Busier than a one legged man in a butt kicking contest...

I have been really busy working on this new game project. Things are going very well, our team is growing at an appropriate pace and its even growing across the world. I will go into more detail about our international team (www.dami.lt) a little later. We have hit a little detour, a good detour but a detour non the less. While meeting with our advisors and working on the game mechanics we came up with a tool that we felt we could sale stand alone. So from there we stop working on the game and started working on tool. Just so happens at the same time the Rice Alliance had a class in Austin in which I had to give a public presentation of my whole idea. Needless to say I was scared out of my mind. I had a great support team in place. One of my advisors Spencer Zuzolo from GameCamp.org was a great public speaker and drilled me pretty hard on the practice run. We still have not got together to discuss the postmortem but I know it's coming soon. I can't go into any detail as to what my pitch was about but I can point you to some tools to help if you are coming up and need to pitch your idea to investors/publishers.

http://www.dfjmercury.com/
On the above website you can read about some Angel investors out of Houston and also download the template I used for my pitch.

Http://www.starlitskygames.com/
I will soon post the Audio files from the classes that I took that help educate us about bootstrapping and venture funding. Speaking of...

Http://www.bootstrapaustin.org/
This is another great resource to help you manage and build company wealth.

So let's talk team. My main partner in crime is none other than Tom Ogburn he is the brains behind the whole operation and great friend. Also check out a little something he was working on here

My writing partner is the wordy Dan Mccollum is busy not only working on the story line for our first big release but he is also hard at work on his first Manga release at www.studioil.com. You can find the first ten pages here

Mindaugas Jokubaitis is the co-founder of www.dami.lt I do have a lot of experience working with team members around the world from Dell but not much in the games/art space. Needless to say I was pleasantly surprised. Lithuanian is about 7 hours ahead me. So a lot of the business time is me waking up early in the morning to coordinate with him and Dan my writer making sure he understands how things are suppose to look and feel. He has a team of 12 and if you check the site you will see that they have what it takes and for the quality of work I think they are very affordable. The web page at StarlitSky Games is about to be revamp by Dami so its not updated just yet. I will show and explain some art in just a bit.

Now that I am done explaining the major players in this new venture lets get to the games. So I have been working on some ideas to try and get them out to market quickly yet still represent the full creative power of the team. So I am starting with 2d game that is based in a Steampunk world. This has a couple of cool opportunities for me. Right off the bat there is not a lot of games that are in the Steampunk world, so I can write my rules to govern that world and get away with it. Plus I personally find the Steampunk genre exciting and interesting. The 2d form of the game will hopefully it open it up to more players.

I wont get into to much on what the game is as far as the mechanics as I am not breaking any big molds but I am bringing elements from 3d games and putting them in the 2d world. I have finally "finished" my design doc. And the reason I put quotes on it is because I once told the same thing to Warren Spector and he laughed at me :( As I know now why, the document wont die and it continues to live and change everyday. But I am to a point where I can start creating content for the game. And whit that statement I now introduce the title of the game and some concept art Steam Jetz

Here are a few of the 9 characters that in the games main story line. Which also brings up another point the game has its own history and narrative. So these works of art come from my overseas connection with the DAMI group. After sending over my entire 15 page bible to the game the team came up with these pictures of the some of the main characters. The cool thing is that most of these drawings took less than a couple of days. This was really nice because when working with such an important portion of the group its nice to know good quality work is being done in a speedy manner. So if you guys are looking for an art house that is quick check them out... ok enough commercial for DAMI now back to our game and the characters:



Neeko is the purported captain of the Silver Gale. He is young, greedy, cunning and carefree. His small crew is Shahenda (Navigator) and Kazem (Gunner). He is willing to try almost anything if it will make money. Neeko is officially classified as a criminal for various activities he may or may not have committed. He therefore is considered a legend among pirates and with the lower class who believes him to be a hero.



Andrew "77-Zulu" Sparrow - Harry's rival and captain of the Foxfire. Andy is an admiral in the Royal Navy, who is charged with capturing Harry after he deserts the army. Andrew is a childhood friend of Harry and Alexa, though he left their school early to join the ranks of the army after he showed some initial promise.



Rondo is the true captain of the Silver Gale and father of Neeko. When Neeko steals the plane and takes it to an OWA port city, Rondo follows. Neeko's goal in helping Charles is mostly to get away from his father, who is in hot pursuit.



Shahenda is a mysterious girl. She has dark skin and Arabic features. Shahenda is the navigator of the Silver Gale, and is the true reason for the ship's phenomenal success. Shahenda is able to navigate the Winds unlike any other person. In truth, she is from the Underworld, the land below where society remains fractured. Her people tracked the navigation of the continents as the ancients tracked the motions of the stars and planets. Therefore her knowledge of navigation is based on her perspective as a child.....



The Overlord- Rondo's aircraft carrier. The Overlord appears to be a conventional zeppelin vehicle powered by a therium core, allowing it to carry a heavy iron deck capable of housing up to 10 planes and a crew of up to 50. However, it is powered by a very dangerous liquid therium core, which allows it to stay afloat even if the dirigible is compromised; this is a unique innovation only made possible by the ship's scientist, Walroy. The Overlord houses the Silver Gale, Walroy's attempt at adapting the liquid therium core for a smaller ship.