Plan for Frank Bignone
by Frank Bignone · 01/16/2003 (11:50 pm) · 7 comments
So what's up doc ?
Dog of Prey
Concerning the coding, I make up for lost time. I rewrote our mission code to be more flexible and easy to add 'mod' (new mission objective). I still have some weird behaviour with the activatePackage function but it should be ok soon. So, we now have four different mission objectives including the new santa claus one. I'm working now on the seek & destroy mission objective (it's where the car modeled for DoP will be used).
Concerning the art material, our lead mapper has some very bad wealth problem and he cannot work on DoP for the moment. All the team wish him a fast recovery. Our team has been reduced now to its core members :
- Frank "Toky" Bignone (coding)
- Laurent "Crazybi" Pavet (modeling)
- Alexandre "Aldo" Doumenjou (modeling)
- Frederic "Frappuccino" Texier (mapping)
- Brad "TextureDop" Collins (sketckes/texturing)
- Eric "PlaysWithWolves" Forhan (interior mapping)
with some help from Pascal "Decoy" Boss (sketching)
Another nice point is that i have advertize DoP on a french download site and during the last 5 weeks, we have a weekly download rate of 500 download per week.
Other projects
We really want to finish DoP before going to another new project. However, with my fellow friend Laurent I'm designing some new project (games and apps). I think we have some good idea and there is mainly three ways we are investigating :
- some sort of shoot-em up based on the DoP universe (if we can say that DoP has some particular theme to set a style). It will not be a FPS or flight sim btw.
- a tactical game (TWar). We will try to have something nice to see (with some improvment of the torque game engine) and some particular multiplay gameplay. Main difficulties is to stay small in order to be feasible for an indie team with up to eight members.
- a game dev studio (SageStudio) linked to the Torque game engine. I already did some proof of concept and wrote some external specs (easiest one). I'm currently designing it (concept) and for the moment it involves only me as i'm mainly doing the code architecture design.
Personnal
Year 2002 was very interesting for me as i was able to create a game with a very good team and nice people. It took me a lot of time too, but it's was worth it. I regret that i was not able to go to the indie gamecon, but i will go the IndieGameCon 2003 (i already put some money under my bed for that ;) ). On the other hand, i had some very bad problems in July - November 2002 which ended with a separation with my wife (not due to the game things). None to say that it was one of the point that slow the DoP project end of last year. Now things are going really better : new friends, new projects, some planed travels in US and Japan, ...
Concerning the new projects, we will certainly try to sell them, maybe via GarageGames if the app/game reach their requirements. Nevertheless, it will take time and we have some bunch of work to do in order to finish correctly DoP.
So, Happy New Year 2003 for everyone and Best Wishes for your projects(in France we have the whole January month to wish happy new year).
Dog of Prey
Concerning the coding, I make up for lost time. I rewrote our mission code to be more flexible and easy to add 'mod' (new mission objective). I still have some weird behaviour with the activatePackage function but it should be ok soon. So, we now have four different mission objectives including the new santa claus one. I'm working now on the seek & destroy mission objective (it's where the car modeled for DoP will be used).
Concerning the art material, our lead mapper has some very bad wealth problem and he cannot work on DoP for the moment. All the team wish him a fast recovery. Our team has been reduced now to its core members :
- Frank "Toky" Bignone (coding)
- Laurent "Crazybi" Pavet (modeling)
- Alexandre "Aldo" Doumenjou (modeling)
- Frederic "Frappuccino" Texier (mapping)
- Brad "TextureDop" Collins (sketckes/texturing)
- Eric "PlaysWithWolves" Forhan (interior mapping)
with some help from Pascal "Decoy" Boss (sketching)
Another nice point is that i have advertize DoP on a french download site and during the last 5 weeks, we have a weekly download rate of 500 download per week.
Other projects
We really want to finish DoP before going to another new project. However, with my fellow friend Laurent I'm designing some new project (games and apps). I think we have some good idea and there is mainly three ways we are investigating :
- some sort of shoot-em up based on the DoP universe (if we can say that DoP has some particular theme to set a style). It will not be a FPS or flight sim btw.
- a tactical game (TWar). We will try to have something nice to see (with some improvment of the torque game engine) and some particular multiplay gameplay. Main difficulties is to stay small in order to be feasible for an indie team with up to eight members.
- a game dev studio (SageStudio) linked to the Torque game engine. I already did some proof of concept and wrote some external specs (easiest one). I'm currently designing it (concept) and for the moment it involves only me as i'm mainly doing the code architecture design.
Personnal
Year 2002 was very interesting for me as i was able to create a game with a very good team and nice people. It took me a lot of time too, but it's was worth it. I regret that i was not able to go to the indie gamecon, but i will go the IndieGameCon 2003 (i already put some money under my bed for that ;) ). On the other hand, i had some very bad problems in July - November 2002 which ended with a separation with my wife (not due to the game things). None to say that it was one of the point that slow the DoP project end of last year. Now things are going really better : new friends, new projects, some planed travels in US and Japan, ...
Concerning the new projects, we will certainly try to sell them, maybe via GarageGames if the app/game reach their requirements. Nevertheless, it will take time and we have some bunch of work to do in order to finish correctly DoP.
So, Happy New Year 2003 for everyone and Best Wishes for your projects(in France we have the whole January month to wish happy new year).
About the author
Real programmers don't waste time recompiling; they patch the binary files... ... Real programmers don't waste time patching binary files; they patch memory.
#2
01/17/2003 (4:04 am)
You are always welcomed Djag and do not forget you promise me the wolf skin as soon as Gema finish the model ;) 
#3
Hey, if your in the states and need a place near Atlanta, Ga. to stay, let me know. I would gladly trade picking your brain for a few nights rent.
01/17/2003 (5:00 am)
Good luck in the future Frank. Your work reflects your passion.Hey, if your in the states and need a place near Atlanta, Ga. to stay, let me know. I would gladly trade picking your brain for a few nights rent.
#4
01/17/2003 (7:42 am)
Hey Frank, sorry about the wife, I will work on the model in my spare time ;) It will be done :) 
#5
01/17/2003 (12:07 pm)
sure I've promised! hmmm Gema, let's work ! :)
#7
@Wendell: i note it and i agree with your deal :) if i will go near Atlanta, Ga.
01/17/2003 (1:31 pm)
Thanks for the support guys.@Wendell: i note it and i agree with your deal :) if i will go near Atlanta, Ga.
Torque Owner Ben "Djaggernaut" Chavigner
J'espere pouvoir revenir et faire plus de models!