Glow Cubes Demo Deferred
2010-04-30
During these past two weeks, I was taxed to much by my day job. We went into fully fledged crunch and you can imagine how much effort you can bring up when working 9.5 h...
New dead line for GlowCubes (The Demo): 23 Mai
3 Keys for Indi Game Projects
2010-04-23
3 Overlooked Keys to Making Outstanding Games (Game Career Guide)
This is a very interesting article, even though it is stating the obvious. The basic idea in the article is that you need 3 "keys" that are often overlooked by independent game designers.
These keys are:
- Set Clear Goals for Your Game
- Map Out What You Know and Don't Know
- Make a Simple Schedule
Now let's take some time and look at my so far failed game projects. So far I have had the ideas and started development on (at least designing) the games of Lunar Exodus (RTS), Captain Pink Beard (Point and Click Adventure), Glow Cubes (Puzzle "Shooter") and My Little Garden (Casual Simulation).
Porting parallel.sh to MSys
2010-04-17
Ever wanted to process many files but your program is single threaded and your have multiple cores? Well I wanted just that, process 1500 files and I have a 8 core machine. The problem with bash scripts is that loops are executed in sequential order. You can process commands in parallel by appending & at the end of the script. The problem launching 1500 processes is a sure thing to kill your machine.
I tripped over this article: A srcipt for running processes in parallel in Bash. It is a really cool script with which you can execute commands in parallel.
I copied the script into my MSys installation. Guess what, it did not work. The problem is that it checks for /proc/$PID. Too bad that MSys does not have a /proc file system.
So I changed the code to use ps and grep. Its probably not as effective, but it works on msys...
Download the modified script; parallel.sh
Go! Go! Glow Cubes!
2010-04-16
I planed to build a game called GlowCubes about a year ago. It basically spun of while reading this article about Image Space Lighting (deferred shading). The idea is to solve physics based puzzles in a psychedelic environment build from a bunch of glowing shapes.
I basically gave up on most of my projects as I wrote the Hobby or Pro journal entry. It was a big mess (in a very elegant way), since I tried to develop the Quick Game Library at the same time and build in on top of that. I went though different complete redesigns, since the requirements seemed to change and the scope changed.
Hobby or Pro
2010-04-06
Over the last 3 years I tried to develop a number of game projects with the aim to sell them. Each project ran out of steam, mostly because of scale and lack of time. Each project was smaller in scale then the previous and still failed. Every time I said oh it is just a hobby, but a certain disappointment still remains.
One of the biggest problems I have is the fact that I have not found one game engine that was worthwhile. As a result a large amount of effort was invested into developing technology. Now I have partially finished technology, but still no games.
I have never seriously considered to work professionally in game development. For the first fact, my current job just pays to darn well and is extremely safe. Being a father and husband, this is the sensible thing to do. If I develop games, then with that safety net in place.
What drives me is the fun of developing and figuring out new things. I need to acknowledge this fact and that until I do have a publishing contract or you can download my game from steam, it remains a hobby. Maybe I can live better with this mindset and stop trying to force me to create a feasible game idea and design. I just do it because it's fun.
Inside the Sausage Factory: The Art of IP Development
2010-03-26
Gamasutra has yet a interesting feature article: Inside the Sausage Factory: The Art of IP Development.
It is a rundown of how to develop IP based on common trends. Basically the article describes how publishers of media create more of the mediocre stuff to service to a fad. From a business standpoint this make sense, but artistically it is nonsense. It will not create a new trend or rich media.
The author seems to take himself a bit ironically: Inside the Sausage Factory. Sausages are yummy, but not the height of culinary delight.
New Ideas and the Hinterland Of Fail
2010-03-23
I just read a great blog post on why innovation is hard and error prone. Not the newest subject but a well written condensed piece: New Ideas and the Hinterland Of Fail
Site Back Online
2010-03-13
After some downtime the site is back online, but content is still missing in many places.
My "old" server decided to go AWOL last Wednesday. The server did not come back up after some planed maintenance on the buildings power system. Since the server ran flawless for about five years and a 99% uptime guarantee, they still have 18.25 days to fix the problem. Although they promised to fix the problem as fast as possible, it seems other people have similar issues.
The site is back up on a different server. This is because I was planing on moving the site to a cheaper (and newer) virtual server. The new server was ready on Tuesday and I was planing to move all my sites next week or so. Well now I booted by schedule up a bit.
Since I wanted to make changes on Rioki's Corner and merge some almost obsolete sites into mine. The roll out of Rioki's Corner took a bit longer than expected.
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