Blog for Jason Swearingen at GarageGames.com

Novaleaf Software after 1 year

Jason Swearingen — 2007-11-25T10:19:41+00:00

About 1 year ago I quit my job, sold my house, and moved to Bangkok, Thailand and started a software company: Novaleaf Software Co. Ltd.. In that time, the company has grown to 16 people, and we are actively recruiting for 5 more positions.

Our game division, Novaleaf Game Studios officially launched 2 months ago, and we are scheduled to release a beta of "Novaleaf Biology Wars" (our first commercial game) in the beginning of December.

Needless to say, we have ahd quite a bit of growth, and I've seen my job role transform from doing everything to being mostly management and technologist.

Over the last year, I've seen Novaleaf's technology shift further away from GG's offerings, so though I dont have anything to contribute to this community, I'll still stop by occasionally, indie is indie afterall :)

Okay everyone, happy deving, and perhaps we will meet at some future game conference :)

Jason

2dmmo restart

Jason Swearingen — 2007-08-29T01:27:47+00:00

Hi guys, i've been gone away from the GG site for the last month or so, been busy running a business.

Right now, the corporate I setup has about 14 FT employees, which i think is fairly respectable since we just started up 5 months ago, and will be "profitable" by the end of Q3 2007. (Though I must say that it's due to the blessing/curse of outsourcing)

Unfortunately for me, the outsourced project we are doing is getting a bit more demanding. without giving away any details of who the client(s) are, it's going to be shipped to 1 to 10 million users ultimately, and they need a ship product in 1.5 months. The client's execs are out of their freaking minds with a schedule like that, but that's their business, not mine. My business is to get them their product, so unfortunately that means I'm going to be working on that full time for at least the next 2 months.

Since I was a 1 man show concerning 2dMmo, that's not a very good sign. However, I hired 2 game devs a few months ago, and they are getting up to speed in regarding C# game dev using TorqueX. (see screenshot below, that's from a prototype game it took them 3 weeks to write).

So, since I'm going to be busy with outsource work, I decided to hire 3 more game devs. So as of september 1st, we'll have 5 full time game devs on staff, so I'm fairly confident that we'll be able to continue the dreamgames contest in some form, though 2dMmo's vision will most likely be reduced to a fairly small subset, and we still will be running out of time come April (the contest deadline).

In addition, I'm still looking for a artist to hire full-time, and will probably be hiring a gui programmer also.

So, in summary, I'm going to be too busy with outsource work to do 2dMmo. So i hired 5 devs to take my place. I'll write another update about the same time next month :)

-Jason

2dMmo update ("outsourcing")

Jason Swearingen — 2007-07-31T11:47:50+00:00

Hi All,

I was going to spam a copy of my latest blog post, but I'll save it for those interested in the click-through.

To summarize: my business (Novaleaf Software) is doing too good! I'm going to have to start managing a team doing C# client development, so that means my direct contribution to my "2dMMO" needs to be cut down.

Instead, I'll be hiring 2 or 3 game developers to take over the game dev work, and I'll just do architecture/game design for the time being.

Happy times here in Bangkok Thailand, but honestly I'm a bit annoyed at the distraction this additional work/revenue is going to cause.

2dMmo Monthly update

Jason Swearingen — 2007-06-27T15:36:56+00:00

Hi all you garage games fans (torqueX, i'm givin you a shout out!)

Not much verbosity from me this month, I'm saving that for my 2dMmo Strategic Assessment document.

What? you havent read it already, on my blog?

Well i'll save you all the pains of doing the click-through. here's a copy of my last post, complete with the PDF download link:

Quote:

I just finished writing a strategic assessment of the project (2dMmo). So this blog entry will be short (indeed this is also my monthly garage games entry)

It's a fairly well thought out 7 page read... enjoy!

Download my 2dMmo strategic assessment PDF.

PS: i did my world architecture, and surprisingly the world visualization turned out almost exactly like the last screen shot, so no screenshot this week until i get more "features" implemented (working on a sphere tree right now)

So if you want the methods to my madness, there you go... madness distilled.

2dMmo: Scope of Milestone 1

Jason Swearingen — 2007-05-17T01:53:15+00:00

Ponder the architecture
My mission over the last month (as part of Milestone 0) has been to research the various technologies that are applicable to designing and developing a grand MMO (in 2d of course).

Now I have a pretty good idea of the technical needs for the project, and indeed it is rather daunting! Since the complexity of a MMO is very high, I decided to restructure the milestones a bit.

M1
Previously, M1 was going to implement the general world persistence, networking and visualization needed for the MMO. I decided to rescale that, and instead focus on M1 as a kind of "mini-game", an arena based combat game that then can be used to prototype additional functionality, in a very scaled down system. This doesnt change the ultimate goal of the 2dMmo over the next 10 months, though it does give a fairly concise goal for the next 2 months (I plan on having the "arena mini-game" prototype done before July 20th).

M2
After the arena game prototype is finished, I will re-evaluate the project, and do a post-mortem of the milestone. So I actually dont have much defined for post M1, except that the work done in M1 should be extendable into future milestones, and the ultimate goal is a Mmo by March 1st 2008.

Design doc:
I am restructuring the design doc to take this new M1 into account, so in a few days I'll post a summary of the new milestone goals. (to my blog) Thankfully, this means I'm actually getting close to fully understanding the scope involved, as I was holding off on serious writing of the design doc until I understood the project better. I still need to do a little more research into the network protocols and object management, but that should be done in only a day or two more.

Summary!
So in summary, things are going well, I'm working on this about 12hrs/day, 7 days a week, and feel pretty confident in the scope, though it is admittedly the most complex project I've every attempted!

My next update here on GG will be in about a month, so next post you'll have a much better idea of if I'm actually capable of anything ;)

- Jason

Disclaimer: this is a repost from my 2dMmo blog

2d mmo

Jason Swearingen — 2007-04-21T06:59:57+00:00

UPDATE: for current info, check 2dmmo.blogspot.com

April Blog:
I reciently moved to Thailand, and started (or am currently starting, to be exact) a software company. Currently the company is focused on the neubulous area of "Enterprise Software", and is building tools that we are firstly using in-house (is this some weird form of turing completeness?) prior to introduction to the SMB (Small and Medium Business) market.

Thats great, but what does that have to do with 2dMMO?
Well, as every great programmer (yes I am egotistical), I always wanted to get into writing games... not just games, but "good", technically OMGWTFBBQ good (ie: cutting edge) games that take advantage of my self-percieved abilities.

And so, while I manage a team working on tools, I will be prototyping the technologies nessicary to create a game, in the manner that I deem apropriate (IE: cold, calculating, and unemotional)

That's all great, but why blog about it?
Well, there is a supposed, quite hypothetical chance that the game I create could win a contest (with a first place prize of USD$10,000) that provides a significant financial incentive. (more information on this contest can be found at: www.mydreamrpg.com)

One of the requirements of this contest is to write weekly blog status updates regarding the project, which is why I write this, and further entries. Honestly, I'm the "do" rather than "tell" type, and so I find it actually quite dull writing about my suposied pie-in-the-sky MMO game, and would rather just present to the world what I have, after I have it. But, as there is this financial incentive, and I am not so self-infatuated as to not apreciate the motivational benifits that being forced to provide weekly updates can bring.....

Now, what are you actually working on?
This week, I am posting the actual contest entry at: www.mydreamrpg.com/community/showthread.php?t=1647
the contents of which are:

Quote:

Title: 2DMMO (working title)
Engine: TorqueX
Team members: Jason
Website: 2dmmo.blogspot.com (weekly updates, etc)

Description: A dynamic, scaleable, and extendable MMORPG

Purpose: Though the title of the game is obviously very generic, it is titled this way because this is ultimatly the purpose of the project, not to create a game which is rich in mythology, but to design a game which meets the very sophisticated technical requirements needed to create a MMORPG. (A "technical beta" if you will)

With the purpose stated as such, I (or we if it becomes that) will pick some traditional (most likely tolkien-esque) fantasy genre which the beta-content will be based on.

Disclaimer: Honestly, I am not ready to take part in this contest, as I have not performed enough technology based prototyping to have concrete definitions of the technologies and design patterns that will be used. However, since the contest point system rewards for early entry, I have chosen to post this contest entry prematurely.

As such, this contest entry will be extremely different from the entries submitted by other teams. This "MMORPG" projects updates/blog entries will (initially) have a lot less emphasis on the actual game development, and much more on the technology, as indeed, this project is being done "from scratch".

You still havent said what your "working" on!
Okay, so what I'm actually working on, from a technical standpoint, is a generic (in the c# sence of the word) factorymanager class that will provide the base class for all future factorymanager classes in the game, that will provide an abstraction of the functionality needed to manage the in-game objects, providing easy abilities to allocate and deallocate objects as-needed.

Additionally, I will start work on the asynchronous framework that I plan on using, which will allow easy support of multiple CPU's in executing the game logic.

Also, I will be prototyping the actual 2d visualizer that I am going to use, at least for the short-term prototyping of the game.

And lastly, I am posting all these blog entries!

Disclaimer: this is an almost verbatum repost of my blog at: 2dmmo.blogspot.com

leaving on a jetplane

Jason Swearingen — 2006-11-18T01:51:16+00:00

I've been quiet on the forums a while, so I thought I'd put a little post for those remembering who I am :)

T2D.NET
T2D.NET is pretty much a dead project now, as GG is creating TorqueX, it's pretty much obsolete and so I wont be pursueing it further. It was a good chance to learn TGB code, and how to do C++ C# interop, and tackle a very big, complex project from start to finish, so overall I'd still call it a success (glass half full as you will). No plans on a postmortum, though if anyone has any questions about the project, feel free to email (JasonS at cwite dot org) and I'll answer.

Thailand
I just bought my plane ticket to Thailand, December 25th, one-way. The last 6 months i've been busy wrapping up loose ends in my personal life (selling house, etc) and various projects (watershed simulator, etc). The last project should be done by the end of this weekend, so then I get to apply for a visa, and all the other buricratic joys related to moving to another country.

Game development
My original plan was to open a game studio in thailand. This plan has been modified a bit, though I still plan on the game development, just not as the very first project. My business partner wants to pursue developer tools (some revision controll system related projects) so I agreed to pursue that as our first project. On the side however, I still plan on the game angle. We have already secured the temporary use of 2000sqft of officespace and an admin assistant, which while only temporary, will get us started quickly, so we can focus our intial efforts hiring Java (web), and .NET (everything else) developers. I would have liked to stay a msft shop, but my business partner is a java guy, so hiring a java guy for the web portions is alright by me.

I'm likely to stay pretty quiet on the Garagegames forums and blogs over the next few months, though I'll definatly stay in the shadows, as TorqueX is defiantly the technology that will be used in the future of indie game development.

Peace be with you all, and good luck in all your projects, game related or not.

-Jason

Mono

Jason Swearingen — 2006-03-31T04:20:51+00:00

Myself, being a huge .NET fan, have been eyeing Mono for a long time, due to it's obvious cross-platform benifits.

Well there has been some news about Mono 1.2 floating around reciently, that I think may raise the curiosity of others.

---------------------

for my pet project, t2d.net, A bit of a change in plans: I plan on spending the last two weeks in april getting it ported to the newest T2D version, and write a tech-preview of the API abstraction project. So on the first sunday of May, I plan on having something nice to show off. Sorry no official plans for Mono support at this time, but i'm thinking...

2006 year in preview

Jason Swearingen — 2006-03-14T01:06:21+00:00

I've been getting emails from people currious about my plans in Thailand, so I'll share with you a copy-paste of my reply to one such email:
------------------------

The very first thing I'm going to be doing is learning the language. I plan on spending 6 months going to school full-time.

Part time, I am going to be working on an educational non-profit I setup (www.cwite.org) which while funded with 24k of seed money, is still in it's infancy and will need a lot of attention.

Additionally, I'm going to start hiring developers for my "for-profit" business (TaoCorp) which I plan to have going full-speed around December. The primary focus of TaoCorp will be around the .NET wrapper I wrote for Torque*. I was initially thinking to focus on selling the wrapper to developers, but due to some recent developments, I am considering saying "screw the developers" and just focus on developing an in-house game. (I want to eventually supply indie devs, but nothing gets an engine better attention than a good game written with it)

So that, in a nutshell are my plans.. I plan on hiring only 2 or 3 developers initially, so the scope of what I do will be small, but as the saying goes: "learn to walk before you run"

-Jason

* TGB, though should be trivial to port to TGE/TSE

Bye bye microsoft

Jason Swearingen — 2006-03-01T17:34:46+00:00

As some of you know, I've been working at Microsoft for the last 6 years, a fairly long time in IT years :)

Last week I gave my boss notice that I'm quitting, so I guess there is no turning back now :P

Some of my friends think I'm a bit crazy, as they rightly mention that a lot of people would kill for the job that I'm "throwing away", but we all should have asperations for greater things, mine just happen to not include msft :)

tgb
my work on a .NET wrapper of tgb (aka: "tgb.net") is being put on hold until my move (see last few blogs) is over, so my appologies to those dreaming of a nice .NET interface.

Currently tgb.net works, but is ported to only tgb v1.1a1, and is a straight-translation of the tgb torquescript interface, not a .NET conforming sdk. sexing it up is the work scheduled for later this year, after i hire a few people to help out with my projects :)