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Its aliiiive!!! - Our project that is.
Its aliiiive!!! - Our project that is.
| Name: | Rasmus Boserup |  |
|---|---|---|
| Date Posted: | Aug 12, 2007 | |
| Rating: |  Not Rated | |
| Public: | YES | |
| Comments: | YES | |
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| Profile Page: | View profile page for Rasmus Boserup |
Blog post
Finally, after two months of planning, we launched RazuMedia yesterday. I'm really psyched about this project - I'm so psyched I've even decided to begin blogging about it here at GG.
Basically RazuMedia stems from a frustration me and a few friends had about not being able to get into game production because we weren't experts at C++ or some other language, we didn't have extensive 3DS MAX experience, or because we hadn't already done 800 casual games. We really think there should be a place where people who love games, who want to make games, should be able to do so in a group without already having extensive solo game production experience. And so, RazuMedia was born.
The goal is to make a place where a group of passionate people, who love games, can try their hand at actually making games! Before I discovered the GG engines I really wasn't sure on how to actually pull this off. But it seems to me that the Torque Game Builder, and to some extent the Torque Game Engine, are perfect tools for a group of dedicated people. They are simple to learn (at least simpler than to learn how to build your own engine from the ground up in C++), simple to use, and still quite powerful. But enough shameless promotion rant about GG - lets go back to shameless promotion rant about RazuMedia instead ;-)
I've already received quite a few applications for our position as programmers and artists. But I'm hoping that I will receive even more. But one thing I think is important is that when you join RazuMedia you not only join as a "programmer" or an "artist" - the idea is for people to work in their specialized field, but ALSO work in other fields. Perhaps an artist thinks that C++ is great, but he just hasn't had the possibility of working with it under guidance of a real programmer - well why not let him program something small in the game? Its valuable experience after all. And if the programmer turns out to be a great background artist, why not let him do some art?
But still this is a fairly small project. One of our main goals is to keep our first few games on a very small scale. This way we can keep motivation high, games will be coming out at a regular pace, and if people decide that real life is more important, they can leave the project without disrupting 6 years of development.
To finish this I'd like to do some more shameless PR for our website: www.razumedia.com.
And last but not least. I hope that some of you people out there. People who really want to make games, who dream about a future in the game production industry, all of you who are still learning. Come visit us, and if we catch your interest drop us a mail and we'll talk.
On a final note - off course we are also looking for people who have more experience, people who want to help beginners either as active participants or in advisory roles. Everyone is welcome - drop us a mail and we'll talk.
Thank you for your time,
Razumasu.
www.razumedia.com
Basically RazuMedia stems from a frustration me and a few friends had about not being able to get into game production because we weren't experts at C++ or some other language, we didn't have extensive 3DS MAX experience, or because we hadn't already done 800 casual games. We really think there should be a place where people who love games, who want to make games, should be able to do so in a group without already having extensive solo game production experience. And so, RazuMedia was born.
The goal is to make a place where a group of passionate people, who love games, can try their hand at actually making games! Before I discovered the GG engines I really wasn't sure on how to actually pull this off. But it seems to me that the Torque Game Builder, and to some extent the Torque Game Engine, are perfect tools for a group of dedicated people. They are simple to learn (at least simpler than to learn how to build your own engine from the ground up in C++), simple to use, and still quite powerful. But enough shameless promotion rant about GG - lets go back to shameless promotion rant about RazuMedia instead ;-)
I've already received quite a few applications for our position as programmers and artists. But I'm hoping that I will receive even more. But one thing I think is important is that when you join RazuMedia you not only join as a "programmer" or an "artist" - the idea is for people to work in their specialized field, but ALSO work in other fields. Perhaps an artist thinks that C++ is great, but he just hasn't had the possibility of working with it under guidance of a real programmer - well why not let him program something small in the game? Its valuable experience after all. And if the programmer turns out to be a great background artist, why not let him do some art?
But still this is a fairly small project. One of our main goals is to keep our first few games on a very small scale. This way we can keep motivation high, games will be coming out at a regular pace, and if people decide that real life is more important, they can leave the project without disrupting 6 years of development.
To finish this I'd like to do some more shameless PR for our website: www.razumedia.com.
And last but not least. I hope that some of you people out there. People who really want to make games, who dream about a future in the game production industry, all of you who are still learning. Come visit us, and if we catch your interest drop us a mail and we'll talk.
On a final note - off course we are also looking for people who have more experience, people who want to help beginners either as active participants or in advisory roles. Everyone is welcome - drop us a mail and we'll talk.
Thank you for your time,
Razumasu.
www.razumedia.com
Submit your own resources!| Chris \"C2\" Byars (Aug 12, 2007 at 12:41 GMT) |
| Frank Bignone (Aug 12, 2007 at 14:34 GMT) |
| Rasmus Boserup (Aug 12, 2007 at 14:41 GMT) |
Yeah the site does require a fairly speedy internet connection :-/
@Frank
What are the chances of that? - with the internet being so enormous? :-p But yes, templatemonster is nice :-)
| David Higgins (Aug 12, 2007 at 21:52 GMT) |
1) The loading screen was apparently useless, it said "100%" and started loading a trailer like thing ... when I clicked 'skip' ... I got YET ANOTHER loading screen ... thats not cool
2) Apparently, the entire site is done in flash ... this is nice, but ... it's also not all that great ... I mean, making some of the features of the site flash powered is cool ... but an entire site layout in flash ... and after looking at most of the site, it could have all been done in HTML with CSS and a little bit of Javascript ...
3) Audio should be an option on a site, and should not auto-play without some form of warning first ... VERY annoying ... I was listening to some music, and playing it through my stereo, quite loud too I might add ... and I damn near jumped out of my chair when your site audio started playing ... perhaps have some sort of audio fade-in that stretches across a period of like 15 seconds ... so the user has a) time to click 'mute' and b) time to realize that audio is playing on the website, especially when it involves lots of hi-pitched notes
Ok ... no ... why did i mention #2? Simple ... Sites that work like this, have very little SEO (Search Engine Optimization), as they appear to search engine bots (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc) as having ... yep, you guessed it ... no content ... so therefore, nothing to index ...
It also makes linking to topics on the site near impossible, perhaps there's something on your site that I want to show a friend, but I don't want to have to sit there and explain to that friend the 20 steps involved in getting to the content ... what I would normally do, is goto the content ... and copy the URL from the browser and paste it into an email or chat dialog ... but with your site, I have to give them your site URL, then an instruction manual on how to navigate to the content of interest ...
I am also not able to do direct-quotes from your site, again ... for the purposes of communicating to my friends and colleages about what your site is for ... I may want to copy/paste some of the content ... perhaps your tag-line, or a 'latest news' entry ... and show it to a friend directly ...
Now, your nav menus look really cool ... and I can see using Flash to pull off the nifty little swirly effect or whatever it is ... but at the same time, an animated GIF would do the same thing ... a little CSS for a Hover, and you can achieve almost the exact same look (minus the tweening ... a little javascript, and you can even do the tweening, heh) ...
Another pet peeve, is the inability to use my mouse and/or keyboard to scroll the scrollable content ... this makes the site even less navigatable ...
Now ... please, don't take any of these criticisms as saying your site is not nice ... I definately liked the look of it, very pleasing on the eyes ... I just felt I would point out some of these things, as they are key things that make good sites, good.
and actually, after reading Franks comments ... and viewing his site, I would also suggest that ... you not use a popular template, especially for a site called "RazuMedia.com" (I actually thought at first that you did all the design and art yourself, and was very impressed ... and am now not so much ... expected more from a site with 'media' in the name -- sorry) -- but Frank did make an HTML version of his site ... although not as functional as his Flash version (just has an 'about us' on the html page -- which is actually just a picture, which is ... also not very SEO friendly ... search bots don't use OCR ;p
| Frank Bignone (Aug 12, 2007 at 22:20 GMT) |
| Rasmus Boserup (Aug 13, 2007 at 10:47 GMT) |
Thank you for your comments.
I am well aware of most of the stuff you mentioned, and im already building a light HTML version of the site (as well as a php cms backend system for the group to use).
As for the SEO its not something that is actually relevant for us at the moment, which is why the site is done completely in flash - it's there to look good for the people who get "invited" to look at it. Not so people can google for it - when we need googling powers we will do some more SEO focused implementation ;-)
Your point about load screens and music has been noted.
Again thank you for your comments :-)
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