I am constantly asked about acquiring licensing for console development. From the enthusiasm of these developers and the rather lacking amount of information on the web about it (other than forum posts about prices and speculations and homebrew kits), I thought I would at least toss out the base links for getting information from the official licensing sources.
Count Gore De Vol presents "Cheerbleeders!" from Gore De Vol on Vimeo.
Peter is made of friggin' awesome!
I often hear the phrase "do what you know" or "do what you are good at", but the problem is that I'm a bit scattered at times and have difficulty pinpointing just what it is that I'm good at.
I'm quite competant at computer programming. I've been doing it for a long time and have several languages, development environments, and projects under my belt as a result of it. So it seems that I should run in that direction, and at times I have. My latest little foray into the programming world off-the-clock has been a little RPG engine that currently makes use of Flex. If I go much further with it, I will be using the PushButton Engine, which is a great Flash-based engine that has some very strong developers behind it. It is well-organized and can efficiently push what I am doing in the right direction (ie. I will not have to build an engine from scratch).
But I find the RPG to be a diversion; it is a way for me to avoid doing other things because I'm having difficulty with them. Not real-life stuff. I clean the ferret cage, do laundry (sometimes), and putter around the house or yard. But those things that I do not have to be doing but enjoy...but and stuck on.
Like Manifest Destiny. I had a dream about a little girl who could manifest herself psychicly. Then I began to flesh it out. Suddenly, I had a slew of ideas , none of them well-formed but all of them intriguing. Maybe ideas would be too vague a term. Instead it was a series of imagery or lines or situations that I found intriguing. Unfortunately, since they are ephemeral in nature, they are having trouble manifesting themselves, which is a problem with the premise. If I cannot dilineate a single arc with these phantoms, then having a lot of partial arcs that never go anywhere would be extremely annoying and irritating to write, develop, film, and watch. So I am thinking of back-burnering it for a bit. I feel bad though, because Chris is an amazing help and helped me hone ideas down a bit...but they are still so scattered that I think it would take much, much longer than we have to even make something baseline presentable.
Which makes me look at other projects.
I have thought a lot about the pioneer slasher because it is mostly a single location with a smallish group of actors (and a similarly sized crew). Unfortunately, I would have to travel and take these people with me to a location, which I cannot afford. Strike there.
I have also thought a lot about a zombie musical. This is my favorite idea that I want to work on, though it is also one of the wackiest since I do not want a comedy show-piece, but a full-on in-your-face ultraviolent hyperactive zombie bloodfeast...with music and lyrics. I will see how this idea shapes up this next week.
I have also been doing a bit of 3D modeling in Modo. I'm relearning the interface since it has been a while since I got into it. It is easy enough that it truly is like riding a bike. I have been modeling a high-school, because I'm a fan of modern games that take place in hellish environments.
Which brings me back around to doing what I know. I do a lot of different things, but I do not know how well I do them. From work, I know that programming is something that I can do well, but it is also my job day-in-and-day-out.
Time to go and act for the final weekend of Relatively Speaking. We should have a good house tonight. I know tomorrow night is sold out.
I was driving home from Theatre ISU's fun and lively production of Picasso at the Lapin Agile when I heard a song by Dope featuring Zakk Wylde of Black Label Society (as well as being a hell of a guitarist for Ozzy). The song "Addiction" has the chorus:
Cocaine, heroin, alcohol and vicadin
And I couldn't get out of my head that I had heard this string before or at least something like it. Here is the video:
Nice bit of nu-metal, that.
The song that I had in my head wasn't Nu-Metal, though. Not really much of any kind of metal. More of a fun-punky sound that the second stage of Vans is so fond of. It took a second to remember what it was. It was Boink! A band that I found while looking for music for Die Happy.
Here's their in-development site. The song is "Prescription Cocktail". Two different styles that use what I am sure is most likely a twist of a common drug-poet chant in very different ways. Boink's list is a lot longer and a bit more fun, though. Definitely not the same, but both caught in my head and it took looking them up (and sorting through my music collection) to figure out why my brain would not shut down.
Prosiac, Ridilin, Aderal, Welbutrin/Put it in the water now/Everybody's learning how
Paxil, lithium, SoCo, give me some/Put it in the water now/Everybody's gonna feel happy, happy, happy, not sad.
Prosiac, Ridilin, Aderal, Welbutrin/Nicotine, tylenol, heroin, alcohol
Should you be remotely interested, as I am in my dabling state, I have created a group of templates for different handhelds. Mostly, it will help artists think about how their nifty desktop game artwork will work on mobile devices. It can really muddy up your day. First of all, you should check out the technical comparison from Joystiq. Note that the gallery settings are a bit strange when viewing them. Clicking on the individual images will give you the proper dimensions, etc.
I have to say that I love my jobs. Sure, there can be horrific pressures. ISU is seeing budget freezes, layoff's, hiring freezes. I get people who scream at me to support their non-existent C++ coding knowledge when they were told repeatedly that certain features require C++ changes to the engine (PhysX in TGE, for example). But 99% of the time, I quite enjoy my jobs.
I enjoy getting to work with Chuck and Ron on our lab issues. I really enjoy getting to sit down, test logic, and program. My boss, Tony, makes chatting about extremely important issues seem light and much less stressful than they could be. In all, it feels like a pretty big win situation.
Working at ISU and GG is an Epic Win!
On the GarageGames front, I really enjoy Deborah, Mich, Brett, Jacob, and Michael who I seem to be in constant communication with about any given number of things that are going on in my work-day. Sometimes I feel a bit out of the loop, as can be expected from a remote employee, but Matt and the rest of the Torque 3D crew and contractors keep me well-versed in everything that is going on in the development shell. Jacob is excellent at keeping me updated on what is happening with web pushes that he and his team are working on. Mich is a powerhouse when it comes to documentation and community presence. His GDC interviews and documentation are absolutely awesome.
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