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Plan for Ed Averill

by Ed Averill · 10/27/2005 (1:57 pm) · 7 comments

Well, slowly but surely I become Torque-ified.

I've been spending a lot of time with the tutorials, both here and from various third parties. Also been watching all the IGC videos (thanks to all for making those available), very interesting stuff. Also researching into what I need to put together a decent production pipeline on my development system.. lots of good stuff out there, even for someone on a limited budget.

Being self-funded is never saying "Please give me more cash", although it does often involve the question "More tools.. or beer?". Thankfully, no spousal unit means that there's one less layer to pass through when making that kind of a decision (lol). Soooo...

Money has been flowing to bring decent tools in-house. Bought Visual Studio (urgh), bought Cartography Shop, bought the Lighting Pack, bought a couple of Content Packs, and finally bought Showtool Pro. Thankfully I already own some modelling tools and a copy of Milkshape! It's a good thing my day gig as an embedded systems engineer can fund all this.

I do have a game concept in mind - something fairly easy to implement, no real character animation involved, child-friendly and that sort of thing. Not an MMORPG, not an FPS, not an RTS, just something you can sit down, play for 1/2 hour or so, have fun, and smile at. I think of it as an "all-ages kids game". I certainly believe it's limited enough in scope for one person to finish without spontaneously combusting! After that, maybe some kind of environmental walkthrough/interaction kind of game, something.. surreal. Always wanted to do something along those lines, even if it's not "commercially viable".

Kids games.. heh.. having worked on the (ill-fated) Compaq/Fisher-Price Wonder Cruiser ages ago, maybe I'm trying to recapture fond memories!

I'm not expecting to have anything playable (or even screenshots) for a while as there's at least 2-3 months worth of learning curve minimum, I'd guess. Once I do, I'll post them in the Appropriate Places.

About the author

Programmer, writer, game developer. Born in Florida, lived all over the U.S. Now in Austin, TX!


#1
10/27/2005 (3:25 pm)
I think showtool pro is the best product I have bought from GG second only to the IGC ticket. It is not a fair comparison though because TSTP can't possibly haev beer which gives IGC the ultimate advantage.
#2
10/27/2005 (3:37 pm)
Where are the IGC videos....am i missing a link somewhere? I just remember seeing pics.
#3
10/27/2005 (11:04 pm)
just out of curiosity (spelling), would you be the same ed that first wrote RealityFactory?
#4
10/28/2005 (9:17 am)
Well, beer gives anything an advantage over non-beer-enabled software. ;-p

Josh, there's a thread: http://www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=35597 lots of video goodness!

Anthony, heh heh.. yeah that's me. That was a llllloooonnnnngggg time ago! Got totally burned out and quit gamedev for a while, but now I'm back! :-O
#5
10/28/2005 (10:42 am)
thanks ed
#6
10/28/2005 (4:46 pm)
Thats great, RealityFactory gave me my first taste of game development. Of course that was just after you handed the project off to Ralph, when it wasn't too much to look at. A lot has happend to it ever since, Mike W took control of it and started charging 100 bucks for a tutorial CD for it. Now it is a community project, a lot has been done to it since you stoped game dev :) Good to see you back in game development though, at least you know you have one fan ;)
#7
10/29/2005 (9:30 am)
Hey Anthony, cool! I've lost track of RF development, it's nice to hear it's still moving along! Glad it got you started! :-)

I figured everyone would have forgotten me by now. ;-)