Tag Archives: future

“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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E3 2015 – A Review From A Little Indie’s Perspective

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E3 seems bigger this year. Maybe it’s because of Bethesda and Square Enix entering the fray, joining Ubisoft, EA, and of course Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo (and PC?) to try to convince you why they are the company to look at.

This is all a further sign of modern times both in industry and culture, how everyone is trying to not only be in the spotlight but steal the spotlight entirely for themselves. Such selfish people. I’m just as guilty: if I had games that stood out like that, I’d be trying to steal the show too (my current games “Drew and the Floating Labyrinth” and “Unfinished – An Artist’s Lament” are not even close to worthy… although if you haven’t yet seen those hand-drawn 3D games, do take a look). All the same, I ended up being more pumped then ever this year, with this many groups and now years into the current generation, surely everyone had something to show. Even Youtube had it on their homepage logo, advertising their new game-streaming service, helping ensure millions could comfortably watch it all (although I had some unusual slow down times in streaming, maybe even Youtube can’t handle that many viewers at once).

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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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Announcing My New Project: Unfinished

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Sometime in January, I made a post that said…

 “I will have gameplay finished by April 2015, or so help me God I will shut down this site and my gamedev career forever!”

Well, April is almost over, and I’m announcing my next game project just in time. It feels appropriate that it happens to be “Unfinished.”

“Unfinished – An Artist’s Lament” is a hand-sketched 3D adventure game for Windows, Mac and Linux.  Control Sketch, an unfinished sketch wishing to know who it was supposed to be. The only clue is to follow a pencil that continues to draw in the distance, followed by an artist’s voice as he struggles to complete his work. To reach new areas, Sketch will find left-over drawings to use for new abilities throughout the journey. Featuring traditional animation in a 3D environment, a personal story, and an environment filled with scattered concept art by the developers from various projects. More information on http://unfinished.fromdustscratch.com .

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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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