Tag Archives: frustration

“Unfinished – An Artist’s Lament” is coming August 4, 2015 (so here’s what it’s about)!

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“Unfinished – An Artist’s Lament” was originally planned for a release on July 31, 2015 as of two weeks ago. I wasn’t certain I could keep this release date, so I didn’t advertise it too much… sure enough, animating the ending cutscene and adding certain features took a bit longer than I hoped. The current build was finished on July 31, but I moved the release date to Tuesday, August 4 to give the stores some time to prepare. Steam and IndieGameStand will host the game, and hopefully so will MacGameStore and WinGameStore.

To prepare you, this post provides a detailed rundown of the background of the game, from development to now, to guide you as to what to expect. I hope it helps.

"Unfinished - An Artist's Lament" is now finished!

“Unfinished – An Artist’s Lament” is now finished!

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“Unfinished – An Artist’s Lament” Could Use Your Help To Be Finished!

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Stage Select Expo 2015 in Toronto this week was good fun, met some great people. It’s one of the only game-centric events in Ontario, it’s a shame it doesn’t get more support from local gamers and developers.

If you happened to see me at Stage Select, you’ll have heard my proposition, which I make open here. Give me an unfinished work of art, a drawing or sketch, and I will include it in the background environment of “Unfinished – An Artist’s Lament.” Additionally, as a thank you, I will add your name to the credits AND give you a free copy of the game as thanks.

“Unfinished – An Artist’s Lament” is a small game about creativity, identity, purpose, and difficulties all artists face trying to finish a piece of work. You play Sketch, a unnamed doodle of a stick figure. Knowing you could be so much more and seeing the artist’s pencil continuing to draw in the distance, you follow after it, hoping to be finished one day to understand who you were meant to be. The game features a 2D hand-drawn character in 3D space, extending the use of “3D Cel Animation” as used “Drew and the Floating Labyrinth.”

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Desura Late Payments – A Comment From A Thankful Developer

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If you follow indie-developer news lately, you probably noticed since late 2014 that Desura, a online store prominent for small indie games, has been late to pay many developers. I was one of those developers waiting to get paid, although I did eventually receive what I was owed in January 2015. The only reason I post this now is that I feel some responsibility… several game news-sites have only recently started writing stories about Desura’s excuses, and most have specifically referenced a reddit page I made asking if this was a common problem.

The reason I bring this up is that I’m scarred. Legally, developers that have waited months for their owed payments have a case to sue Desura if they wanted to, but doing this type of action always seemed petty and out of anger and spite to me (America has a reputation of treating suing someone as a business rather than a legal action). I don’t think it’s worth the effort. I don’t think it’s worth the pain.

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GDC 2015 – Unreal Engine 4 VS Unity 5

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I shouldn’t be spending time writing more blog posts, but this was a big week for game developers big and small. GDC (Game Developer’s Conference) had some great announcements.

Oculus Rift still doesn’t have a set release date, although most sites state it will formally release before the end of 2015. And it better… plenty of competitors from Sony, HTC, and others are racing to beat it, and will release early 2016. I’m still excited for the opportunities of VR.

NVIDIA announced the greatest thing ever: an Android TV. Like the ones we’ve had for the last five years. Except it’s slightly higher quality, and they are using a high-powered mobile chip to encourage developers to port their last-gen games to Android with the new box. More importantly, they’ve announced a sort-of Netflix for films, which again kind of existed but still has opportunity for improvement. Imagine streaming games at high-quality purely based on your Internet connection rather than your computer’s own graphics card. The thing is, my mid-range-graphics card is much better than any Internet connection in my town. Regardless, I hope it works.

More importantly, Unreal Engine 4 is now outright free. It was already cheap at $19 a month (with an easy-to-quit subscription, so it was basically $19 for the whole engine), but now there’s no excuse to not give it a try. The only barrier is that standard percentage after you make more than $3000 profit. Also, a few weeks ago they announced a new grant program to give money to small developers to use their engine. At a time when Unity 5 and Source 2 are also released, it’s hard to say that Unreal isn’t worth at least looking at.

So I looked at it. As a experienced Unity developer, did I like Unreal? Well…

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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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