Blog for Mark at GarageGames.com

Some new things and changes at IALeague

Mark — 2008-06-27T18:02:33+00:00

We are nearing the completion of our main website which uses the Joomla CMS. We have a few people registered, but not nearly enough to drop the ball and get things rolling - this however won't be the case for long.

Today we added something very exciting to the IALeague: Instant Action LIVE, which broadcasts live Instant Action games via our website & Stickam. Here we will have broadcasts of ladder matches / Championship games / etc (possibly with an announcer). Of course, this feature will rely on a spectator mode if such a thing is to be implemented into Instant Action.

Sometime in July or August we will be finalizing our decisions for prizes. What kind of prize?

Whoever wins the Rokkit Ball 1vs1 Championship will get a free iPod Nano.

I have not decided what the 2nd prize winners will get, or the 3rd prize and 4th prize winners (or if there will be any).

These are just a few things we have planned at the Instant Action League. You may have noticed I am excited about this and am putting a lot of my time and resources towards this project. We hope to be the premiere League of instant action and will do everything in our power to make it so.

Soon, we will be posting openings for staff members when things begin to kick off. We won't be looking for just anybody, but dedicated and trustworthy individuals.

I really do enjoy the Live feature, I went around on Justin.tv and Stickam and found the best channels. Just last night I watched the Hitman movie via Instant Action live. It has some good potential.

If you have not signed up at InstantAction.com yet, I think you should. Rokkit Ball really is a fun game.

Instant Action League

Mark — 2008-06-06T11:12:58+00:00

www.instantactionleague.com/

It's a big idea, it's a good idea, it's a fun idea. After playing Rokkit Ball for my first time, I knew I had to build the Instant Action League.

Here you can register your clan/squads to compete with others in regular season games and to the championship games.

The goal is to start the Rokkit Ball Season on Monday, July 7th. This has the potential to become something very big and it will be interesting to see if the IA dev team support the idea... for example, the team that wins the championship gets free Instant Action tokens! Perhaps a little "Championship" achievement on your IA account for the world to see?

Who knows. The possibilities are endless.

Eventually I will open the IAL to other IA games like Legions, but for now, it's going to be Rokkit Ball just to experiment with things.

Hope you all like the idea, and be sure to register your clan/squad!!!

Some concept art

Mark — 2008-04-19T03:24:35+00:00

I made this in PaintShopPro. I really wanted to get into digital art and decided the best way would be to actually start making some stuff.

Of course I used an image as a reference, other than that everything is 100% PaintShopPro.

I also started working on a Halo picture but never finished it.

Some others:

Hitman, used photograph as reference

I plan on heading to college for art soon. Hopefully that will make me even better.

Anyway what inspired me to start doing this kind of thing was this guy:

www.youtube.com/user/macpulenta

Really some incredible stuff, I recommend you check that guy out. The detail he puts into his art is amazing. I hope I can get to that level someday, hence why I hope to take courses soon!

Sidus Publishing

Mark — 2008-03-07T09:47:15+00:00

Another great place to get your product into the crazy world!

www.sidusstudio.com/

(still working on it)

Edited 03/08/08

I just noticed the template was the same as Bungie.net. CRAP!!!! I'll have to find another.. there arent many nice Joomla 1.5 templates out there unfortunately. Thanks for pointing that out or else I would have never even known it.

Now to answer some questions, I appreciate your feedback.

@ Martin and Leroy: Good question. The answer is no, we don't. Most start-ups dont have any customers, they have to get them. Remember, we let folks publish with other publishers so they really have nothing to lose. GarageGames follows a similar policy, Determinance for example appears to have found a box publisher (I assume) AND they have their game for sale here at GG. This is good for the creators of Determinance, giving their game more than one outlet to sell the game.

@ Ted, I agree with you. 60% seems a little nonsensical and I'm probably going to raise it considerably more, if not promoting a few games with no royalty rates, which may be a good traffick grabber,putting a few titles on the site, becoming "known" and forming relationships with artists for future releases.

@ Stefan... uhh..

@ Terry, while this may be true, you may be speaking of the big-name elites. However, Indies and start-up groups may find it appealing. I have geared this plan towards no-names, considering I am a no-name. I figure If I'm going to start somewhere, I might as well start with them: in the beginning. Publishing a Mariah Carey CD or Gears of War 2 is not my intent. This is for Indies in need of assistance. By giving them a secondary outlet AND allowing them to publish with others, they don't have much to lose.

@ Neill thanks for pointing this out. As terry said, it was a Joomla 1.5 template from NukeDesign and I plan on changing it immediately.

This really comes down to the royalties. As I said above, I may contact folks and promote their work, asking nothing in return. Over time, I suspect the site to get some page views and then I may be able to pop in a 5% royalty and continue to raise it as the site gets more popular. This seems very fair to me.

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As a start-up organization, we are looking for good Indie Games, Music and Films to publish. If you are interested in publishing with us, read below to get an idea of what it may be like to publish with Sidus.

You made the content, you deserve the money. We pay a royalty rate of 60%. This means you get 60% of the monthly earnings for whatever product you may be selling. You get more money than us, that's how it should be.

We let you publish your work with other publishers. This means you can have 2 or more publishers at once, as long as they allow it like we do. This can be VERY beneficial and will likely maximize your profits. You have nothing to lose!

Our knowledge in contracts keeps things easy for you. The contracts we provide are easy to read and are built to better suit YOU, not us.

Many publishers, particularly in the games industry make it look like they created the content, when they only published it - we make it very clear that YOU created the content.
You will always own the intellectual property. Everything will be yours.

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

Still with us? Here are some Questions and Answers:

Question: Will you put my product in stores?

Answer: We want to do this eventually when we get in contact with sales reps. Right now we are doing digital-downloads only, which may even be more beneficial than getting your product on store shelves, considering how easy it can be to market on the Internet and how easy it is to shop.

Question: How much money will I make publishing with you?

Answer: Hard to answer. It always comes down to how good your product is. If it's high quality, expect word-of-mouth alone to be the prime marketing strategy and expect sales to be very good. If your product isn't that great, it probably won't go viral. Make your product great!

Question: We are having trouble with our game/song/film! How can you help us!?

Answer: There is a limited amount we can do. However, we provide some truly great resources to get you on the right foot. We also provide a project management web tool for free if you are planning on publishing with us. It becomes very helpful for managing your team, projects and tasks, speeding up your creative process considerably. We will also provide you with your own private forum board so you can discuss things with your team and with us very easily.

Question: Contracts?!?!?!?!?!

Answer: Yes! Don't be intimidated! Almost all publishers use contracts. We understand you may not be familiar with contracts and contract law, but we are. We make it very fair, easy to read and we will always answer your questions. You can take it to your favorite attorney to have a look at our contracts, if need be!

Question: How are you going to market my game?

Answer: Advertising! We want to advertise your product to the moon if necessary! We'll submit your product across message boards, banner ads and more. Again, if your product is GOOD, expect it to sell itself.

Question: So, why should I go with a publisher?

Answer: Creating content is one thing, getting it out in the world is another. It's expensive and very time consuming - publishers eliminate all of it.

Question: How do I publish with you?

Answer: Contact me! I handle all submissions. My E-Mail is mark@sidusstudio.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

When thinking about what to include in your E-Mail, don't worry about sounding all professional and using big words. We just want very basic information:

1) What you want published. A game? A movie? A music album?

2) A description of your product. What is it? What genre?

3) Provide us with DEMOS! This is very important! We'll ignore your E-Mail if you don't show us anything.

For games, we want screenshots and videos.
For films, we want trailers and clips.
For music, we want music samples.

We will review your submission and decide whether or not we would like to publish your product. Remember, it's not only customers looking for quality - it's also publishers.

Expect a close relationship with Sidus Studios!

Publishing Submissions - mark@sidusstudio.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Constructor Level Building Experiment

Mark — 2007-11-26T23:32:32+00:00

I had an idea a few days ago that I think Indie developers would find interest in. Making a level in Torque can be a long process, it takes a few hours in constructor to make just one building that you can enter and explore.

My idea was to treat constructor more as a level builder rather than a building maker.

This is a simple Lab hallway that was made using 2 "hallway" prefabs, one small corridor and one big corridor. If anybody is not familiar with the TimeSplitters level editor, it works a lot like this:

You are given a bunch of segments you can place onto the editor grid. These segments resemble hallways, ramps, stairs and rooms that can all be connected to form a fairly large detailed level in just a few minutes. You are also given various themes like "Lab" "Egyptian" "Military" "Horror" which changes the style of the segments.

The idea is to have something like this in Torque. All you need to do is snap a bunch of segments together to form a complete level, something that would take days from scrach, which would then turn into minutes.

What do you guys think?

Hitman: Blood Money Trailer

Mark — 2007-10-11T04:59:58+00:00

Ok, this is what I'm talking about.

Hitman: Blood Money trailer I created.

I do like this one more than the others. I just need to fix the ending part a little and spell assassin correctly *UGH* (You have no idea how annoying it is to render a video for 10 minutes just to find out ONE tiny little thing needs to be fixed, Render all over again)

High-Res downloadable version (or stream)

www.trailer-star.com/videos/Hitman.wmv

YouTube version

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pmUQ-jdVaM

This is dedicated to Lo Interactive for creating a memorable character, Agent 47, and a memorable game, Hitman.

Let's hope the movie does the same.

Switching Gears Teaser Trailer

Mark — 2007-10-10T04:18:13+00:00

www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhaRjukBE3A

Just a quick small trailer I did. I guess it could be a teaser trailer knowing the footage was taken from the Demo.

Afterworld Trailer by Trailer-Star

Mark — 2007-10-07T04:34:11+00:00

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUNzfjjSWCo

Talk about a difficult task. Trailer-Star.com has released their very first Trailer for the folks over at afterworld.ru. Afterworld is a MMO made heavily with the Torque Game engine that you can download and get for free over at their site with no fees whatsoever.

While it looks decent, it was difficult to do. Making a trailer for a MMO is harder than it seems and I learned that the hard way with limited hardware. I couldn't help but be surprised how great the game was however, I was constantly surprised by the little details they managed to throw into the game and what they did with the Torque engine.

Trailer-Star.com is still offering free trailers, so contact me at support@trailer-star.com if you want a trailer for your game. I warn you, we arent interested in paying for your game just to make a trailer for it.

The trailer isnt exactly what I had hoped it to be. But others seem to say it's pretty good, and that's all that matters I suppose.

I'm actuallly interested in making a trailer for that Switching Gears game, I think I could have some fun with that.

Trailer-Star.com providing FREE services

Mark — 2007-09-26T16:56:41+00:00

www.Trailer-Star.com

In order to get my new website going by showing some example work, I'm providing free video editing services for Indies.

If you want a trailer for your project, contact me at support@trailer-star.com with your specific needs and I'll get back to you ASAP.

Example work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOOGAG9mg0E

SP Mission Objectives

Mark — 2007-09-23T18:02:19+00:00

Right now I'm trying to make a resource that adds more Single Player functionality to Torque. The idea is to give the player tasks that he/she must complete before moving onto the next level - much like GoldenEye or TimeSplitters.

There are various objective types that I hope to get working:

- Destroy an Object(s) or character(s)
- Plant some type of device(s) at a specific location(s)
- Pick something(s) up
- Get to a certain location(s)
- Defend a certain location(s)
- Turn something(s) on or off

Another thing Torque really needs, is good Single Player AI. Is anybody working on something like this? If so, let me know, we can put both of these packages together - people will be creating single player games with ease.