Celebration time! My massive animation project is finished! More or less. But the three months of working 14 hour days 7 days a week are over, so I have my life back! Woooooo
Finally I can get back to gamedev – Two and Sentinel have been gathering dust for the last few months, and I’m excited about finishing them up and actually releasing something worthwhile for people to play, but I’m also really happy to have the time to actually play games again. I played Minecraft for the first time in about four months yesterday, I’ll briefly sum up my experience:
* What are all these extra status bars for? Food? That’s interesting.
* A village! Saves me having to make a house.
* Huh, food doesn’t seem to heal you any more. Oh right, health regenerates when you’ve filled up your food bar. Nice.
* Massive cave! Some sort of giant underground ravine, that’s new.
* Are those torches down there? And some sort of wooden structure?
* An abandoned mineshaft! Brilliant!
* I don’t remember spiders being blue.
* POISONED! OH NO
* Aha, a spider spawner. I SHALL DESTROY IT
* Oh right yeah I can’t instantly heal myself any more. ARGH SPIDERS STOP BITING ME
* DEAD
Next on my list are Bastion, the Stanley Parable, all those fanmade levels for VVVVVV, and I’ve ordered Xenoblade, which I’m very much looking forward to. Also, when I started my big animation project I abandoned poor Vin Diesel about to assault the Dark Athena for about the 19th time, I should probably go back and help him out. If I can stand the fact that all the dialogue seems to have been written by a very angry sexually frustrated 15 year old.
Anyway, gamedev: It’s all a bit overwhelming right now, and I’m not sure where I should start. Two is the shorter game, but Sentinel is further along. I just want to finish something as quickly as I can, maybe I should do a quick three-week game just to get back into the swing of things? or maybe I should work on the upgraded version of Rocket Storm? Choices!
It’s good to be back! Hooray!
That is pretty much my experience with 1.8 as well, that and farming at least.
How did the animation thing turn out, any word on when will we get to see the finished product (I really liked the original)?
How is Assault the Dark Athena? I loved the original and Vin Diesel in general but never got around to plaything the sequel.
The animation turned out pretty good – much better than the original version, anyway. it’s in the hands of the production company now, hopefully they’ll manage to sell it to a TV station by Christmas and then we’ll all win loads of oscars.
Dark Athena is good – showing its age a bit, and the melee combat bits seem rather clumsy after having played Zeno Clash, but it all hangs together pretty well – it’s pretty much like a more polished version of Butcher Bay, only without the tedious fetch-quest hub levels sections. Suffers from the same bizarre episodic nature as the original though; it often feels like different chapters were made by completely different teams, which can be quite jarring – spend four hours learning how to sneak through shadows and assassinate guards silently, then suddenly the game decides it wants to be Halo and throws away all the skills you’ve just mastered. The only major issue I have though is the dialogue. It’s all acted well enough, but it’s pretty embarrassing stuff. I’m sure the developers were aiming for morally repugnant space mercenaries, but it just sounds like angry teenagers trying to impress each other by swearing loads.
Great, so maybe now you’ll answer these old emails piled up on your gmail account?…
That is entirely possible – really sorry if I’ve ignored anyone; I’m pretty terrible at emails even at the best of times, so my inbox never stood a chance over the last few months. I’ll try to get back to everyone who emailed me, I promise!
Great!
There are two thingsI sent in: ilnk to article on selling Flash games (I really want to see that Death Chase like game one day) and the other one would be the interview request (well, rather a plea actually).
If you have time, of course. Oh, and I might have forgotten to mention, but Small Worlds is extremely cool.