Category Archives: Fun and Opinion

Blogging for the point of blogging.

Behind On Blog Posts…

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(just a note to myself of blog posts I want to make this summer)
– E3 2015 review
– “Drew and the Floating Labyrinth”, one-year retrospective
– Developer site stores in review (experience applying and using Steam, Desura, IndieGameStand, GOG, IndieRoyale, Groupees, and more)
– Indie Developer conventions in Ontario
– More posts about “Unfinished – An Artist’s Lament”, including new trailers and game demo (unfinished.fromdustscratch.com)
– (plus, see “Unfinished” at ConBravo 2015!)
– comments about game pricing
– post about how awesome “Gardenarium” is (http://www.ko-opmode.com/gardenarium)
– links to talks and presentations about animation process used in my games
– brief review of school research

 

 

 

 

Good Leadership

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For the last few years, I was a (semi) active member of my school’s game development club. Last year, it was almost disbanded due to a lack of members, which was due to a lack of a leader. I stepped in at the last minute, but missed opportunities ensured no one knew we existed that year. Thankfully, a new group of friends were much more involved the following term and invested in taking the club in a new direction.

Having been a “leader” for this club for a short time, another student one day asked me how to get friends involved and invested in working on a team project. It was a general question that could be used for club leaders, class projects, or general fun stuff to do with your friends or family. If you have a project to finish, and are able to get other people to join your “team,” how can you get them to contribute and get excited in the project as much as you are? Having been a poor club leader, I had no real answers. It didn’t help that people in my area happen to be very laid-back and uninvested in general (whether this has to do with being Canadian, being from Windsor, or being from my lazy generation, I may never know). But after seeing a handful of ambitious students struggle to encourage involvement, including my own experiences, I think I see several cases where people have gone wrong. I hope this post helps guide wannabe directors and leaders in the right direction. Keep in mind that there are thousands of other good website posts that also state similar advice (see wikihow or google), but mine comes from my personal experience as an indie game developer and as a student, even though it can likely be applied elsewhere for project-based work.

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The Revolution Is Here, The Internet Is Not Ready

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It’s been some time since I ranted about something. So I’ll talk about an old topic.

Assassin’s Creed: Unity came out a couple months ago. Note that they didn’t call it AC 5, even though it is probably more worthy of the number than AC 4 was. I haven’t played the game, so keep that in mind that I can’t speak much to whether or not the game is fun (although it received good review scores, yet lower than any AC game). A part of me laughs when I hear how it’s the first new-generation AC game and how it uses new advanced AI, which really only means larger crowds and means nothing for actual AI. Anyway…

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An Update From Your Friendly Neighbourhood Gamedev

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I should write more posts. Especially this month, there have been a ton of new announcements.

Those video game awards 2014 were cool, although the only big announcement I got from it was that Nintendo’s new Zelda for Wii U is worth buying a Wii U for and that Nintendo might best Sony and Microsoft in 2015. Sony’s new PSX happened, and a few cool demos came from it. Street Fighter V is PS4/PC exclusive, and doesn’t look that great, albeit it looks like what SF IV should have looked like, instead of those awkward jagged poly-models everyone said looked incredible. New game “Drawn to Death” looks like good fun, but it tries to mimic pen-drawings with computer models and cel-shading again. Similarly, that new Guilty Gear game is out this month, and also uses 3d models instead of painted 2d ones.

I mention those last few games because I can’t help but feel disappointed. They would all have looked better if they utilized styles similar to my work, where you literally use hand-drawn sprites/cels in 3d environments.

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November’s Over Already?

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Wow, time flies. And to think, I planned to give a brief teaser of what games I was working on for November 1… even now, I’m not at where I wanted to be with that. I guess I have a fair excuse: research projects and marking lower classes as a University student has kept me busy, and I may be the new programmer for another indie developer’s game due early in 2015 (more on that later). But darn, I really hope I can get back into my own projects soon. Expect fewer and fewer blog posts until I have more progress.

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