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Keeping busy around the lab
Keeping busy around the lab
| Name: | Timothy Aste |  |
|---|---|---|
| Date Posted: | Nov 12, 2008 | |
| Rating: |  4.0 out of 5 | |
| Public: | YES | |
| Comments: | YES | |
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| Profile Page: | View profile page for Timothy Aste |
Blog post
About time for another .plan update, hope everyone has been doing well!
For those of you who don't read Make It Big in Games, Jeff Tunnell's industry blog, he posted a great article today about the "iterative design process" we are using over at Push Button Labs. The article is called "The Art of Backing Off". In the article he discusses one of our projects, a flash RTS we have been prototyping and how we started big and ended small:
I thought it would be cool to back up Jeff's story with a blog post of my own over on my website. The blog post contains a few images by both Todd Pickens and myself) that accompany what Jeff says about the various stages of the Flash RTS concept in his article.
Post-GG life has been busy, VERY busy actually! At the new shop we have a ton of cool things going on, and I am pumped for when we pull back the curtain on a lot of those things this winter. We recently put up our placeholder website, although there is not a lot of info there except for the basics most of you already know.
Sean Sullivan and Rick Overman have just put OnePress Community into it's first round of private testing. OPC is an extremely cool product which has been a blast to work on, and I think will help a lot of people. Not a lot has been said about OPC, but I don't want to jump the gun and steal any thunder of Sean or Rick's, so I'll leave that to another .plan from one of them. :)
In other news, Adam Larson and Ben Garney have been rocking out on the Push Button Engine and we expect to make a lot of progress on that this winter.
It's been extremely fun to work on so many different projects with the dudes around PBL. While I can't share much of what's been going on, rest assured I've been very productive lately. Since August, I've put out 15-20 pieces of concept work, about 10 pieces of functional game "prototype" art, and created 8 websites (among other things I've done a little contract work, a bunch of identity and branding, and other such things). I don't think anyone blogged about it, but a fun fact is we ended up renting out the lower floor of our old digs, the previous GarageGames office! It's kind of fun to be back in the place where we all started (well... half of us at least!).
In other news, I finished building the yurt that I blogged about recently! It was a pretty crazy process form start to finish, but we got it done. It's a 30' ft Pacific Yurt, and we even took the extra step to get it approved and up to code by Lane County, which was a huge, but necessary, pain in the ass. I need to finish some plumbing and wiring over the next two weeks, than I hope to be moved in! More photos can be found here, although oddly enough no picture of the finished product (woops, guess I was just too tired).
Hope to post more news from indie life and Push Button Labs soon!
For those of you who don't read Make It Big in Games, Jeff Tunnell's industry blog, he posted a great article today about the "iterative design process" we are using over at Push Button Labs. The article is called "The Art of Backing Off". In the article he discusses one of our projects, a flash RTS we have been prototyping and how we started big and ended small:
Quote:- From The Art of Backing Off
As a producer you have to be open to reducing your expectations. Your customers only know what the end result is, not what you were thinking anywhere along the development process. I think it is always best to start with an idea that has a lot of room for expansion, then cut it back as development progresses.
I thought it would be cool to back up Jeff's story with a blog post of my own over on my website. The blog post contains a few images by both Todd Pickens and myself) that accompany what Jeff says about the various stages of the Flash RTS concept in his article.
Post-GG life has been busy, VERY busy actually! At the new shop we have a ton of cool things going on, and I am pumped for when we pull back the curtain on a lot of those things this winter. We recently put up our placeholder website, although there is not a lot of info there except for the basics most of you already know.
Sean Sullivan and Rick Overman have just put OnePress Community into it's first round of private testing. OPC is an extremely cool product which has been a blast to work on, and I think will help a lot of people. Not a lot has been said about OPC, but I don't want to jump the gun and steal any thunder of Sean or Rick's, so I'll leave that to another .plan from one of them. :)
In other news, Adam Larson and Ben Garney have been rocking out on the Push Button Engine and we expect to make a lot of progress on that this winter.
It's been extremely fun to work on so many different projects with the dudes around PBL. While I can't share much of what's been going on, rest assured I've been very productive lately. Since August, I've put out 15-20 pieces of concept work, about 10 pieces of functional game "prototype" art, and created 8 websites (among other things I've done a little contract work, a bunch of identity and branding, and other such things). I don't think anyone blogged about it, but a fun fact is we ended up renting out the lower floor of our old digs, the previous GarageGames office! It's kind of fun to be back in the place where we all started (well... half of us at least!).
In other news, I finished building the yurt that I blogged about recently! It was a pretty crazy process form start to finish, but we got it done. It's a 30' ft Pacific Yurt, and we even took the extra step to get it approved and up to code by Lane County, which was a huge, but necessary, pain in the ass. I need to finish some plumbing and wiring over the next two weeks, than I hope to be moved in! More photos can be found here, although oddly enough no picture of the finished product (woops, guess I was just too tired).
Hope to post more news from indie life and Push Button Labs soon!
Recent Blog Posts
| List: | 11/12/08 - Keeping busy around the lab 07/25/08 - Open Horizons! 03/04/08 - Legions @ GDC 09/20/07 - Video from GDC 03/02/07 - Art blog 01/04/07 - Products, Holidays, Job Opening, GGE Winners! 12/12/06 - GGE Contest Extension! 12/07/06 - Win even *more* Free Stuff |
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Submit your own resources!| Josh Engebretson (Nov 12, 2008 at 06:04 GMT) |
A great indicator of talent is making cool stuff look easy... you guys seem to have that covered so far :)
| Ben Garney (Nov 12, 2008 at 06:08 GMT) |
| Jay Barnson (Nov 12, 2008 at 06:10 GMT) |
| Josh Engebretson (Nov 12, 2008 at 06:26 GMT) |
Seriously, love the direction you guys look to be headed in. I am excited to see Flash pushed hard by some real game developers! Of course, the social networking angle will be interesting to see too... more blogs!
| Ben Garney (Nov 12, 2008 at 07:56 GMT) |
| Dave Young (Nov 12, 2008 at 13:03 GMT) |
I've started to get deeper with Flash game development too, and I took a full time job this week as a game dev over at Lycos Gamesville. I've been way surprised at the improvements in Flash since 2005. They are all about casual games here but I definitely see major potential for Flash to be a major player in larger games too especially using Flex/Air and some of the cool 3rd party APIs out there like Flint and Away or Papervision.
Exciting times!
| Todd Pickens (Nov 12, 2008 at 17:04 GMT) |
PBL is a creative powerhouse, I see good things ahead :O)
| Timothy Aste (Nov 12, 2008 at 18:18 GMT) |
| Michael Perry (Nov 12, 2008 at 18:49 GMT) |
| Edward (Nov 12, 2008 at 20:58 GMT) |
| Jeff Tunnell (Nov 12, 2008 at 22:15 GMT) |
Seriously though, we are having a blast at PBL. I can't wait for you all to see what we are turning out.
-Jeff Tunnell
| Leroy Frederick (Nov 12, 2008 at 23:31 GMT) Resource Rating: 5 |
Interesting post as ever Jeff! I've had to do similar with some flash projects too, I tend to overblow my ideas too much so I'm trying to improve my KISS'ing technique so to speak (Keep It Simply Silly).
I'm finding it easier since upgrading to CS4 (some really nice improvements in the workflow), so I guess we'll see how it goes. Anyhow, looking forward to seeing what you guys come out with!
Oh, while were talking Flash, thought I'd give a game a special mention to an indie flash adventure game that at least for me is in the list of games that push the envelope of what flash is (at least deemed to be) capable of: www.somethingamiss.com/
Edited on Nov 12, 2008 23:31 GMT
| Mike Rowley (Nov 13, 2008 at 00:24 GMT) |
Now to go check out that website. :-)
| Adam deGrandis (Nov 13, 2008 at 04:27 GMT) |
| Ken Finney (Nov 21, 2008 at 19:45 GMT) |
Edited on Nov 21, 2008 19:46 GMT
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