Maized and Corn-fused

Alright, so I'm going to break from my usual routine of actually having a "point" in these little blog entries. My current state of mind after an all out, no holds barred battle through the weekend to get My Bogle into a reasonable state (that lasted all the way through until 3 am Tuesday morning) has left me in a very odd, and not completely lucid state of mind. So I'm not going to attempt to wax theoretical or philosophical or anything. If you were expecting something profound, move on now...

1. David Jaffe, who made a point of wanting to make people cry, has changed directions. While I fear having to compete against a downloadable PC Game by Mr. Jaffe, I also think it's quite ironic and almost cathartic to here him say such things as

Quote:I think somewhere in the last year, I realized that electronic games have always had an amazing ability to evoke emotion. They are not the emotions that many of us- including me- have been pursuing. But they are emotions nevertheless; they are feelings that the best pure games can always evoke. Feelings of tension and release, feelings of fear and anxiety, feelings of triumph and defeat, feelings of confusion followed- sometimes- by joy at having overcome the challenge.

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God that sounds so freaking familiar. But it's great to hear him say it. I feel validated :)

2. One of my little pet projects - a dynamic image/button control for asp.net developers called "ArtForms" - came back to surprise me. I was surfing around and just decided to do a search on it to see what it's been up to. See, I haven't it really touched the thing since 2003, when we released a free version of it. I did a bunch of guerrilla marketing, posting it to different sites and such, talking it up in forums.. and for a developer control, especially one that was for a fairly new market of asp.net developers back then, we got quite a bit of interest. It was free, but we had plans for building out the control's features in order to sell a "professional" edition. So when we had something like 10,000 downloads and we were getting linked to by foreign web sites and put on a cover disk for the Italian PC Magazine.... it was really cool. Well, the project was unfortunately hibernated but it's limited success is still a good memory and quite confidence inspiring.

Well, I ran across a link to ArtForms on download.com. Apparently they had posted the thing back in 2003 and had gotten an additional, like, 8000 downloads, but I had no idea about it until last Friday. Thinking that 8000 people said "hey, that's a cool idea" and downloaded it ... all through no exra effort at all on my part gave me a crazy boost of confidence that "yeah, I can do this!" Now, a free dynamic image/button control is a long way away from a top down 2D online multiplayer tactics game, granted. But who cares about using things like logic and reason... My first product was listed as "popular" on download.com! And I don't intend for it to be the last.

3. When we first started this little endeavor, I accepted the fact that the chances for success (especially financially) were heavily stacked against us. I accepted the fact that, more likely than not, the only reward we would have was to be found in the journey itself. But as we close in on a completed project, I can't help but to get my hopes up.

I'm crazy excited about where we've gotten to in the game and the pieces keep falling into place. We'll officially be hitting alpha in a week or so and should be in a closed beta by mid-August. There's tons and tons of things to do, but I'm more excited and energized now about doing all those little tedious details than ever. I expect to see a lot more of 3am as we head into beta and then onto release. In the mean time I'm not sure how coherent my blog postings will be but I'm more certain than ever that when it's all said and done that it will all have been worth it.

4. As I showed off the latest bits of animation to my two boys last night before they went to bed, the youngest one said, very matter of fact like: "Daddy, you are really good at making video games." ... "But it sure does take you a long time." I think that pretty well sums it up, right there.

Oh.. I almost forgot my obligatory image. Well, I've got a new character but I haven't gotten her "glamour shot" ready to show off yet... so instead I'll send you over to this great google video that represents our target market:

video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7521044027821122670

Quote:Mercy?? You want Mercy??? I'm chaotic neutral!!!

Speaking of which - anyone going to Dragon*Con this year?

-Andrew
theoreticalgames.com