Still Alive

No, not the fantastic Portal song by JoCo. Sorry, just another post by yours truly.

So let's see.. where did I leave off? Survival, that's right. Well, we did get it completed and submitted and judged and juried. And it did well! In fact, shared 1st prize. Nothing to sneeze at, I say! We are both really proud and happy of how both Survival and Gears fared in the contest. And we wanted to officially congratulate the Trashed team and wish them the best in the future. Moving on.

At the end of the my last post I stated that "What's next? We have tons of ideas of levels and features that we want to implement and I think these next few weeks are going to be dedicated to experimenting with what ideas will work and what features we find to be awesome.". Well, we did. And we came to the conclusion that to get both Survival and Gears to the point where we dreamed they could be, it would take at least another year on each title. Too much time. Yes, we did it as well. We bit off more than we could chew. Go ahead and laugh and point now. I'll be here when you are ready.

So we decided to, not forget, but rather reshuffle the priority of those two titles a bit. We are still incredibly proud of both Gears and Survival and may come back to them at one point. Especially Gears who is very dear and close to my heart (isn't everybody's first title special to them?)

So we have decided to pursue not one.. but two titles this summer. I know what you are thinking: "oh geez.. they are doing it again!" and that may be but we have a plan. Basically what we ran into time and time again during Gears and Survival is that either one of us would have to wait for the other to finish task A before the other could start on task B. Since we are only two guys there really isn't an option to go to another person for assistance so it created this start / stop / start / stop development. So we are trying something new: Two titles developed simultaneously. As Ryan (programmer) is developing the prototype of one game, I am developing all art work needed for game 2. When we get to a point when either one of us is finished with their tasks we simply switch games. So far this system has worked pretty well. We both work in the same room, so if one of us has a question about the either game, we can simply throw a paperclip at the other one and start talking. I'll let you know how this experiment works out.

So what are the games? Well, one is a title using TGEA and Arcane FX which we are aiming at Instant Action. Fast, Fun and Furious PvP Action Buzzword Awesome. The other title is not even connected to GarageGames or even 3D! Crazy talk, I know!

And that's it for now, I guess. As we venture on in this parallel development universe, I'll try to keep you updated on our experiences with it and how things work out.

I'll leave you with a render of one of the characters I am developing. There's still much work to be done on him (mainly all the different maps), but I feel he's ready for a first glimpse. Enjoy?



Cheerio!
Fredrik S
Affectworks