Plan for L Foster

As some of you may have noticed, I have been given that elusive 'associate' status here on GarageGames. It's a pretty cool honor to have and I want to thank the guys at GarageGames for letting me have this title.

So now onto why I am writing this .plan, well to be honest it primarily has to do with the fact that I haven't written one in about 1.5 years and I felt that it looked bad on the Associates page to have something that outdated (nothing quite like being the black sheep). So in an attempt to shed this elusive cloak of shadows that I have on, here are some updates that some of you might care to hear about...

Dark Horizons Lore:

As some of you may already know, I have been working as a part of Max Gaming over the past year to help develop Lore. We have the game finished and shipped per say and we are still working hard to add more features to it as well as quash some bugs.

Lately we have been working on releasing a new 'update' that not only fixes various bugs (such as the terrain conform aiming problem) but also introduces some new content (maps and other destroyables for mission objectives) and even a revamped UI that is coming along great (thanks to the expertise of Sebastian on the GUI stuff). I really think that current and new players of Lore will enjoy these changes.

We also have plans to release a new content limited demo that is a bit kinder on the downloads (ie. smaller size) as well as offering you unlimited play.

E3 2004:

It is hard to sum up this trip, but I would have to say it was an awesome experiance for everyone. Jay and Jeff from GarageGames as well as Dave and Justin from 21-6, and a whole slew of people from Max Gaming were there at the event (we all stayed in the same Hotel complex too). Here is a summary of my time at E3:
Tuesday
- Arrive late in the evening (it's actually 1AM local time). LA is warmer at 1AM than Edmonton was leaving (its something like 16C when I land). Call up Adrian to get me at the airport and then go to get my luggage. Wait 20 minutes or so only to find that my luggage is missing. Nothing I can do about the luggage tonight, so I head to the hotel to get some sleep.
Wednesday
- Wake up and harrass people if they have a clean shirt I can use. I then try to prepare for E3 as best as I can (including combing my hair with my hands... ah the things you learn from playing Hockey). Luggage still hasn't been found.
- Get to E3 and go through the hassles of registering. (LA Convention Centre, More LA Convention , Registration
- Ed finds out that G4 TV is giving out free t-shirts. So I now I have a shirt to wear tomorrow :)
- The group then breaks up for our various meetings or our own agendas. We check out a variety of booths in the South Hall and see a variety of cool booths including the Phantom (where I got to play Think Tanks). It looks like the Phantom is giving out free shirts, just 1 more and I have enough for my trip. (Booth, Booth)
- Visit various other booths, check out the DarkWatch presentation (which really wasn't impressive), get a few more shirts, deal with the massive crowds, get pictures take of and with booth babes. (Babe, Babe, Babe, Blood Rhyne, Babe)
- Justin from 21-6 arrives at E3, funny thing is that he actually beat my luggage to LA :)
- Stand in line to meet Richard Garriot, while in line someone asks me who Richard Garriot is, I think to myself 'what the hell are you doing here in E3 if you don't know that answer'. I get a few minutes to chat with Mr Garriot, he's a pretty down to Earth cool guy who cares about making great games. I of course put in a shameless plug for Lore.
- Afternoon hits and we go hang out in the Apple room while we wait for their party to start. Everyone from MGT steals a Apple demo machine and plays a variety of games... sadly there were no GG community games shown. The Apple party begins and we snag some food, bottled water, beer, and the best dammed chocolate chip cookies (I swear I could have eaten the whole platter of them). Jay informs us that we have an nVidia party to go to later this evening.
- After a short supper we head out to the nVidia party in Hollywood. nVidia has rented out a bar by the famous Chinese theatre on the walk of fame, they have a ton of food, an open bar (fully stocked), belly dancers and the band 'Sugar Ray' entertaining us. We all had a running joke at this event that we cannot go home until we have $400 in alcohal in us (the equivilent of promises that haven't delivered yet). This party really wasn't very good for networking with people, but it was a good break from E3 and it was a great place to get drunk and enjoy the weather. (Justin on the set of Ryan Secrest, nVidia Party, nVidia Party, Gate Crashing Pimp, nVidia Party, A Geeks Mentor, The famous Chinese Theatre, Ed gets some roughage in his diet.)
- After taking some bad directions from Jeff Tunnel as to how to get back to the hotel, and putting up with the nastiest hot dog ever made that Ed ate, we arrive at the hotel and pass out.
Thursday
- Luggage arrives! I think everyone had a sigh of relief since I was now presentable enough that they felt they could associate themselves with me. This truely will be the best day of E3.
- More booth babes and game demos. (More Blood, Babe, Liesure Suit Larry, Booth1, the Xbox 'fortress', Babes)
- Sebastian and I get lost from the main group and end up wandering around aimlessly for a few hours. We eventually find Jay who leads us to Ed and Adrian. (Sebastian and I are lost)
- I end up meeting a cool group of guys local to me who are called Fire Toad Software. This small group of 8 developers is making a PC & Xbox game called Fuel (a wave race game) it looks and plays pretty sweet. Turns out their big break to get some funding was to do a tech demo for the Geforce 3 launch.
- I end up missing the TryMedia party, which from what I hear was better than nVidias party since you could actually network with people. I instead spend the evening with the rest of the MGT guys eating pizza and joking about the strange thing that women do.
Friday
- Gaaa, more E3!?
- There isn't much left to see here. We go out with the Fire Toad guys and have lunch. I stumble across Richard Garriot playing Tabula Rasa with the people at E3, upon seeing this I had to take some of his time and chat with him some more. Garriot1, Me & Richard Garriot)
- Later on that day we go into the LucasArts booth (which was open in the afternoon to the public) and play some games. Knights of the Old Republic 2 looks awesome and Republic Commando is probably the coolest game I have played in a long time. (Republic Commando and KOTR 2)
- After the show is over everyone heads out to the beach and enjoys the California surf before heading for a nice supper at some restaurant on one of the promenades. Here we meet up with some developers from Streamline Studios that Jay invited out and sit around joking about the show, talking about future plans and smoking cigars on the patio. (Jay wants me to read between the lines, another great example of the comrodery at the show :))

Shaders:

I have begun to delve more into adding advanced shaders onto some of my artwork, the primary reason for this is for a side project that I am going to do (well more of a technology demo) that I hope to show at IGC. With any luck you should see an IOTD about the project soon.

Realm Wars:

Realm Wars is always on the back burner it seems for everyone involved. Phil and his merry band of programmers have been adding a lot of cool new code to the game as well as updated it to TGE 1.2, Paul Dana has enhanced the hand to hand stuff and I am trying to figure out whats needed so that I can develop some levels and art for the thing. Sooner or later there should be a new executable ready, just not really sure when.