Humvees, education, wrongful death, and time machines

Hey all. Quite a lot has gone on since the last time I posted a plan (which was back in October). Rather than just go off on a long winded rant about everything, here's everything in a nice, easy to read, quasi bulleted list.

Marble Blast

So the biggest thing of late is Marble Blast has shipped and doing quite well, both in terms of sales and player happiness. This is great and somewhat unexpected. Towards the end of development, the normal frustration that comes from combining creative processes with deadlines was rearing its head. I got pretty burned out by the time we wrapped things up. But then I went back east for the holidays, had some time to collect myself, and returned only a couple weeks before we got the message that Marble Blast passed cert.

Having that time away was just what I needed. Im able to look at the game objectively now that the old dust has settled. It's still not a game Im ever really "in the mood for" - frankly I suck really hard at it - but its something that a lot of people are in the mood for. Being able to make things that make people happy is one of the main reasons I love working in this industry, so blam blam, everything wrapped up nicely for all intents and purposes.

Now for what I actually did on the project. I made the powerups, about a third of the marbles (the heart marble is my personal favorite of the ones I made), and a few of the multiplayer levels. Oh, and my name on Live is MisterGoid. Feel free to say hi if you ever catch me when I'm on.


Humvee

I believed I showed a screenshot of this in my last plan. Here it is much more finished. I still have some texture touch ups to do and I have to make the LOD still, but its looking mostly complete.



This is the TSE version (rendered in Max). There's also a TGE version which has all the bolt/door/whatever details burned into the diffuse texture instead of a using a normal map. It's also going to have a forest camo texture and a night ops / swat texture in addition to the desert one. All in all, I'm pretty pleased on how it turned out. No absolute date on when it will be released, but it's safe to say "soon".


Boot Camp

At the end of February, I'll be helping the most talented Stephen Zepp put on a Torque Bootcamp. I'll, of course, be handling the art end of things. This is pretty cool because the boot camps haven't ever had an artist teaching. The volume of material I can cover will be somewhat dependent on the skill level of those in attendence, but I think its fairly safe to say things like the basic art pipeline and how to get a character into the game will be covered. I don't want to go into it too much more than that (I'd like things to be as flexible as possible), so I'll end with I look forward to meeting you if you're planning on being there. :)


Wildlife Tycoon: Venture Africa!

I said the important stuff about Venture Africa in my last plan, but I feel like mentioning it because Im not sure if it was officially released by then. It's officially released now. Go get it. Now.

Beligerent salesmanship aside, my favorite thing to do in the game is to build a thriving ecosystem to the point where Im about to win, and then let loose an entire pride of lions on an unsuspecting zebra herd. Sure, you lose the game, but you're also knee deep in the blood of innocent animals. Is that REALLY losing? I think you know very well it's not.




Outside of Work

Recently, Tim "Nasty" Aste and Justin "Nickname" DuJardin moved from our big house with Matt "Bases Loaded" Fairfax and Ben "DJ Pwny" Garney into a smaller house. Moving is always a hassle, but this went largely without incident. Dare I say, this is the best house ever. The size is right, we have an ideal "summer cookout" deck, the list goes on. I'm super pumped about the whole deal. Here's a shot of the outside.



Yeah, Tim drives the DeLorean from Back to the Future, so what? I also think it's pretty funny we have a basketball hoop. I keep talking about getting a basketball so we can all play horse or around the world or something. The chance of that actually happening is slim to none.

There is a ton more going on in and out of the office, but this is already too long. Besides, most of the REALLY cool stuff is under NDA. So thanks for reading!