#IHateVideogames
It was a post I saw by a friend of my best friend on Facebook. It was a picture of a disassembled Nintendo Switch and a smartphone and a broken Xbox 360 saying she wanted her son back and with that hashtag.
Now this friend of my best friend was known for teasing him (and me by extension) about being nerds with no life who can't get meaningful relationships and never leave their room.
I honestly feel that it's a cover-up for bad parenting. What's the kid going to think if he doesn't have a healthy way to spend his spare time? It's important to go outside. It's important to learn about the outside world, and gaming should be kept to reasonable standards. (No more than a couple of hours a night at worst, but only after doing homework and getting some time in the sun.)
The kid spends 7-8 hours a day at school doing physical education and learning, and it's important to balance that out with something fun. If they like it, don't use negative reinforcement to take away games and punish them, foster it with positive reinforcement. Teach programming and algebra and do some research on scripting languages so they can make their own games. Channel that interest in tech to something that will help their grades and their future.
Note, I'm saying this as someone who isn't a parent. Please take my advice with a grain of salt.
And FWIW - I do go outside and make sure to go on road trips and travel, even with being a nerd. I'll probably get to that in a future post.
Until next time.
Sunday, October 7, 2018
Friday, October 5, 2018
Letting go
Those who have known me for a long time know that it's really hard for me to let go of things.
As my real life has gotten more hectic and busy, I've had to step back a bit from actively working in the trenches on Selatria to focus on some of the other studio projects to make sure that they were progressing in a serious manner.
At first, I'll be honest, it really hurt because I made most of the cutscenes and was constantly tweaking it so it's perfect. As of Chapter 4-2 of Selatria, the main assignments of cutscenes was passed on to one of our newer game designers in the team, while I play and review it and polish it and make necessary tweaks at the end as needed.
While I ported most of the script by hand into the game for Chapter 4, I left behind vague stage instructions for how I would have directed/implemented the scene and he rolled with it and then some. The newer game designer also develops cutscenes a lot faster and more efficiently than I can.
I had to let go of my vision a bit if it means we make substantial progress on the project. I'm happy with his iteration of the scenes, and that's just the first step in learning how to let go. I was telling Jon during one of our lunches that a big factor in me wanting to hold onto cutscene creation is that I didn't have suitable talents that would transfer well and cutscenes were the only thing I had left. People can program better than I can. People can map better than I can. People can design better battles than I can. And people can design better cutscenes than I can. But I think my talent is that I can manage several teams pretty well. (This is still something I'm learning) while I'm average at the other parts.
I'm really not sure where I'm going with this ramble, but the one thing that puts me at ease is this. I don't assign these because of whether or not they can do it and I can't, it's just better to assign and collaborate where people would be most efficient. Even if it means letting go.
As my real life has gotten more hectic and busy, I've had to step back a bit from actively working in the trenches on Selatria to focus on some of the other studio projects to make sure that they were progressing in a serious manner.
At first, I'll be honest, it really hurt because I made most of the cutscenes and was constantly tweaking it so it's perfect. As of Chapter 4-2 of Selatria, the main assignments of cutscenes was passed on to one of our newer game designers in the team, while I play and review it and polish it and make necessary tweaks at the end as needed.
While I ported most of the script by hand into the game for Chapter 4, I left behind vague stage instructions for how I would have directed/implemented the scene and he rolled with it and then some. The newer game designer also develops cutscenes a lot faster and more efficiently than I can.
I had to let go of my vision a bit if it means we make substantial progress on the project. I'm happy with his iteration of the scenes, and that's just the first step in learning how to let go. I was telling Jon during one of our lunches that a big factor in me wanting to hold onto cutscene creation is that I didn't have suitable talents that would transfer well and cutscenes were the only thing I had left. People can program better than I can. People can map better than I can. People can design better battles than I can. And people can design better cutscenes than I can. But I think my talent is that I can manage several teams pretty well. (This is still something I'm learning) while I'm average at the other parts.
I'm really not sure where I'm going with this ramble, but the one thing that puts me at ease is this. I don't assign these because of whether or not they can do it and I can't, it's just better to assign and collaborate where people would be most efficient. Even if it means letting go.
Wednesday, October 3, 2018
Getting rid of facebook groups for whimindie
So on October 1st, I announced to the whimindie folks that we're going to stop using Facebook groups by the end of 2019.
Back when I started "professional" game development in 2011, we used Facebook groups as at the time I felt that was an easy way to add my friends who worked on the game and ensure people will read updates.
Fast forward 6 years later and there are far more efficient ways to keep the team together using more modern and efficient methods. We have Slack and Discord for team communication (Well, I set up the Discord for the studio at the same time we announced us slowly moving away from FB) and HackNPlan for task management.
And honestly, now that I think about it, adding people that I'm not personally friends with in real life to our facebook group is kind of awkward.
That's not to say I don't begin to come friends with the people I work on these games with, but it shouldn't be a requirement to join the studio.
Did I mention that a lot of younger people don't even use Facebook? It may be one of the dominant players right now, but that could change down the line, and this is a test to see if we can adapt to that.
Until next time.
Back when I started "professional" game development in 2011, we used Facebook groups as at the time I felt that was an easy way to add my friends who worked on the game and ensure people will read updates.
Fast forward 6 years later and there are far more efficient ways to keep the team together using more modern and efficient methods. We have Slack and Discord for team communication (Well, I set up the Discord for the studio at the same time we announced us slowly moving away from FB) and HackNPlan for task management.
And honestly, now that I think about it, adding people that I'm not personally friends with in real life to our facebook group is kind of awkward.
That's not to say I don't begin to come friends with the people I work on these games with, but it shouldn't be a requirement to join the studio.
Did I mention that a lot of younger people don't even use Facebook? It may be one of the dominant players right now, but that could change down the line, and this is a test to see if we can adapt to that.
Until next time.
Monday, October 1, 2018
Official returning post
Also, hey! I'm back. My dreams were my ticket out. It's been a little while. A month and a half perhaps? I'm going to start posting a bit more here whenever I have a bit of free time. I don't think I'll be able to talk as regularly as I used to when I started the blog, and please don't expect these posts in-between the development logs to be as concise and organized as those, as I tend to ramble.
I don't think I'll be posting these particular entries publicly on social media, but if you're somehow reading these, don't feel ashamed to bring it up to me. If I posted them here, then it's public and I expect it to be public knowledge, even if I'm not going out of the way to ramble about it to social media.
Now that's out of the way. It's been a pretty busy month. Since I've last posted in August, I've officially became chair of the IGDA Las Vegas and we had our first meet-up. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't incredibly nervous about getting up on stage and addressing the crowd. I haven't watched the recording in full, but what bits and pieces I've seen, I've not been very proud of my posture. I try to look relaxed but I tend to fidget and look around a lot. When we have our meeting in October, I'm going to sit in the second row and not the first one so I'm not constantly on camera.
Anyway, if you want to see how it went.
A lot of people come up to me and talk to me like I know what I'm talking about. I have no idea what I'm talking about. Earlier today when I went to lunch with my friend Jon, we were talking about one of the fortunes I had in my cookie. It read: "Life is about making some things happen, not waiting for something to happen." I know it came from a fortune cookie and it was supposed to be a generic message, but that's really the source of any successes(?) I may have had in life. It didn't come from my intelligence (where there isn't any) or my wit, it just came from volunteering or offering to do what no one else wanted to do. For better or worse, that's how I got to be where I am. Being opportunistic and taking any opportunity available is what gets you places. (Within ethical reason, that is.)
There were a lot of people that can do game development a lot better than I can, and were smarter than I am at that IGDA meeting. I feel honored to be in the room and to be able to absorb that knowledge and see where I can apply and make my own projects.
This Saturday is the Coyote Cross-Up event at CSUSB. We're going to use this as an opportunity to see about getting additional interns for an upcoming project we're getting started on, as well as showing one of the boss battles Jon and I recently finished for Selatria and get some user feedback on how they handle that.
Until next time!
I don't think I'll be posting these particular entries publicly on social media, but if you're somehow reading these, don't feel ashamed to bring it up to me. If I posted them here, then it's public and I expect it to be public knowledge, even if I'm not going out of the way to ramble about it to social media.
Now that's out of the way. It's been a pretty busy month. Since I've last posted in August, I've officially became chair of the IGDA Las Vegas and we had our first meet-up. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't incredibly nervous about getting up on stage and addressing the crowd. I haven't watched the recording in full, but what bits and pieces I've seen, I've not been very proud of my posture. I try to look relaxed but I tend to fidget and look around a lot. When we have our meeting in October, I'm going to sit in the second row and not the first one so I'm not constantly on camera.
Anyway, if you want to see how it went.
A lot of people come up to me and talk to me like I know what I'm talking about. I have no idea what I'm talking about. Earlier today when I went to lunch with my friend Jon, we were talking about one of the fortunes I had in my cookie. It read: "Life is about making some things happen, not waiting for something to happen." I know it came from a fortune cookie and it was supposed to be a generic message, but that's really the source of any successes(?) I may have had in life. It didn't come from my intelligence (where there isn't any) or my wit, it just came from volunteering or offering to do what no one else wanted to do. For better or worse, that's how I got to be where I am. Being opportunistic and taking any opportunity available is what gets you places. (Within ethical reason, that is.)
There were a lot of people that can do game development a lot better than I can, and were smarter than I am at that IGDA meeting. I feel honored to be in the room and to be able to absorb that knowledge and see where I can apply and make my own projects.
This Saturday is the Coyote Cross-Up event at CSUSB. We're going to use this as an opportunity to see about getting additional interns for an upcoming project we're getting started on, as well as showing one of the boss battles Jon and I recently finished for Selatria and get some user feedback on how they handle that.
Until next time!
#VegasStronger
A year ago today I woke up to a bunch of missed calls and messages asking where I was and if I was OK. Had no idea of the chaos that was going on about 10 miles away from where I was.
Co-workers from other remote offices were pinging us asking if everyone and their families were okay. It was just really surreal.
For about the next month everything was just kind of off, usually I would drive to California and when I would normally see a lot of cars piled up going the North to try and go to Vegas, and it was eerily empty.
A year later, there are still signs and banners on the side of the freeway that say #VegasStrong, and I see the saying on the back of a LOT of cars on the freeway.
What long term solution could you do to minimize the impact that some deranged person could do something like that again? I certainly wouldn't want to be checked and frisked every time I wish to go somewhere, but with something as busy and populated and unregulated as this, I'm concerned something like this will happen again.
It's an unfortunate feeling to have and think about. The city has recovered and gave us something to come together and help each other out on.
Co-workers from other remote offices were pinging us asking if everyone and their families were okay. It was just really surreal.
For about the next month everything was just kind of off, usually I would drive to California and when I would normally see a lot of cars piled up going the North to try and go to Vegas, and it was eerily empty.
A year later, there are still signs and banners on the side of the freeway that say #VegasStrong, and I see the saying on the back of a LOT of cars on the freeway.
What long term solution could you do to minimize the impact that some deranged person could do something like that again? I certainly wouldn't want to be checked and frisked every time I wish to go somewhere, but with something as busy and populated and unregulated as this, I'm concerned something like this will happen again.
It's an unfortunate feeling to have and think about. The city has recovered and gave us something to come together and help each other out on.
Saturday, August 18, 2018
Whim Independent Studios - Development Log #47
Hey all, back with the 47th development log for the studio. For this update, we're going to talk about progress on our games and infrastructure for the studio. A lot of this might be a bit boring if you're not interested in what goes on under the hood, but I guess the point of a development log isn't really to entertain but instead talk about what's going on. Anyhow...
Progress on the Selatria project is going well. The most difficult aspect of the project is still managing the large amount of voices, what needs to be done, and what needs to be re-cast and re-recorded. Shadoe, the sound engineer of the project, has taken to going through the last main character's voices and sending me a list of what needs to be retaken there. While I go through the long backlog of voices for side characters and recurring characters and approve/send emails out as needed. Here are some new screenshots from Chapter 4.
The new cutscene developer Donald Alfieri has come up with the basis for a lot of these new cutscenes for the second half.
Changes to Shopkeeper:
Currently Shopkeeper can die based off the player's actions or if they're careless or don't choose to buy goods from them based off the previous actions.
I was ignorant to some very negative tropes that this contributes to and I'm making some changes and what I feel are needed retcons to the character. We've begun work already on some of the points you see below, and all of these are going to be implemented by the time Selatria is ready for release. For future games, I want to do better on this and do better research on people of different backgrounds/orientations/communities so something like this doesn't happen again. I personally feel embarrassed that I didn't know about these aspects of the community and I want to make sure it gets changed.
Negatives removed/planned:
• Removed "Shopkeeper's Dying Will" item that would appear in wherever you let him die.
• Removed permadeath aspect. You will be able to see Shopkeeper in every scene he's supposed to be involved in.
• For places where his bones used to be if you let him die, it will just be nothing there assuming he somehow escaped or got free.
Positives planned:
• A "rewards" like system for if you buy the goods and stop him from getting angry, you get permanent discounts on his wares starting at 5% per positive interaction to a 25% discount cap
We have more additional further changes in mind to the Shopkeeper character, and we'll announce them as they become available.
After messing with Perforce and trying to get in contact with them for the Indie Studio pack and having to jump through hoops and emails to get a price point, we've settled on Plastic SCM/Gluon for the version/source control tool for the studio. I wanted to make sure we got a tool that everyone can use without it being a hassle, and I'm really happy we settled on the choice. I thought I was going to have to fight to get this all set up but it was extremely easy and straightforward. Why didn't we use this sooner?
We ended up going for the Cloud Server option for us.
E3 was handled a lot better this year than it has in previous years. While the industry only hours, there was time to actually get some dedicated playtime in but it wasn't enough of a time block to be able to see everything. (Each popular game was a multi-hour wait, even including industry credentials.) I hope next year they take more of a stance similar to Tokyo Game Show and have an industry-only day and then two full days for the public. That would be the best compromise to making the exhibition a better event.
For future conventions and events, some of us will be at the Las Vegas game jam next weekend and Gameacon Las Vegas at the end of the year. Next, Salt Lake Gaming Con? LVLUPEXPO 2019? More to come in the next development log.
Until next time!
Selatria
Progress on the Selatria project is going well. The most difficult aspect of the project is still managing the large amount of voices, what needs to be done, and what needs to be re-cast and re-recorded. Shadoe, the sound engineer of the project, has taken to going through the last main character's voices and sending me a list of what needs to be retaken there. While I go through the long backlog of voices for side characters and recurring characters and approve/send emails out as needed. Here are some new screenshots from Chapter 4.
The new cutscene developer Donald Alfieri has come up with the basis for a lot of these new cutscenes for the second half.
Changes to Shopkeeper:
Currently Shopkeeper can die based off the player's actions or if they're careless or don't choose to buy goods from them based off the previous actions.
I was ignorant to some very negative tropes that this contributes to and I'm making some changes and what I feel are needed retcons to the character. We've begun work already on some of the points you see below, and all of these are going to be implemented by the time Selatria is ready for release. For future games, I want to do better on this and do better research on people of different backgrounds/orientations/communities so something like this doesn't happen again. I personally feel embarrassed that I didn't know about these aspects of the community and I want to make sure it gets changed.
Negatives removed/planned:
• Removed "Shopkeeper's Dying Will" item that would appear in wherever you let him die.
• Removed permadeath aspect. You will be able to see Shopkeeper in every scene he's supposed to be involved in.
• For places where his bones used to be if you let him die, it will just be nothing there assuming he somehow escaped or got free.
Positives planned:
• A "rewards" like system for if you buy the goods and stop him from getting angry, you get permanent discounts on his wares starting at 5% per positive interaction to a 25% discount cap
We have more additional further changes in mind to the Shopkeeper character, and we'll announce them as they become available.
Dastardly Dairy Debacle
We're still making some progress on The Dastardly Dairy Debacle, but there's some last minute hiccups before we can bring it to Google Play. More information on this game will be in next month's development log.Improving the infrastructure/implementing proper source control
Up until now, we've been using Dropbox and Google Drive for our version control for game development. (I know, really bad/amateurish on our end.) While we've attempted to use more professional version control like GitHub, we've noticed it was rejecting some of the assets for our project that wasn't code-related, so that wouldn't work for us.
After messing with Perforce and trying to get in contact with them for the Indie Studio pack and having to jump through hoops and emails to get a price point, we've settled on Plastic SCM/Gluon for the version/source control tool for the studio. I wanted to make sure we got a tool that everyone can use without it being a hassle, and I'm really happy we settled on the choice. I thought I was going to have to fight to get this all set up but it was extremely easy and straightforward. Why didn't we use this sooner?
We ended up going for the Cloud Server option for us.
E3 and future conventions
E3 was handled a lot better this year than it has in previous years. While the industry only hours, there was time to actually get some dedicated playtime in but it wasn't enough of a time block to be able to see everything. (Each popular game was a multi-hour wait, even including industry credentials.) I hope next year they take more of a stance similar to Tokyo Game Show and have an industry-only day and then two full days for the public. That would be the best compromise to making the exhibition a better event.
For future conventions and events, some of us will be at the Las Vegas game jam next weekend and Gameacon Las Vegas at the end of the year. Next, Salt Lake Gaming Con? LVLUPEXPO 2019? More to come in the next development log.
Until next time!
Tuesday, June 19, 2018
Producing and Directing comments
Me: You know, I don't really do a lot of hands-on game development. ...Or at least as much as I'd like to.
Jon: That's because you're both a PRODUCER and DIRECTOR.
Me: ...Good point.
They're not just titles, I'm want to make sure the game is heading in a good direction as well as making sure we get everything settled with the publisher and patches. I think next project I'll take more of a creative role and leave the production side to the end. Well, at least, make the game, let it sit for a while during which I'll market it and build hype, then announce a release date and send it out to the world. Doing it all simultaneously is taxing.
Jon: That's because you're both a PRODUCER and DIRECTOR.
Me: ...Good point.
They're not just titles, I'm want to make sure the game is heading in a good direction as well as making sure we get everything settled with the publisher and patches. I think next project I'll take more of a creative role and leave the production side to the end. Well, at least, make the game, let it sit for a while during which I'll market it and build hype, then announce a release date and send it out to the world. Doing it all simultaneously is taxing.
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