we'll spend the next week or so making it into something actually fun. ;)

I will update with more soon!

Vlympics: Round Four: 4 v 4 COD

2011-05-27T17:39:00.001-04:00

Final round of the Vlympics before the championships! This round was simple - 4 v. 4 COD: Black Ops. No kill streaks, no unlocked equipment. Round one was domination, rounds two and three were team deathmatch. Single elimination tournament style. 4 teams played at a time - 2 on either side of the room. It was super intense! A couple of the rounds finished with extremely narrow margins of victory. :)

Two teams will progress to the final round: Mos Eisley Spaceport & Alan + the Touring Machines.

The game for the final round will be revealed the day of. We're putting a lot of planning into it and I'm really exited to see what the Vlympians think!

Pictures once again by Mel Holtzman.

Super Hero City Test

2011-05-27T08:52:00.001-04:00

So I worked on this video yesterday evening to test out an idea I had for gameplay presentation for the Super Hero Game idea - and then as I was going to sleep I realized how unintentionally similar it was to the Skull Girls debut trailer!

Whichever way, this is intended to be how gameplay actually works, as opposed to a trailer, so maybe it's ok? That being said, so far this test is pretty clumsy and unreadable so I'm not sure if the idea will pan out (having all 3 character represented with generic bipeds doesn't help. ;) )

But anyway, I wanted to post it despite its clumsiness. It was just a single night's work to try and prove out a concept.

Jungle!

2011-05-23T18:25:00.002-04:00

Environment I'm building.

Old Animatics!

2011-05-23T18:22:00.002-04:00

Digging through some old work of mine and I found these animatics from school. They're old versions of my thesis! The cleaning one is my favorite. :)

Vlympics: Round Three: Analogue

2011-05-18T13:26:00.000-04:00

Vlympics Round 3 was last night! This round consisted of 3 cooperative challenges, for the team to take on as a unit: 1) in 10 min, put together as much of 2 puzzles as possible, 2) build the tallest Jenga tower possible (still following normal Jenga rules), 3) guess as many gaming-related Pictionary words correctly as possible. (We made the Pictionary list ourselves, so I've now learned a bit about creating and balancing Pictionary. ;) )

The puzzle + Jenga parts made for the quietest round yet, but it was really fun.

Once again, awesome pictures were taken by Mel Holtzman.

Bko Walk Cycle

2011-05-18T00:03:00.000-04:00

Goofing around with Bko - I've never animated an upside-down walk cycle before. :) It's just rough.

Vlympics: Round Two: Collectibles Relay!

2011-05-17T10:33:00.000-04:00

Looks like Blogger's crash ate this post, so here it is again.

Round 2 of the VV gaming Olympics that I'm organizing was last Tues and it was a blast! Teams played a relay race of games with collectibles - so team mate one would collect 300 gems as fast as possible in Kirby's Epic Yarn, then tag off with their teammate who had to collect 50 rings in Sonic (the original) as fast as possible - and so on down the line of 4 - the other 2 games were Mario64 (30 coins) & Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped (100 fruit). We were originally going to determine the victor by time trial, but then we realized that when you watch people play, you learn where everything is - so because of this we did single elimination tournament style again. This way 2 teams would race each other at one time (there were 2 full setups). Also, when they progressed on to the next round, we gave them different levels to play for the sake of variety.

Pictures taken by Mel Holtzman again!

Virtual VV

2011-05-17T01:21:00.000-04:00

Calling it done for now. Depends on how exactly Tim is planning on using it. :)

Ako and Bko

2011-05-16T13:05:00.000-04:00

Back to this image from early March. I'm bouncing back and forth between 2 game ideas right now, which is why my blog's all crazy. :)

Super Hero City Test

2011-05-11T23:32:00.000-04:00

Trying out like a 2D/3D style for the game Issam and I are working on.

Vlympics: Round One: Fight!

2011-05-11T13:27:00.001-04:00

I'm helping organize a gaming Olympics at work (inspired by the Omegathon at PAXEast). The competition is between 8 teams of 4 people each. Round One's theme was fighting games - the teams divvied themselves up and sent one representative to compete in each of the 4 games: Street Fighter 4, Soul Calibur IV, Killer Instinct and WWE All Stars. There was a separate bracket style tournament for each game (single elimination), which determined how many points each team member earned for their team.

It was a blast! Round One was Thurs night - Round Two happened last night and I will update with images and an explanation soon.

These awesome photos were all taken by Mel Holtzman.

Virtual VV

2011-05-11T09:43:00.000-04:00

Modeling my office for a project for someone at work. :)

Attack!

2011-05-05T08:53:00.002-04:00

Monsters Colored!

2011-05-05T00:42:00.001-04:00

Monsters - Color!

2011-05-04T10:40:00.000-04:00

Monsters

2011-05-01T12:23:00.000-04:00

Skull Girls Fanart

2011-04-29T01:50:00.001-04:00

I've been following the guys at Reverge Labs a bit lately and they have a Fanart Friday so I made a piece!

I probably could have done more with the background... but why am I up so late at night?!!

Hero + Villain

2011-04-23T23:08:00.002-04:00

Playing around some more with this idea. I feel like I can push it a lot farther! :)

Super Hero City

2011-04-20T22:50:00.000-04:00

Started working on an animatic for a game idea Issam and I are working on.

The overall concept is that you're a regular person living in a super hero world - trying to go about your normal business like picking up your kid from school and grocery shopping. In this particular scenario, the epic battle raging between the super hero and villain is blocking off a major section of road and you're going to be late picking up your kid from school because of them - AGAIN. This time you're not going to settle for letting your kid down, so you snap and embark upon a crazy drive right through the danger zone.

Gameplay will be on rails, with various obstacles related to the battle which you need to dodge (since how can you pick you your kid when you're crushed to death??)

These are just some rough drawings that made me laugh. I've made zero art decisions yet... other than the fact that I want it to be comic-booky. For example, on the frame when the hero's fist makes contact with the villain, I want a cool anime-style freeze frame with lines shooting all over. You know what I mean.

I also haven't really figured out what the characters look like. These are what came out of my hand when the moment arrived that I had to make them look like something. :)

Hopefully I can get this done soon! The opening is all fleshed out in impossible-to-read thumbnail form... I just need to draw it!! (Tonight I waited too late to start and could only make this feeble post instead. Now I sleep.)

Ako and Bko

2011-04-18T22:04:00.002-04:00

I've been slow on posts lately, but I'm definitely up to a lot of stuff. Maybe if I narrowed it down a little bit I'd have more to show. ;)

DigiGirlz and other Events

2011-03-31T22:37:00.000-04:00

Look! I'm in the news!:
DigiGirlz article

I spoke with Marcella at the Microsoft DigiGirlz event at the University of Albany a couple of days ago. It's an event put together by Microsoft to educate high school girls about careers in tech that they can pursue - and encourage them by having women speakers. It was a lot of fun, although I worry that the exercise we brought ended up being a little too young.. We had some extra time at the end, so I used it as an opportunity to get on my soapbox a little about girls in games. ;)

I also spoke at the Girls, Inc Summit at the college of St. Rose with Kristen in December (I had made these images for our presentation). I don't think I ever posted the news clip about it, so here it is: video. This event was for middle school students and it was really cool.

Finally, here is the STEM video that VV put together for Activision's participation in the STEM video contest a few months ago. I'm in there, but I don't really say very much.. haha.

I also do a lot of presentations at work when students come in for tours. I really love doing events like this because I sort of stumbled into gaming by accident - I didn't really know what it was all about, and I thought that because I hadn't been a hardcore gamer all my life it wouldn't be for me - but I couldn't have been more wrong! I want to share this knowledge with as many students as possible so that they can understand what it really means to have a career in games, and they may find that it's for them. I don't want anyone to miss out, like I almost did - especially girls. ;) We need as many of them in the industry as we can get!!

C# Learnings

2011-03-20T19:54:00.000-04:00

So for anyone that doesn't know, I've decided to make an effort to learn C# so I can make games in Unity. I'm working from Learning C# 3.0 Liberty & MacDonald. It's cool because it assumes I know nothing (which is true!)

PAX East 2011 Recap

2011-03-19T16:22:00.001-04:00

PAX East was last weekend! Now that I'm finally done typing up my GDC notes and my Game Journal entries from the games I played at PAX's Console Freeplay, I want to do a quick writeup about what I saw at PAX.

- Death of an Indie Studio
Presented by Scott Macmillan (who started and ended the studio), this was the story of the 3 year history of indie studio, MacGuffin Games. Key Points:

Art != Business: Before you jump into the world of indie games, you have to ask yourself "do I want to start a company, or do I just want to make my game?" You may find that it's the latter (which is the boat I'm currently in), in which case you might find that it's smarter to keep a normal, paying job, and make the game you want to make if your free time.
Learn to code. If you really think making games on your own is something that you want to do, you should probably learn to code (this is also something that I'm currently doing). If you've got a friend to help you and they're not fully invested in what you're doing, you'll probably find that they're going to flake out. It's much easier on you if you figure out how to do it yourself.
Find a community. Whether you're making a game on the side, or starting your own company by yourself, it's really important to have as many people as possible playing your games, giving you feedback, and sharing their knowledge with you. Working by yourself in a basement might work for some people, but it probably won't work for most people.
Find a place to work. If you've quit your job and you're working at home, see what you can do to separate your work space and your 'at home' space (I've heard this in other talks too). It's confusing and emotionally exhausting to have your work space and play space be the same. (Plus, as I've heard in other talks, you want to be able to have something of a cut off point at the end of the day - which is hard if you're always essentially at the office.)
Pay attention to scope & set deadlines - or you will never get anywhere. :)

- From Background to Center Stage: Building Game Worlds as Main Characters
This talk was presented by a panel including Ken Levine about Bioshock Infinite. It was mostly about the art direction concerning their environment:

Prototype. "City in the sky" is a cool concept, but there are a lot of challenges when you really dig into it. One of them was the idea of how you get from building to building quickly and easily for more interesting gameplay - to which the solution was the 'sky hook.' A non artist (I think it was a programmer?) made a gameplay demo of the sky hook concept which first showed the player moving from line to line to see if it was even fun - which it was. The artists still weren't really sold until a second prototype was made (I think by an artist this time) which was more cinematic, and added sound effects. In this prototype, they proved out how to make it feel tense and exciting to travel by sky hook, and the artists were able to get more excited about it.
Small details matter. This is one of the things people are most drawn to in the Bioshock series - when you go into someone's office, every small detail - from the magazines, to what's hidden under a pile of objects, says something about the character who worked there. This started back in System Shock when you'd have a box of porn and a bottle of beer hidden behind someone's desk. Small details like this make the world more real, and the player notices.
Take your time. They definitely took awhile to flesh out the overall direction for Columbia - at first it mostly felt the same as Rapture, until after a lot of back and forth they arrived at the idea of American patriotism, and then everyone was able to get on board and feel like they understood what the city was all about.

- The Making of an Announcement - Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception
Presented by Naughty Dog's community manager and one of the lead cinematic animators, as well as the 3 guys that make up 2 Player Productions spoke about the making of The Reveal: A Behind-the-Scenes Documentary (there are also 2 more parts).

Wanted to give a public face to the studio. Videos like this help build up a fan community even more - fans want to see what goes into the games they love, and when it turns out that the people making the games are really cool, it makes people feel even more excited.
2 Player Productions were great in terms of not disrupting the general studio flow. They were filming people at their desks, talking and working - as opposed to the more standard game dev interviews where you get taken out of your office for and official interview. It seems they also focused on a lot more of the actual devs, in addition to just the higher ups at the studio (which is something else than fans like to see).

- Console Freeplay: NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams
(Click for my Game Journal entry)

- Penny Arcade: The Series, Season 1 Screening
Also made by 2 Player Productions (season one only), PA : The Series is a behind the scenes look at the day-to-day operations of Penny Arcade. I really think the truly interesting thing about Penny Arcade isn't the comic, but Mike and Jerry themselves (in fact, that's how I really got into all of this stuff. Issam and I sort of wandered into the Penny Arcade Q&A panel at the NY Comic Con a couple of years ago, and that's when we realized how cool these guys really are.) It's really fun to see how this company of, basically 15 or so friends, works together daily. I definitely recommend checking it out.

- Just Because You Have an Idea, You Are Not a Game Designer
Presented by Scott Macmillan of (the now defunct) MacGuffin Games, Chris Oltyan of Dire Wolf Digital, Ichiro Lambe of Dejobaan Studios, and Eitan Glinert of Fire Hose Games, this talk was mostly about what steps you should take if you are an aspiring game designer -- but then, they really didn't get into any specific, actual steps for you to take (except for an argument about whether or not you should learn coding). Honestly, I don't feel like it was a very valuable talk - it was too disorganized, and it didn't seem that any of the panelists had any significant experience working as designers in the mainstream industry. They were all founders of indie studios, which I do think is a totally different experience than working with the job title of 'Designer.'

- Console Freeplay: Punch-Out!!
(Click for my Game Journal entry)

- Females on Female Characters
Presented by a group of game journalists and an actress, I thought that this was the worst talk I attended all weekend. It was basically a group of women gamers (no devs included), a folder of .jpgs of girl characters, and a completely free form discussion, which mostly consisted of people trying to make humorous one-liners. Every character mentioned was vastly oversimplified - for example, the discussion about Princess Peach came down to one woman saying "I hate Peach" to much applause, and then all of the typical arguments about how she's basically just a lame plot device (which I think really overlooks fact that there are many victories in how Peach has been treated as a character over the years, considering that at the start she was simply a plot device.) I think the whole hour of conversation could have been boiled down to: "we would like to see better written characters (male and female) in games."

- Console Freeplay: Marvel vs. Capcom 3
(Click for my Game Journal entry)

- Penny Arcade: The Series Season 2 Q&A
After seeing season one of PATV the night before, as well as a panel with the 2 Player Productions guys, it was really interesting seeing this panel with the creators of season two, Vantage Point Productions. Interesting things:

They never discussed why they had decided to go with a different production company, but Issam and I did a lot of speculating after seeing the respective personalities of 2 Player and Vantage Point - the guys from Vantage Point had personalities that really seemed to mesh with everyone at Penny Arcade, and they talked a lot about how they had all become friendly with each other. They said that they felt like part of the team at Penny Arcade
Because of this closeness, they were able to get a lot more out of the guys at PA that were more camera shy. Also sometimes they felt that they were breaking the 4th wall a little too much - but the connections have been made, so there's no going back
One of the Vantage Point guys has a more serious documentary film background. He had made a documentary about living conditions in Haiti (before the disaster), and was planning on returning to more serious documentary filmmaking after this season. The other guys were planning on staying on.

- The Twisted Pixel Variety Hour
I liked the premise of this "panel" - basically it was a couple of the guys from Twisted Pixel goofing off for an hour. They showed us funny videos that they had made at the studio, told us stories, had the audience do some crowd recordings, had a video chat with the guy that was supposed to be there but had a cancelled flight. They also showed some character designs and talked about their upcoming game, the Gunstringer. I've always had a soft spot for this company since I had a couple of phone conversations/interviews with their Creative Director when I was looking for a job out of college. Having this panel was a cool sort of community building exercise I thought - maybe VV should try something like this next year. :)

- Penny Arcade: The Series, Season 2 Screening
Just more PA TV, but now we got to see some of the differences between the 2 Player Productions and Vantage Point Productions approaches.

- Game Mechanics and Mechanism Design
Issam and I wandered in here not knowing it was being presented by the GeekNights, who were one of our favorite presenters at NY Comic Con this year, so that was a cool surprise. This talk was mostly about different aspects of game design, but unfortunately I did feel that they were a bit out of their element. Obviously this is something that they think is interesting, and have been studying on their own for fun, and they know some things about game theory - but in the end it was too disorganized, and they didn't do a good job actually explaining the principles they were trying to teach. It might have been cooler to get some actual game designers, or game design professors in there instead. It was still entertaining though. I like those guys. :)

- Console Freeplay: Dragon Age II
(Click for my Game Journal entry)

- Console Freeplay: God of War III
(Click for my Game Journal entry)

- Getting to Know Your Games
This was a really cool talk. It was by Dan Amrich, who runs the Activision Corporate blog One of Swords, the community manager for Irrational games, and a guy and girl that work at a PR firm which works with game companies. It was mostly a free-form Q&A, but it still felt very organized compared to a lot of the other panels I attended.

Why was Bioshock Infinite announced so early, considering the fact that they couldn't share anything about the game (since so little of the game was actually decided on)? Because they were about to start building the team up more and hiring a lot of devs. You can pretty much assume that when you've got a giant list of job openings, people will speculate. Also when you get that many people in for interviews, the likelihood of leaks skyrockets. You always want the information to be coming from you instead of speculation, so they figured they'd rather announce it than have someone nonchalantly leak "Oh yeah, it's just set in the sky.."
Funny story about NBA 2K11. They got Michael Jordan for the cover, and it was exciting and a big deal. They had this whole plan for how they could reveal it to maximize the impact - and then it got leaked. After this is quickly turned into the "what are we going to do now?" meetings. They decided the best thing to do was to bring the message back to them - they called all of the news sources that leaked it and requested interviews so that they could get the right information out there.
Dan Amrich - took the job working as Activision's corporate blogger because he wanted to make sure that people were getting the right information. There are so many rumors out there, so it's nice to have a place where you can go to get Activision's official message to clear up misunderstandings. We spoke to him after the talk and he was really cool. It's nice to have someone in the media who is on your side in terms of providing the truth. :)

- Console Freeplay: Bulletstorm
(Click for my Game Journal entry)

- Start Your Own Damned Company
Presented by the same guys as the "Just Because You Have an Idea, You Are Not a Game Designer" talk, plus Damian Isla (co-founder of Moonshot Games). It was cool to have Damian on the panel because he had actual experience in the mainstream industry - he had worked as an engineer at Bungie for a number of years. Overall, this one was also really disorganized and full of strong personalities.

There were a lot of disagreements about best practices, which was cool - pretty much all of the guys on the panel had different goals, so they had different ideas of how to get there. For example, Eitan mentioned that you had to expect to kiss your money and social life goodbye if you wanted to start a studio, whereas Damian, who has a wife and little girl pointed out that this totally depends on what kind of studio culture you'd like to create.

I don't really have any specific notes from this talk - except that Damian mentioned that really, it's much better to start a company after you've been working in the industry for awhile and know more of the ins and outs about how making games works. If you come at it from straight out of school, you're going to have a much harder time succeeding.

- Omegathon Final Round
Even though we went to PAX East last year, I had no idea what the Omegathon was until we watched PA TV and saw the segment about it. Basically, the Omegathon is like the gaming Olympics. A number of contestants are selected at random from people who had pre-registered for PAX, and compete in 4 or 5 rounds throughout the weekend. I'm not sure what all of the events were this time, but I know they competed in teams of 2 and played Katamari and Jenga. The final, surprise round this year was Ikaruga co-op. It was amazing how dramatic it was. We need to do something like this at work. :)

GDC 2011: Game Deisgn Challenge

2011-03-16T20:05:00.000-04:00

Jason Rohrer, John Romero, Jenova Chen

- Introduction:

o Contestants receive concept 1-2 months before GDC

o Only real limitation is that it h as to be for tech that currently exists

o Topic: Line have been drawn between gamification and religion: create a game that in some way can be a religion in its practice and how it operates

- Jason Rohrer

o Old purpose of religion was to explain the world

o Science took over the explanations of most physical mysteries, so religion turned inwards

o Thinking about his grandfather

§ He was the mayor of a town which I-77 was supposed to cut through, but he pushed back and to this day, I-77 makes this crazy curve around the town

§ This is his grandfather’s legacy

§ Through stories, he is less of a man, more of an idea of a man

o The idea of legacy and shrines to the past

§ Think about Stonehenge – we become like gods to those who come after them

o Rough idea:

§ 1 person in the world plays the game at a time, then passes it on

§ This creates a predecessor relationship

§ In most games, the start state you get is THE start state – but gets more interesting when your start state is someone else’s end state

§ In most games, pursuing a goal modifies the terrain

§ Tried to come up with a game where the pursuit of a goal wouldn’t ruin the game for those who play it afterwards.

§ Got caught in the gravity of one game: Minecraft (so it’s a mod)

o Rules

§ You get the ONE USB stick (this is the arc of the covenant)

§ Install Minecraft from this stick

§ You play the game until you die exactly once

· You cannot leave signs with text

· Suicide is permissible

§ Quit to menu, let it save, pass it on

§ Never discuss what you saw or did with anyone, never play it again

o Player One

§ Talked for hours with his son to come up with game one

§ Had grand plans. ..but ended up dying the most heartbreaking and painful death in a game ever

- John Romero

o What is religion? Deity, worshippers, devotion

§ Religious wars were like games – the crusades

o Rules

§ Created Twitter user @God6502

§ Chose person to be @Messiah6502

§ In real time (at the event) the first 12 that follow the Messiah will become apostles

§ The apostles have 2 min to find as many followers as possible

§ The winner is the apostle that has the most followers that contain miracles (whole pad to sticky paper)

- Jenova Chen

o From China, atheist J

o Eastern religions are all about how to live life (Taoism, Confucianism)

o Progression of “religions”

§ Socialism

§ Developmentalism

§ Consumerism

- Religion Needs to address: fear of death, and lack of purpose

o Needs to address these two main things

o Spread ideas to others

- Religion needs to address purpose of life

o Something intuitive, survive the test of time

o Primitive yet profound

o Rights of life: born, growth, propagate

o Propagation is the most fun part

o Propagation of idea! Good purpose for life

- Goals:

o Dogma: promote anything which enhances the propagation of ideas

o Create flow of ideas

o Protected rights and fairness important (so anti-monopoly)

- TED (http://www.ted.com/)

o This is a good example of the spread of ideas

o But TED has a very passive style

o “Ideas worth spreading” is a very passive slogan

o Just database

- Religion Design:

o Take TED and make it better!

o Make it more active

o New slogan: “influence with ideas”

o Make spreading of ideas into flow experience

o There aren’t even view counts on the TED website – add them

o In addition to the view count, say if you were inspired by the video

o Give TED video posters profile sites (more like Facebook or Twitter)

o Like Chinese Twitter – show you how many people are now following (new followers)

o Needs feedback loop

§ Promote ideas to win badges, then you get more opportunities for promotion (game aspect)

o “Most influential people of the year” based on TED sites – who has the biggest following

o Called “Propagationism”

GDC 2011: Postmortem: Raid on Bungeling Bay

2011-03-16T13:40:00.002-04:00

Will Wright, Stupid Fun Club

- Bungeling Bay

o Will’s first game

o Didn’t consider himself a designer

o Took him 1 year of work (1 byte/minute – now 100 bytes/minute)

o Game came out in 1984

§ Same year as the first portable CD player

- 1980, Will was into robots and racing

o Bought a computer to help with working on robots

o It was the last time that one single person could fully understand the whole computer

o Played the game “Conway’s Life,” recreated it to learn coding

o When the Commodore 64 came out, decided to make a game for it (since it was new, so the game market wasn’t built up yet)

- Inspiration

o Loved helicopters

o Wanted to create an intricate clock like world. Wanted the world to be large enough to get lost in

o Commodore 64 allowed for screen to move seamlessly across several screens (before you just got what was on a single screen, but now you could have a bigger world)

- Created tools: Cedit (character editor) and Wedit (character and world editors)

o Wedit later became basis for Sim City

- Memory

o When working on programs, you knew where code was – it lived in a specific place in memory

o You would spend time hunting through code to find single bytes to add up

o Now he feels like a grandparent who lived through the Depression: “You’re using that many bytes?!”

- Systems

o Whole system of resources, war machine

§ Chain of resources moving from oil rigs -> ships -> tanks -> factories

§ People seemed to get some of it, but not all of it. Might have been better if showed resources actually moving?

- Progression

o As you got farther into the game, difficulty built. The escalation of difficulty doubled after each factory you destroyed

o You always go back to the aircraft carrier for repairs, you build a relationship with it

§ 2 factories into the game, bombers attack carrier. You have to protect it!

- “Bungeling Empire”

o Took game to Broderbund for publishing

o They wanted it to be explicit that you were not killing humans in the game, so they came up with the Bungeling Robot Empire

o They also were the bad guys in Choplifter and Logan’s Run

- Piracy

o Piracy was rampant

o Spent hours trying to protect games

o 20,00 units sold on Commodore 64

o 800,000 units sold when game went onto the NES (piracy!!)

- Evolved into Sim City – every version of Sim City has had helicopters (also Sim Copter)

- Surprised at how many fans have remade this game