Blog for Michael \"Evic\" Wales at GarageGames.com

ATTENTION: Alaska Developer's

Michael \"Evic\" Wales — 2007-06-25T03:47:22+00:00

My wife is from King Salmon, AK, (and I spent 3 years in Fairbanks) - not that you care, but stick with me here for a second. We'll be visiting the in-laws from June 8 - 20 and that means a stop in Anchorage.

We'll be staying at the Microtel the morning of the 9th and I am thinking of sitting down with Alaskan developer's that can make it that morning for an article on GibThis, called Indie Wednesday, that we run every week.

This will be a great opportunity to get your product - whether completed or not - in front of a couple thousand people, really quick.

This will be a very informal session - time will depend on how many people are interested as well as what time you are available. Simply bring a laptop with your stuff all ready to go as well as a CD with any media (screenshots, movies, demos, etc). We'll look over your product, I'll ask some questions, and your product will be on the site. As simple as that.

What do you guys think of this idea? If you're not an Alaskan Developer - you can always just contact me - but for those of you in AK that can make it, this is a great opportunity to show the press your product first hand. The passion for gaming is what drives all of us and that's something a demo or some trailers simply can't convey - I love to see that twinkle in developer's eyes.

If you're interested - contact me and we'll discuss details.

Get Featured on a Growing Gaming Blog

Michael \"Evic\" Wales — 2007-06-23T00:13:06+00:00

Wow - it has been a very long time since I've appeared here. A lot has changed in my life (a daughter, move to California, so much more) but this blog post isn't about that.

GibThis.com is a multi-author blog that I own and serve as the editor for - we're growing quickly and covering a ton of great gaming news. We're currently working on a set of weekly features - unique articles that will be posted each week, on a particular day. Our first of which is Indie Wednesday! Venture Arctic served as our first feature of Indie Wednesday and now we want to give everyone else the opportunity as well.

If your an Indie developer and would like to be featured on GibThis, please feel free to contact me. Of course, we'll be around looking for you but contacting me can only better your chances of us seeing (and reviewing) your product.

We're not only interested in completed projects though! If you're currently in development, just working on some great resources for the Indie community, or involved in any other way - we'd love to hear from you. Indie Wednesday isn't limited to reviews - we're open to conducting interviews, conference calls, video reviews - you name it and we can make it happen.

BTW: Yes, I did download TTGE and TGB again - looking forward to getting back into the scene. Lots of great new stuff coming out of this community - I can never stay away for very long.

Sunday Oct 16 21:20

Michael \"Evic\" Wales — 2005-10-16T21:20:17+00:00

Bringing back a classic

I'm positive everyone remembers and has played Quake - it was truly a revolutionary title. Did you know Quake is still being played on a daily basis today? I bet you did not.

Team Fortress software, now part of the Valve team, developed a modification entitled Team Fortress that many of you may be familiar with. This is the longest running online game ever, 9 years later people still play this modification on a daily basis - although the size of the community is dwindling.

My goal is to make it easier for new players to get into Team Fortress, specifically Mega Team Fortress. As of now, it's rather difficult to get started, you have to write configurations, download a client, figure out command line parameters, and find a server. Server admins have twice as hard a time running their own server. This was normal many years ago, but these days the commerical model is quite different, and new players don't expect this torture to get started.

My goal is to standardize the server/client that is used within the community, and merge these two applications into one. There are many great client out that increase the graphical capability of Quake to today's standards, my goal is to ante up the quality of the models. Many of the UI menus are confusing and unnecessary, I will attempt to streamline these menus while offering new features as well.

A rather incomplete list of my tasks is below, that I posted on the MegaTF Community's Forums (http://quakeboards.rmcd.net/). I am currently looking for 2-3 people (coders and artists) who are interested in helping revive this community. My goal is to bring in new players, and relaunch a commercial quality MegaTF for free.

Quote:
I'm talking a rebirth on a grand scale here:
- Complete rewrite of mod code, fixing the bugs and adding in the new features in a less than "patchwork" method. This would require massive communcation between the client, server, and mod programming teams.

- One server. The MegaTF community picks a server and supports it 100%, the mod won't even run on other servers. If you look at the games of today do they have dozens of confusing options all configured differently to run a server? No, they run the executable with a -dedicated parameter, end of story.

- One client. The MegaTF community picks one client and supports it 100%, you can't even play with a different client. Fuhquake is the obvious choice here, although it will need massive work on it as well.

- Merger of the client/server into one executable.

- Cleanup the filesystem making it less of a mess.

- All new, professional quality, custom designed models. Designed specifically for MegaTF.

- An identity, a common theme, throughout the game.

- A true community website, ran professionally and inviting to new players.

- Newbification of the interface. It is extremely difficult to write configs, setup your video settings, and to setup a dedicated server. We don't think so because we have been doing it for 9 years, new players won't put up with it. User Interfaces for all of it.

- Advertising revenue. We'd have to make a name for ourself and pop up in magazines.

And because it sucks not having a screenshot, here you go. This is a map entitled well6, being run on a popular client FuhQuake - which is the base of the MegaTF Rebirth client.

If you are interested in helping out, please email me: evic@gibthis.com

Wednesday Jul 27 3:14

Michael \"Evic\" Wales — 2005-07-27T03:14:37+00:00

Got bored, wrote a spider.

So I got bored and decided to give a shot at writing a spider. If you're not familiar with a spider it's essentially an application that starts somewhere on the internet, and follows links around constantly, indexing the information it finds. It's currently written in PHP and, albeit functional, not efficient.

I started the Spider at www.garagegames.com (webmaster, you should see GibSpider come across, if it's killing your server let me know, not much in the way of wait limits and what-not). It's been going for 18 minutes now and index'd 81 pages. At this rate it will prob take about an hour to go 20 levels deep (what I set it at). We shall see.

I've decided to give a shot at porting it over to Java and see how it performs in that respect. If I can get it optimized well enough I am thinking of launching a search engine directed at gamers, more than likely I'll start with the Indie market.

Wednesday Jul 20 20:16

Michael \"Evic\" Wales — 2005-07-20T20:16:01+00:00

New Project - Betaflow

First of all, yes GibThis.com is still in the works. I'm getting slightly burned out on it, so I've been looking for something to give me a bit of a break from it. After looking over the Pic of the Day for Torsion, I think I've come up with a pretty neat idea.

First of all, I'd like you to take a look at this screenshot and tell me what you're first impressions of the website are. What do you think this website is about? What do you think it's purpose is?

evic.gibthis.com/betaflow.jpg

Now, the reason I have asked for your impressions prior to telling you what this website's goal is, is because I am not to sure if the front page adequately portrays the goal to a first-time visitor. So, hopefully you will provide me with that information as it will help me out a ton.

So, what is Betaflow? Primarily, it is a directory listing of Beta Tests for all sorts of programs. Visitors will have the ability to suggest a beta test, which the staff will review and if we feel it's appropriate, add it to the site. Visitors will be able to search/browse for beta tests in progress, and quickly visit that beta's website to receive more information. Betaflow will also provide a nice collection of community based features, such as commenting on betas listed in the directory, and the ability to maintain your own Beta Blog for articles on Beta Tests you are participating in and other related topics.

In addition to these features we'll also be offering a variety of products and services to assist companies in the operation of their own beta test. One of the most popular services is sure to be our recruiting service, in which we will provide companies a list of our registered user's that fit within a certain demographic (user's will have the ability to opt out of this demographic survey). Other services/products that will be available at launch (or soon after) are dedicated forums for beta tests operated in collaboration with Betaflow, as well as bug tracking software and bug intermediary services - where the Betaflow will act as the middle-man between your testers and your engineering team, to assist in the filtering of relevant bugs from the petty complaints, flames, suggestions, etc.

All around, I feel it's definitely a platform that can be successful, albeit I don't think it's something that will take off in a grandiose scale. It will still be a fun company to get up and going and competition is rather slim, with only www.betanews.com/ as a legitimate competitor in the consumer market, and very few competitors in the corporate market we're targetting.

So, I have a few suggestions for your comments on this plan:
- First off, did your initial impression of the page adequately reflect the intended purpose?
- Second, what is your overall impression of the design/layout?
- Third, would your company be interested in the services/products offered when it comes time to Beta Test your product?

Finally, phpIndie (I mentioned it months ago in a plan) has been cancelled as I really don't see a market for it with all of the CMS systems out these days. I encourage those of you that were looking forward to phpIndie to check out www.cmsmatrix.org/ for a list of nearly every CMS released and an easy-to-use comparison between them. I personally recommend Typo3 (very powerful, confusing to begin with), Mambo, or Xoops (very, very easy to use).

I am also available for free consultation on your website, whether it be design or content, and contract work in design/maintenance.

Sunday May 8 5:51

Michael \"Evic\" Wales — 2005-05-08T05:51:37+00:00

Upcoming T2D project

So, I've wanted to be productive lately, but getting bored of PHP. When you do it for 9 hours a day at work, your ambition to do it when you get home is a bit lacking. Hopefully, I'll be done w/ a lot of the PHP stuff I've been doing for work next week, and get back to doing my real job. Until that time, phpIndie and my upcoming website gibthis.com have been put on the back burner.

So, to feed my creativity I've been doodling a bit, and trying to come up w/ some good ideas for a T2D platformer. I think I finally got something I'm willing to work with (and something I can do the art for).

So, without further adeu (sp?), I present the obligatory .plan image:

Not much beside that at this point. I just did this like 30 minutes ago, so not much time to come up w/ a design. But, I think it's a pretty good character to start building a platformer around. Should be interesting.

Saturday Apr 16 5:04

Michael \"Evic\" Wales — 2005-04-16T05:04:25+00:00

phpIndie - Indie Website Development Framework

For those of you with Torque2D, this post will run you through a bit of a discussion on this topic.

For those of you without access to that forum, I will simply run through a quick introduction to this product here. I welcome any and all comments and suggestions.

phpIndie started from a short .plan from Phil Carlisle. I had the basic idea of this in my head, but was unsure if there really was a "market" for such a product. Phil's .plan confirmed that market, so I have done a bit of planning since then, a lot of testing and building demo apps, and I am ready to make the next step in the development of this framework.

Essentially, phpIndie will be a framework that will allow Indie's to easily create their product's website with a primary focus on the content. phpIndie will handle all content management via it's standard "modules" such as basic content management (the creation of pages, deletion, editing, etc), forums, screenshot galleries, polls, and file management.

A standard set of templates will be released for live usage or use as examples to create your own templates. A template will consist of both a .tpl file and a .css file.

The "flow of content" is as follows (for addition of a new page):
- The webmaster will enter the content via a Content Management System, and select the page's location within the navigational tree.
- When a user visits the website, they will activate a "content retrieval" script, which will retrieve the content from the databas.
- The content retrieval script will contain all PHP code necessary to render the page, and will activate the template.
- The template will determine where the content is position within the HTML source.
- The template file will refer to a CSS document for all formatting purposes.

This process will be virtually the same for all content additions. It sounds rather confusing at first, but when you think of it from a design-only standpoint, it's quite effective. You only need to develop one "template set" (the .tpl file and the .css file).

I have attempted to find ways to eliminate the need for the .tpl file, but I feel it's very important to use a templating system in this framework, as it provides a nice seperation between code and design. If you need a visual representation I recommend heading to www.csszengarden.com/ as their .html file and .css file is pretty much a straight-shot example at what I am working with (albeit we are using a template file, using a template layer between the content and template).

The entire framework is very modular, with a simple drop-in and activation method, to provide many other applications such as project management, version management, and anything else a PHP programmer feels like adding.

I wanted to go into a bit of detail over some of the modules that will be released as standard, but I think this .plan is running long enough as it is and my friends are bugging me to go out.

Wednesday Apr 13 2:37

Michael \"Evic\" Wales — 2005-04-13T02:37:35+00:00

A diversion from my original plan and heading in the right direction now...

After a lot of thinking I realized I have been wasting a lot of time. I've been sitting around designing my game, working on art, developing the website for it, all without thinking of one simple fact: Torque2D can't support it right now, and neither can I.

I've been spending a lot of time on stuff that should be done after the game has at least been prototyped out first. I guess I could sit around and work on all of the art, and have the website ready, so when Torque2D does finalize it's network support and what-not I could just start making the game. But wait, I haven't had much practice with this new engine (aside from a few small things) and I would not only be learning a new engine but developing a product I intend to earn money from (albeit in a round-about way, but still).

So, I have decided to turn around, run back to the fork in the road, and take the rougher path as it will get smoother at the end. I've thought of a simple puzzle game that I feel is original (at least I think it is) and should be able to teach me quite a bit about the engine.

So, here go a few quick images and explanations from my upcoming game "Hue Hitch."

The object of Hue Hitch is to connect like colored tiles on the game board, either vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. At the end of a chain you will clear these tiles from the board, all tiles will compact in, and you continue until all colors are gone or you can no longer make a move. Levels will be set in place by increasing the size of the game board by 1 row/column of tiles both vertically and horizontally (Level 1: 2x2; Level 2: 3x3; Level 3: 4x4; etc). The longer your chain of tiles is the more points you will get upon clearing it (2 tiles: 10; 3 tiles: 25; 4 tiles: 50; doubling each time from there). The potential for special tiles (bombs to clear areas of blocks, lasers to clear columns/rows, etc) are abundant, but will be implemented after the first prototype is set in and I let you guys test it out. A simple left-click to select/deselect blocks within a chain, and right-click to clear the currently selected chain is more than sufficient.

Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that? My intentions are to release it as a free game for Torque2D owners as have a lot of other T2D owners with their learning projects (and as is appropriate).

So, without further delay (I tried to say a-dew, but couldn't spell it), here are my concept images:

A New Game Board - Level 2

The Player Has Selected a Chain of Tiles

The Tiles Have Been Cleared, and Compressed to Bottom Left

Friday Apr 8 20:49

Michael \"Evic\" Wales — 2005-04-08T20:49:05+00:00

I have never been a D&D nerd, I always find it pretty laughable actually, but the d20 system and it's variations have always fascinated me. Just the idea that a basic concept could be laid down in which so many various games could be create from is amazing. One of these games I have always held interest in is Spycraft.

So, I figure what better time to get my hands dirty with the d20 system and Spycraft ruleset than in designing my upcoming game? You can see my previous .plan for some basic background discussion on EleyChronos (at that time I was calling it Eleytheros, but a name change was in order).

I'm going to be shooting for a realistic comic book feel to the game, which as I envision the game in my head is pretty entertaining. I have this mental image of 3 players in a warehouse with 4-5 enemies shooting at them from across the room behind some crates. The bright yellow Ratatatata spewing from their Uzi's, the Fixer's light tink, tink, tink as she attempts to fix a wrecking ball for the party to use. The hectic whoosh, whoosh of the Soldier's flamethrower...

In an odd way it just feels like it will work great for this game.

As for the game's progress - I'm working hard on prototyping concepts right now and completing the design document (it's almost done in a general sense at 36 pages, but I still need to add some specifics into it, mockups of GUIs, etc).

I'm finding it hard to prototype shit up effectively as there isn't really any artwork around for the theme we are working with and I am finding it hard to look past this myself. Because of this, I have already placed a bid on Rentacoder for some basic tiles to get me started. I figure if I can get a good artist this way, I'll keep feeding him work (and money) for the rest of the needed tiles and characters.

Last but not least, here are a few shots out of the Spycraft book that I colored up - I think they do a good job as concept art of not only 3 of the available classes, but for the overall style I am hoping to achieve with this game

Pointman

Faceman

Fixer

Monday Apr 4 19:26

Michael \"Evic\" Wales — 2005-04-04T19:26:45+00:00

My first .plan ever I believe! This is primarly for myself although Matthew aka King Bob, should find it useful as we were discussing some TorqueDB issues earlier.

First and foremost, if you do not have T2D - get it! It is simply amazing. I have had a TGE license for almost a year now (maybe more) and I have hardly ever touched it. I can't take my hands off of T2D! It's like a 19 year old blonde with firm breasts and a bit to much to drink!

Anyways, on to the real purpose of this .plan: to layout some ideas for my current project, Eleytheros (that's Greek for free). Although I just had an epiphany and I believe I will start calling it EleyChronos... anyways.

This game is essentially a free MMORPG developed around the T2D engine, with a Zelda-ish look (what was that Zelda game on the SNES?). I know most of you just groaned when you heard MMORPG, but hear me out on this - I'm not a newb, remember?

Why an MMORPG?
Because it's hard. I'm always one that is up for a challenge. Yes I have other ideas, most of which I will develop to learn T2D, and many of which I feel have the potential to sell. I'm a big fan of a game called Enigmo, and I plan to work on an updated version of it, which should turn out pretty good.

Besides an MMORPG being hard, they are popular. People love MMORPGs, and many people in the under-18 age-group look around, and beg for an MMORPG that is not pay-to-play (I know I did way back then).

Why free?
There are quite a few reasons for this, and yes I know running an MMORPG is expensive. First of all, I'm in the Air Force, and I can not dedicate the 100% of my time that is required for support. I feel if I can not adequately support the game, I shouldn't charge for it.

Second, this game will act as a form of advertising of sorts. I am working on starting my own consulting company, and this will be an excellent reference and traffic attractor.

Third, although we won't be making money directly off of the game, we have various ideas to allow us to earn income off of the game around the game. Primarily, Google Ads on our website. I have had excellent experiences with Google Ads (I was earning $8K per month on wowcensus.com for a few months), and I feel our website will provide enough information that users will continously visit it (item databases, enemy databases, population statistics, etc).

Tell me about the game
Honestly, not a lot of it has been fleshed out yet. It's a very new idea. What we do know is the following:
The gameworld will take place across multiple times in history - at least 3, thus the Chronos reference above. While the starting timeframe will be medieval in nature, we do plan to offer a far future timeframe, and a prehistoric timeframe. This will essentially work as follows: at a certain point in the game, you will earn an item/skill that will allow you to travel to a certain timeframe. At anytime you may use this item and you will be transferred to the exact same location you are currently at, just in that timeframe.

We haven't yet fleshed out the storyline, or much of the design document, but trust me - it's on it's way. I have been involved in far to many projects that crashed and burned primarily because there was no design document.

Any Technical Issues You Care to Share
We have a few technical plans I'm willing to share, to get ideas from you guys.

First, all "secure information" (player locations, items, etc.) will be stored on our server via TorqueDB. This data will be exported to a MySQL database during our daily maintenance, for use on various pages within our website.

Second, if the game does necessitate the need for multiple servers, we want this as seamless as possible. Therefore, we intend to design a "server cluster" using multiple T2D Dedicated Servers that will constantly share information with one another. Our current plan is, when this occurs, have one server act as a dedicated TorqueDB server, while various other servers handle immediate player information, and share this information with the other servers. This will allow us the ability to eliminate a server selection screen, and support a theoretically infinite number of players within the same gameworld.

Third, we will offer various character sprites a user can choose from, and each item in the game to be displayed (armor, weapons, etc) will have it's own "masked" sprites which will be loaded and mounted to character's. This allows player's to achieve a unique look of there very own, much like you see in the 3D MMORPGs of today.

How Can I Help?
At the moment we are not prepared to setup a team for this project. As stated earlier I need to get the design document done, and various other things. Also, we are waiting on T2D to move to a more reliable release, and obtain it's networking structure. The best way to help right now is answer my pleas for help on the forums - lol. I can always use placeholder artwork as well.