| (no subject) |
[Mar. 15th, 2009|01:16 pm]
rtf
|
Work is quite boring at the moment. Life was considerably more exciting when I was unemployed. I took a 20% cut and pay is coming in way late now because the publisher is a bunch of fuckups and don't know what they want in their game, so they've basically made both projects we're doing with them trainwrecks that are many weeks behind schedule. It doesn't help that we have a certain strict licensor and are contractually not allowed to directly communicate with them, instead we have to go through the publisher.
Fortunately, I've managed to get to the point where the workload isn't crushing me and some end is in sight, at least on one of the projects. The other one needs a complete retuning of AIs because a bug was causing the player to update twice a frame and thus fight way faster, and I did the first pass not knowing this. So the game is really, really hard at the moment. But at least the layouts aren't doing too badly. The procedural generation approach I took made that go so much smoother.
The directors are pinning all their hopes on GDC getting them new gigs. We acquired the license to Chronotron and are going to try to get a publisher to fund a console version of that(probably NDS). From there we might actually have a shot at self-publishing some downloadable ports. It's quite exciting and the game's author is a Real Person who is obviously quite into time-travel concepts and gave us a lot of ideas to work off of to expand the game. Totally different from the typical developer-publisher experience. We had to come up with pitch concepts for a Michael Phelps game the other day. To give you an idea of how painful this was:
http://www.swimroom.com/phelps
Personal Description :
Interests:
Favorite Quotes: Actions speak louder than words
Organizations: Boys and Girls Club
Honors and Awards: 8 medals in the 2004 Olympics
Favorite music: The Fray, Rap music
Famous Swimmers I'd Like To Meet:
Hero(s): Michael Jordan, my mom
Favorite Books: Taking Down the House
Personal Website: www.swimroom.com/phelps
Favorite Websites: www.swimwiththestars.com
This is one blank slate of a man. There is no game hook other than "he swims really fast and takes bong hits in the evening." Which, if they actually let us make an absurd game where half of the time he's stoned, would be awesome and a lot of fun and people would want to play it. But that will probably not happen. So it will be just "he swims really fast."
In more personal matters, my diet now looks approximately like this:
Morning: An Odwalla, maybe, or more likely oatmeal with wnuts and dried fruits.
Lunch: Noodles(not ramen) or possibly eat out
Evening: Black beans, chicken, salad. Or a shredded chicken burrito. Sugary stuff to be avoided.
Snacks: Mixed unsalted nuts, milk, tea
When I can, I'm getting organic stuff as well. There is substantial evidence pointing to the stuff I'm eating(natural/whole/organic foods in general) being more nutritious than what's processed and refined. I pay more for it, and a lot of it tastes quite plain, but I'm mostly paying attention to how I feel after the meal. If I feel nothing at all(no hunger, no tummy-aches, no sleepiness), I consider it a success.
I also started getting on the stationary bike with armrests at the gym and playing DS while on it for 30 minutes+. That works really well, I'm usually wanting to play longer when my time is up, where without the games I'm just bored.
I've been focusing a lot on a personal project to fill my spare time. It's titled Ludamix and I've basically been developing the concepts - games, open-source, amateur development, developer communities - as I go. Gradually I've honed in on specific things to work on, and am coming to realize that the best thing I can do to build the community I want is to make an awesome game that the community can build off of. I expect it to be playable/fun sometime around the summer months, probably. Maybe earlier. We shall see.
And I'm listening to a lot of Tangerine Dream again.
|
|
