Back in the Saddle again...

I'm back, although most of you probably never noticed that I left. I've been around the forums though, I've posted a few threads, working through some problems, I've just never finished a game. Although, I think alot of us are in that position, we have great ideas, big dreams, lots of energy, but we can't get it done. This isn't all our fault, game development is HARD and indie development is even harder, but we all keep trying and thankfully GG keeps making it easier for us.

When last I left you I had started a game dev company that consisted of 4 people I knew from Grad school. We were coding on TGE and TSE, we had beautiful cel shading implemented on our zombies both in shader form on TSE and after some effort, in the graphics belly of TGE. We were feeling pretty good about ourselves when we realized.... we had no artists, and the art we could cough up wasn't anywhere near good enough, not even close. There was hope though! I had a call with a certian member of GG, who shall remain nameless, that was very promising. The hope was that they would be able to help us with our art problems by matching us up with artists in the community that could share our vision. The only problem is... the call didn't go so well.

I want to say up front that I am in no way upset or bitter at this person or Garagegames. The entire community, and especially the guys at GG, have been nothing but helpful to us and to me especially as I have struggled with Torque. But I was told that our vision was to grand, our project to large, and our experience to small. I was told that my postings on the forums and other places had led them to believe that I understood what it ment to be an indie and that I would be able to share in the keep it small, keep it simple, keep it fun idea. Our project was none of those things.... and you know what? He was right. We were over-reaching and we paid the price for it. The bills piled up, there was no income, and I had student loans that were coming due. It was time to get a job and leave the dream behind.

Well, I'm not done that easily! I'm back, and it's time to do this for real. I've been working on various things over the last year. One of them, a website called Klipboardz www.klipboardz.com which is based on the idea of sharing the internet with your friends, is nearing completion and it has sparked something inside of me. I think it's the feeling of actually completing something, actually following through on a project that you care about. It's a great feeling, and it only makes me want to finish a game even more.

So this post is all about new chances and starting over. I'm getting the band back together, as the Blues Brothers would say, and we are going to make it work this time. I'm not going to let feature creep distract us from the fun and simple gameplay that we know will be great, I'm not going to get bogged down in polishing the game before we have a playable prototype, and I'm not going to try and go it alone. When a helping hand is offered I'm going to grab hold of it with two hands. Hopefully, a year from now, I'll be making a blog post about my finished game instead of my finished website.

Here's to being back in the saddle!

P.S. It also helps that the Wii has completely rekindled my love for gaming. ;)