Indie Madness

Blobyrinth is in “Beta” testing, which is most fun.  I’m quickly narrowing down our system requirements for running the game to “The Computer That Blobyrinth was Developed on”.  There are many bugs… some of which I introduced at the time of wrapping up the final beta release, so I’ve got to fix that up ASAP so I can get more useful feedback.

Plugging away, fixing things that are broken, and marching toward (eventual) release.  Good times.

All kinds of many thanks are due to those playing the release and helping to sort out the bugs and system requirements. 

-Tim

So.

If you were at GDC, you may’ve run across one of these things in the form of a business card.  I was spamming pretty heavily, I’ll admit.  If you saw one of these, you may’ve also noticed that there is no contact info on the card… just that image with a Ghost Ship logo on the other side.  This was deliberate, if a bit silly.  In retrospect, I should have left off the Ghost Ship logo and just left it as an odd cartoon for folks to ponder… ah well… live and learn.

I left these (and others like ‘em) out there for people to be curious about.  Blobyrinth is shaping up to be a curious game, and the type of person who would google a name to find out what the hell this was about is our type of person.  It even gets sillier (word?) from there.  Santa Claus is involved, if you must know.

The development cycle of Blobyrinth has taught me a lot of things… and frankly it should have been completed months and months ago.  Now it is finally drawing to a close.  Those four of you who have watched since the days of the “Maze of Meatwads” screenshots will be happy to know that the game will be unveiled on www.ghostshipstudios.com in April.  Some time after that it will be available on www.garagegames.com, since the kindly folks over there have agreed to publish us, despite our silliness.  Is there a market for an arcade puzzler with a (seriously) bad Walken impersonation in cutscenes that make no bloody sense at all?  Is there?  We shall see.  If anything, it’ll be fun to watch once it’s out there floating on the internets.

Finishing touches… the time is almost here.  Then we get to see where the Ghost Ship sets sail for next…

 -Tim

Well another GDC has come and gone, and I for one had a fantastic time attending it.

My highlights:

• Got to meet Peter Molyneux, who is pretty brilliant.

• Got to meet Jenova Chen, who is also brilliant.
• Got to meet Tom Hall, who is also also brilliant.
• Spilled a bit of whiskey on the last of the above three.  He didn’t seem to mind.
• Got to be a Conference Associate again, which was a good time.  I highly recommend it!
• Roomed with people I didn’t know, which means I got to meet more people!  Tim, Shannon, and Dave — you guys rocked.

 

Some cool things that had little to do with GDC:

• Ran into Frank Chu, possibly the coolest San Franciscan since Norton I.

• Visited the grave of Norton I, Emperor of the United States, and Protector of Mexico.

 

I guess that about sums it up.  I’ll be posting again soon about Blobyrinth, and after that a completely new topic!  I’m starting up another website… for Mythology nerds. 

 Until then,

 -Tim

Long time no update.  I won’t bore you with the details… yet.   

What I need to talk about for the moment is this thing — Torsion 

I don’t really know why or how I managed to script in Torquescript for so long before finding this nice little IDE, but let me just say that it is a beautiful thing.  Up until tonight, I’ve been using jedit with a plugin for the syntax particular to Torque Rinds (my happy pet name for torque scripts) — but I might as well have been using notepad.  Syntax coloring is pretty special, don’t get me wrong… but now I’ve got all my favorite features from Microsoft Visual Studio; Most importantly, I’ve got Intellisense and the ability to step through the script while it’s running to debug.  Also you can double click on any error messages in your output stream and it pops you right over to the line of code it came from.  There’s even a call stack. 

This is a lovely bit of software.

Thank you, Sickhead Games, for creating such a thing.

Well Blobyrinth is still rolling… slowly as usual but gunning for completion.  Pretty much all that’s left is menus, map screen, and cutscenes.

 

The minigames that’ll be included in the game’s in-game arcade (and playable on the website) will be (similar to) PacMan, Asteroids, Space Invaders, Frogger, and Spy Hunter.  Hopefully there’ll be some reasonable competition for high score in these classic remakes (free games = good). 

 In other news, I added midi support (for windows) to T2D, which was quite easy and fun.  If anyone knows a good cross-platform midi file player library let me know, because as it stands I’m going to have to redo that when I get to the Mac port.  Also, if anyone knows how to change the volume level with hardware midi (when using DirectSound) in a robust way that supports different hardware, let me know that too, because that part is confusing the bajeesus outta me.

Bloby’s almost done… I just gotta get back to work and do it.  GTD don’t fail me now!  Tune in next time (I’ll be blogging more often I swear)…

 -Tim

Well Blobyrinth is coming along… it keeps growing and getting stranger and more … interesting.

Anyway — Got everything needed for the “Ice Zone” completed… but since level design hasn’t begun yet, there I’ll just give you a few snippets out of the Leafy Lowlands and the Volcanoish Zone…

That’s it for now… gotta work more.

-Tim

OK So we completely missed our March 1st deadline…

I won’t pretend it’s because Blobyrinth has become an MMORTSFPSRPG… It really isn’t so complicated a game — I just overestimated the time that I could put into its development. The game has had some added complexities, but nothing that should require hiring ten developers. I’ll be headed to GDC without so much as a playable demo, but that’s OK in my book… GDC isn’t really the place for showing demos anyway (unless you’ve got a booth… look out for us at GDC 2008!)

At any rate, I’m now piecing together a placeholder site (something for those who get one of my business cards to look at), and sometime after Bloby ships I’ll be enlisting professional aid in our website’s construction… (best to leave these things to those who are truly talented at it).

I’ve got business cards (a GDC must) now… which makes me … erm… super professional, and stuff.

I’m going to try to fill this blog with the highlights of GDC madness, so check back often during the conference, as I’m sure there’ll be tales to tell — and look for Blobyrinth to be available within the month after GDC is over. (for real this time, too.)

News on the GDC front — my application to be a Conference Associate has been accepted! I’m beyond excited — there is no way I could’ve afforded to purchase a Giga Pass for this year’s GDC. A tip for those applying — don’t take the essay too seriously.

In other news, I’m writing this from my fancy new baby Mac Mini, which I’ve just purchased for porting Blobyrinth to Mac in the near future. Yay for… Safari… and “Dock”… and stuff. pff. Mac. I love this keyboard though… so very smooth compared to my old PC one… so velvety super smooth.

In other other news, I’m honored and pleased to say that Mr. Michael Huang has just agreed to take on the task during the month of February to create the musical stylings behind Blobyrinth. I have every confidence that his touch will only make Bloby a better game than it would’ve been otherwise.

In other other other news, my partner and I have now signed our Articles of Incorporation — Ghost Ship Studios, Inc. has become an official entity. You games-related folks will likely see us as Ghost Ship Games, which is a registered trademark of Ghost Ship Studios… Had to leave ourselves open for non-game business… you know how it is.

In other othe… anyway — I’ve got to get back to working on AI scripts for contract stuff, before my compatriots on that task have my head on a stick. The up-down and the left-right are ok… but the snake… the snake is not ok. NOT ok.

Cheers from the land of the cheerful.

-Tim