Plan for Justin Mette

Hmmm, 3 months since my last .plan where did the time go? Maybe the saying "time flies when you are having an absolutely freaking blast" is true...

In an effort to start posting .plans a little more frequently, I think I'll just pick a topic and talk about it instead of writing a dissertation on 21-6 company status like I used to. Today I want to talk about collaboration.

If you were lucky enough to attend IGC 2002, you probably got a shirt that says "World Domination through Collaboration" on the back. Up until recently, that slogan had some positive meaning but didn't really hit home till we started collaborating with BraveTree Productions out of Eugene, OR.

For the past year or so, Joe Maruschak and I have been racking up our phone bills talking about our two companies with topics ranging from product direction to business philosophies. This past January, after attending MacWorld in SanFran, we drove up to Eugene to spend a day with our new friends at BraveTree to discuss further how our two companies might be able to assist each other in both product development and finding contracting work.

Among our discussions, many focused around product development and how we could really help each other build games faster while still maintaining our individual company identities and product direction. Since we got back home in late January, we have acted on this concept and are now working on both Orbz and ThinkTanks from our collective pool of talent.

Examples of how BraveTree is helping with Orbz:

Clark was able to improve the performance of Orbz on lower-end machines by as much as 10-12 frames per second. From his knowledge of Torque and understanding of our code base, this process took maybe a week of his time.

Clark also put a handful of hours into getting us started on low-level logic used by the new Botz in the soon-to-be-release version 1.2 of Orbz.

Joe is working on some new orb models for the game. If you've seen his work in the BraveTree Content Packs, you know this is gonna be sweet.

Examples of how 21-6 is helping with ThinkTanks:

I am implementing the shell for TT using a lot of the shell enhancements I wrote for Orbz. This speeds the development of the shell and allows their team to focus on the meat of game play.

Ryan is setting up a ranking server (similar to that which was used in Orbz) specifically for use by ThinkTanks.

Christopher is helping out with level design.

Of course, we both have IRC channels on irc.maxgaming.net (#21-6 and #BraveTree) in which we hang out most of the day and talk about strategy, game features, and technical solutions for both of our games.

In only a few weeks since starting this collaborative journey with BraveTree it is absolutely amazing to see how much we have been able to accomplish. We are still working out the kinks of bringing the teams closer together (work schedules, cvs access, etc) so there is even more room for improvement - which means the collaboration only gets better.

Why does anyone care? Well, a few community folks have noticed the collaboration between the companies and have been asking about it. In one case someone said "Man, you would never see this type of collaboration from the big game companies it's a real indie story!". That convinced me to spend a few moments to write about the positive energy that has already blossomed from our collaboration with BraveTree and possibly inspire some other teams in the GG community to do the same.

Until next time,

Justin Mette
President
21-6 Productions