Link to: Cool Story, Bro: Impending Changes

coolstorybrogame:

Lol it took everything I had not to write “Impending Doom”. XD

Well we have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that Bob recently went through the application process and was hired to a major game studio. He starts in January! Friends and family already know more about this, but…

This is a tough break. I have run into a very similar situation where I wasn’t able to work on a project because I was employed at Flagship Studios (we made Hellgate: London and Mythos). The worst part was the project was finally out of the “design doc” phase and had a basic build with a single weapon and basic client/server multiplayer working. One of these days, I swear, I’ll relaunch my project “Einherjar” :)

Recently (within the last few months) I’ve been working on various prototype “features” for the games that I work on or something related to those games. However, not long ago I made a pretty rad app for Android (and can easily be ported to iPhone). I want to share some with the people who are out there and are curious enough to click the links.

For Superhero City, a facebook RPG game I work on, I prototyped a new mission system that I hope we will implement in some fashion. Check it out HERE. Basically, our game is about Superheroes, but we don’t have enough comic book inspired features. My redesigned mission system is essentially a comic book that unlocks as you progress through the story by doing “missions.” After showing a few coworkers and getting a lot of feedback, I’m pretty optimistic that we will eventually do this :) I know our Artists would love to make a full on comic book instead of just small tiles to represent parts of the story.

For Age of Immortals, a game we made for SyFy games, I started work on a new forum redesign; which will be adopted by all of our games eventually. Check it out HERE. This was a pretty quick mock up and the conversion to vBulletin 4 theme is going pretty well. The reason I started this project was simply because our existing forums were very rushed and weren’t done very well (I made them, they’re awful and I’m embarrassed by them). Hopefully this new design and layout will breathe new life into our forums and help them grow to be even more popular.

I also started working on a webpage for my brother. He’s helping start a business, so I thought I’d give him a hand with a nice wordpress theme so he can manage news posts and various information with ease :) I’ll post links when it’s announced.

The other day a coworker of mine poked me about doing some mockups for one of our games that we have put on hold, Starship Command. By hold I mean it’s still up and running, we’re just not developing new features or maintaining the code. Anyway, he asked me to mock up a carousel to look like it’s rotating in 3D. So I whipped THIS ugly thing together in a very short time (there’s an interesting bug/feature). The plan for it is to have our player’s choose which account they want to play on (we allow multiple accounts per facebook account) in a nice sexy interface. Currently it looks like cards layed out next to each other, which isn’t bad, but it isn’t sexy either :)

I think, after all of this, I’m going to start work on a design document for a Facebook RPG involving faction territory wars. We’ll see, just an idea rolling around in my head. I really love designing games and then prototyping the user experience in jQuery, not sure why it’s so enjoyable.

Well I’m incredibly tired, good night everyone.

$(me).fadeOut();

muffintrap: Ohai there and thanks for following my tiny blog. I see you live in Sacramento! Did you happen to take part in NaNoWriMo this year? And super nice to see other game dev people here on tumblr :D

I did not participate in NaNoWriMo because I’m not much of a writer :) My creative sparks are spent on various game designs, feature implementations for existing games (mostly the ones I work on at work) or helping other people by making tools and stuff to improve their job/hobby.

originalcontentparadox: Welll.. that is what happens ... I don't want to add to your fear, but I used to be quite skilled at C++. I have forgotten a lot of it's syntax. Python is a pretty language ^-^'. I prefer RPGs ... and as for games I'm working on now ... like it states on my blog ... I I was working on the "blueprint" for a game called Time Assassin, but realized that with some modification and about a month of extra planning/etc... I could combine that with a previous idea of mine,in short a sci-fi RPG ^-^''

Haha, awesome. I’ll continue to avoid Python for as long as I can! Sci-Fi RPG eh? Sounds like fun :)

katleroux: So, I heard your girlfriend is pretty hot. Is this true?

Yep. Definitely. Mhmmm!

originalcontentparadox: Hi... me again ... if you don't mind me asking ... what kind of games do you make in your free-time ... any particular genre you prefer making ... and what language do you use. I'm more comfortable using Python, but am known to use others such as C++, Actionscript 2.0 or PHP if I think it's necessary.

I don’t really have a specific genre of game that I make in my free time, but Platformers are always fun and pretty much every language can make them :) I never got into Flash, but lately I haven’t been making any games since I’m working a lot. Currently I just stick to writing design documents for our games or coming up with new games and pitching them to people at my company.

When it comes to languages, I can’t say I favor a single one. If I’m making a web game, I use PHP for the frontend and backend, but if I’m making a game with a compiled language it would have to be C++. I haven’t dabbled in too many different languages and I’m terrified of Python. I have this fear that if I start using Python, I’ll forget the syntax for every other language because of how beautiful it is to read hehehe

How about you, what kind of games do you make in your free-time and also are you working on any right now? I’d love to hear more about them!

kr-studios: Um... Hi. Thanks for following me. Also, do you really work for BioWare? I was just wondering what the whole BioWare "Social" is about.

A company that I have been working for since early 2010, KlickNation, was acquired by EA/BioWare on Dec 1st of this year. We make facebook games under the BioWare name now and have combined our studio of 70 people with the existing BioWare San Francisco studio that had about 30 employees. We are now known as “BioWare Social” and have a strong focus on making quality facebook games.

So ya, I do work for BioWare now, which I still haven’t gotten used to saying. Today is my 5th day as a BioWare employee and it’s been great so far haha.

originalcontentparadox: Well... I live in Iceland. The gaming market here is rather big for a country with a population of 300k. With companies like CCP(creators of Eve Online) & Dexoris(created a bunch of award winning iphone games) continuing to thrive. There's defiantly job possibilities here. That John Carmack sounds like a visionary and that quote surely is inspirational. I actually am right now heading into the last exam of the college I'm in ... I'm transfering to the Creative & Technical institute of Iceland :)

That’s fantastic :) CCP throws an epic party at GDC every year. It was great to meet you and I definitely look forward to talking to you some more. Best of luck on your exam!