Thursday, April 14, 2011

Mid-April Updates! (Game Development/EPIC/BETACinema)



Hello, blog readers!

Spring's in full-swing and I've been working on several different projects. I'll go into them in more detail a little later, but it has been causing me to get into some random inspirations at random times in the middle of the night. (Probably inspiring the tone of this blog entry, too.)

I've been reading this book almost non-stop (whenever I get some free time at least).


It's called "Introduction to Game Development" by Steve Rabin. Rabin has 10 years of game development and currently works at Nintendo, and also contains various publications and contributions from several people in the IGDA (which I'm also a member of.) It's actually a good read if you're interested in the game industry. (And it's a thick book, don't let the picture fool you. It's about 900 pages.) Believe it or not, it was the textbook we were required to get for my Game Design course we took last year, but the professor hardly used it. He didn't seem to know much about games in general, but this book was still a good buy, even if I'm just now reading it six months after I took the course.

(I ended up getting an "A" in that class, in any case.)

The book seems to understand what I want to do, even if most people do not. Most people seem to get the misconception that I want to do game programming and/or video game 3D modeling and what not, and don't really understand the true meaning of what exactly I want to do with my dream career.

I want to be a game designer. The one that makes the rules of the game, the one who comes up with intricate level design, and/or directs the progression of the project. A game designer can be programmer, and most do start as that, but I'm really not one to sit there typing lines of code, it would drive me nuts after a while. (Well, I'm not exactly the patient type.)

Not that I sit there and think programming is boring. (It's not.) It's just not something I would want to do a full-time career in for the rest of my life. I have a lot of leadership qualities and creativity, and I'd rather actually put those into motion as a designer or engineer rather than be the programmers behind it. Programming is a logical talent, design requires a lot of different talents. More of a "jack-of-all-trades", if you will. Even reading through said book (above) in great detail, I've learned an equal amount of computer science, psychology, and statistics.


Anyway, going off of that tangent, onto progress on projects!

"Codename: EPIC"

My own game projects have been appearing in my dreams too, it's been weird. I've been so engrossed in getting this game project progressed, and I'm very inspired to keep working on it. (Probably much to the disgust of the team, which has to endure my random thoughts, posts, and screen-shots on a constant basis. Sorry, guys!)

However, I still don't feel that any of the work I (or any of the team) has done on the project is worth showing to the public. Not yet, at least. I want to have at least one big picture of the project to show by the end of next month.

Here's a pic of the world map (in development):




World Map designs. I've spent most of this week coming up with a decent flow of the game, testing out possible things the player may enjoy, and getting it to be enjoyable. But on the other hand, I have a bad tendency to make things WAY too easy for the player, and I'm glad I have Jon to call me out on it.

I'm hoping to have a playable demo of one part of chapter 1 done by the end of the summer and all of chapter 1 done by the end of this year. That's the goal, at least. There is a lot of work to be done.

Still need a permanent monster designer and someone to do trailers and promotional work. I'm talking with several different people, but I'm trying to look for someone who'd be more willing to contribute and get a share of the project rather than ask for a flat fee. That's not exactly easy to find, you know.


BETACinema:

Three new skits are coming: The Tube Skit, the Internet Skit, and the Math skit. I don't know what order these are coming in, though. The Math Skit was originally supposed to be finish on April 1st, but we had some postponements getting some of the scenes, so that will be posted in early May.

I'll have to get on Ryan's case for finishing the others since we have the footage for that.

I also need to get working on AdSense...

So much to do, so little time!





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