Author: simon

Posted on by — 2 Comments

Tales of puppets, babies, games etc

Latest News

So here we are, another year is already on the way and it’s time to get busy.

As of today baby Jude is ~45days out and counting, lots of house prep is being done and more still to do.  Excitement is high and nesting mode is in full swing.  The home office has been moved into the game room and the new space works well and the start of a dedicated baby room is in progress.  Super Awesome GFW has got her etsy store up and running, and a whole kitchen studio full of paint and canvas.  90% of all pictures on the walls in the house are now original art, and man is that nice.

Christmas came and went in a blur of cookies, candy, family and food.  When it was all said and done my very own muppet Whatnot was here to stay.  He’s pictured above, and it’s very very cool.  I have plans for him.  Big plans.  But first I’m gonna need a couple mutant sheep puppets.

Speaking of Mutant Sheep.. With the death of my POS Kodak all in one printer I no longer have a scanner.  So I’m having to switch to an all digital pipeline.. which may be faster once I get rolling on it.. but it does mean that I can’t doodle out the roughs at work and then take em home and ink em.  Other than that, it’s back to grindstone and get em finished asap!  Progress on it has been pretty abysmal lately and I’m not exactly thrilled with that, not sure what the mental block/holdup is but it’s time to work through it.

That is, just as soon as I wrap up a bit more paying design / web work.  The freelance developer & designer side of things is really picking up lately and I hope to keep it rolling throughout the year.  So naturally that stuff comes first, before Sheep.

Gaming

The holidays were full of super end of year sales, the most impressive was probably the insane Steam sale, lots of awesomeness was picked up at a pittance.  So here’s a list of the gaming highlights.

  • Dragon Age: Traditional fantasy RPG, polished like nothing else.
  • Kings Bounty: Insane Fantasy turn based combat with a happy disregard for tradition.
  • Mirrors Edge: First person runner.  Not sure why this wasn’t a bigger hit.
  • Garrys Mod:  A multiplayer physics based playgound, had a lot of fun building airships with kiddo an just doing strange stuff.
  • Left for Dead 2: Better than the first one, more zombies, more guns, for when you just want to shoot.
  • Machinarium: A beautiful hand drawn adventure game with so much character its hard to believe.
  • STALKER – Clear Sky: Post Chernobyl fps world to explore full of mutants and more.

And in board games:

We have played the first game of Pandemic.  A co-op board game where you have to work together to save the world from 4 diseases, HIGHLY recommended.  And I have a copy of Arkahm Horror sitting on my desk waiting to have a day dedicated to it.

Posted on by

Long time no bloggy.

Ok, been a bit hectic and I’ve been a bad blogger. 🙁

I feel I can blame it on the impending arrival of offspring and get on with it.

the debbil
the Devil

Couple paintings are done and there’s now a nice angel and demon in 24×24″ panels in the front hall. You know.. to scare people away from the good art that covers the rest of the house.

So the current plans (subject to revision but hey I feel better when I can pretend life’s going according to some sort of plan) is to prep the baby room and get the 2 paintings finished in time for baby Jude to arrive.    Then it’s baby time and squeezing in the last touches on Mutant Sheep Eat The Planet! and get that finished out by Summer in addition to getting some more freelance work and getting Wenderflonia all set up and ready to take over the art world.

The entry to the kitchen
The entry to the kitchen
Posted on by — 1 Comment

Slow progress, but good things none the less

Wow time sure does fly, and whoa am I so totally not going to make the Oct 31 deadline! Which more or less means that November and December are going to be choked with Holidays and Family.

And it turns out there’s a little baby boy inbound, eta Feb 25(ish) (holy crap!)

So that has got to be more or less the last deadline, beacause somehow I don’t think there’s gonna be much free time after that for a while.

So, you might ask, what the hell have you been doing for the last 18 days.   Well, Mutant Sheep progress has been slow… much slower than I wanted but I seriously needed a break. More After the Break, Pictures too! Continue reading Slow progress, but good things none the less

Posted on by

Slow progress

So progress in sheepsville has been..well.. slow..
I’ve got another dozen or so sheep painted and ready to go into their cards, but overall, progress has been a fraction of what it needs to be.

The upside, however, is that I’ve gotten a bunch of freelance work (that’s right, I’ll work for money) and that’s pretty much all wrapped up for now.

I’ve started the process of reworking the site theme. Currently I’ve got the new headers and superfish menus in place, and gotten a jquery lightbox up and running, the menu’s need a bit more work though. Also, we now have a gallery.

All that remains is the re-styling of the content and sidebar and drawing a new site background image.

But first up, www.Wenderflonia.com is gearing up for a massive overhaul and that’s #1 in the priority list. Keep an eye out for it, we’ll have art commissions, prints and more goodies coming soon.

And more sheep. I must make more picture of sheep, and get an accurate count of exactly how many I still have left to finish.

That’s it for now. Further updates shortly.

Posted on by — 2 Comments

Mutant Sheep Balanced on a Razor’s Edge

Well as promised, here’s a recap of the weekend’s playtesting. It’s gona be a long one.

The good:

It was amazingly fun.  A bit unlike other games, the going strategy seems to be hording your cards in your hand until you can twist the game in your favor, which seems a bit of a hard concept for Parker to grasp.   Really, even the two player game was a lot of fun and not totally skewed which was one of my big concerns.  It was fun for all of us and the base mechanics and strategy work exactly as I imagined they would.

There was a slight issue with the print of my cards, but the super responsive guys (JT) at TheGameCrafter.com explained the issue and how they were going to have the issue rectified well before I finish up for launch.   So no worries on that front.

The colors looked great and the quality of the cardstock is very nice and they shuffle well.

beta1-gameplay

The ok:

Lots of typos and little phrases that need to be tweaked and made into english.  I got some great feedback on the rules on the little bits and pieces that I assumed the player would know.  During the games we played over the weekend I got a dozen or so cards whos’ verbiage either needs to change or simply be clarified as the ability didn’t make as much sense as I hoped.

The instructions need to mention a couple things about adding Event location points to the size of the current area, but that’s minor.

The eh:

This is probably the biggest list of issues that came up, and the good thing is that they are all fairly easily correctible.

The timing of when you can use side effects and sheep special abilities is not clear and some cards contradict each other.  The usage of Blue (sheep is stunned/busy/incapacitated) tokens was not consistent.  These are essentially just going through and making all the cards agree and putting it in the rules.

Keeping track of mutation abilites  and side effects can become a bit of a slog.  Cleaning up the timing and usage of abilites will make it easier.  Additionally I’ve decided to add a card case which will leave me with a board with some spare space where I can print out some tokens for things like keeping track of the Hairless sheep (yes, its a serious issue when the blizzard shows up)

The massive number of tokens for large events (we easily had some places in the mid forties ) makes it hard to see exactly how much landmass is remaining in the location to be eaten (which is how you get victory points).  This makes planning things 2 or 3 turns ahead extremely difficult.   This will be remedied by cardboard tokens with numbers on em.

There need to be more side effects with a variable range so you can tweak the total amount eaten by your (and other player’s) sheep a bit more easily.

The Uggh:

Late game balance is a bit out of whack.  Not in the sense that it’s once sided or anything, just that once each player gets 5 or 6 sheep out and a couple mutations on them there’s not much you can do to stop them from devouring a whole location per turn.  So the amount of luck to winning goes up as the game goes up.   The good part is that this is easily fixable by a combination of minor tweaks to the game.  We’ve got three major tweaks that we’re going to be testing indiviually and in combination.  1. Make Side-Effects permanent.  This would let you permanently alter yours and other player’s sheeps appetites.  2. Increase the size of the smaller locations so they last longer.  This would potentially slow the point acquisition of the early game but make the endgame less luck driven.  3. Increase the bonus/penalty that Side effects give.

The Yay!

That’s it.  The game was fun, and with a bit more testing I’m sure we can get the balance of endgame to luck worked out and then it’ll be awesome!

Ok that’s it for now.  Further updates to follow but for now I’m just painting sheep like mad!

Posted on by — 1 Comment

Sheep with a side order of stuff

Time for a quick update!

All the text on the cards were wrapped up by Sunday night as hoped!  This included the 30 something painted cards and a blank placeholder for the ones that have not been painted yet.

It turns out that there will be 8 blank cards in the set so I’m thinking of making them a couple of rule summary cards instead of leaving em blank.

With the basic decks assembled, I ordered a copy of the game from thegamecrafter.com (as the designer I only have to  pay manufacturing and shipping which makes it more affordable in case I need to do multiple iterations of some core mechanic (which I don’t think so .. but you never know))

So I just got the shipping confirmation email and the UPS guys say it should be here by Friday.  So that gives me a couple days to catch up on some pet projects and freelance stuff.

Continue reading Sheep with a side order of stuff

Posted on by — 4 Comments

Mutatant Sheep and other exciting things.

Whoa, I’ve been a bad blogger.  It’s been over two months since I updated this thing.  Time to get back in the swing of things then.

So after finishing the monster of all paintings, creativly, I was a bit drained.  So I spent about a month not really doing anything.. just recharging the old batteries.  Then via Raph Koster’sblog I heard of something super exciting!

A couple guys had gotten together and done a Print On Demand website.. where you can print Games!

Consequently my brain went into hyperdrive and threatened to explode.  I glanced at  one of my little doodles at work ( a gigantic 3 eyed sheep stomping around a landscape) and my next pet project was born.

So here I am, a little over a month later, over 50% of the way there with the final art (drawing and painting in photoshop 125 sheep is a lot of work, it turns out.)  And the cards are 90% of the way defined.  The immediate goal is to have all the cards put in their final state by next Monday, and then order a playtest set, for tweaking the numbers and mechanics while I wrap up the art.

Heres some of the cards
Here's some of the cards

Current statistics:

  • Total Cards: 125
  • Cards Drawn: 64
  • Cards Painted: 44
  • Cards Text Written:  75
Posted on by — 4 Comments

Clockworld, It’s Done!

So it only took a little under 7 months, this weekend I finally wrapped up the behemoth that’s been hanging in the kitchen since January. The biggest change was wiping out the sun, which I spent so much time into getting perfect the first time around. However it just wasn’t working. Once the sun got off the canvas the remainder just fell into place.

While it was fun for the most part, I’m seriously gonna think twice before starting another canvas of that size. It just takes so long and so much effort you wind up just tired of it before you’re halfway, and then once part comes out brilliant, just as imagined, everything else seems sub-par. Thank god it wasn’t in oils though, or I’d just be starting the glazes.

Next up, a commissioned (I barter for exotic liquor) series of cute jungle animals for a cute little niece. Lions, gazelles, giraffes and a penguin(?) oh My!

Posted on by

Summertime!

Ah, it’s been a blissful vacation.

However now it’s full steam ahead! GFW is moving in next week and tons to do around the house before then.

Playing a bit of the Sims 3 and it’s very good and a radioactive black vortex that you can easily dump seemingly endless amounts of time into.

Then as soon as live gets settled and the summer excercise routine gets picked up again (ate too much on vacation and now I have a bad case of Bahamian Guilt)  then I’m itching to spend some time wrapping up the monster painting that’s been hanging unfinished in the kitchen for 5 months now.

Posted on by

Wandering

Ok so it’s been a bit hectic with a bunch of things that just had to get done, which turns out to have sapped my usual laser like (HAH!) focus.

But the creative itch is growing and I have a feeling I’ll be cracking open the acrylics soon.  (that and I owe lil sis some cute animal pix for superbaby’s room).

With the help of GuitarTricks.com I’ve been attempting to get a grasp on the whole playing guitar thing, and I’m getting better.  The best thing I did was to buy a decent guitar (Rouge acoustic/electric Dreadnought from musiciansfriend.com), not having to slice your fingers trying to jam down the strings makes a huuge difference, and it sounds better too) .

Other than that, a super co-operative project with GFW is underway and we’re having fun and getting some serious progress made.

Programming at work, however, is pretty much making sure it’s the last thing I want to go home and do as well.. so BSDDoD! may have to stay on the backburner for a while.

But first, vacation in 18 days.

Posted on by

Springtime doldrums and overthought thinkings

So, I’ve been running around in the total overwhelmed mode for a while and it’s time to steer the frantic caffinated ADD besotted herd of cats that is my attention span back onto track.

Some basic concept art got created, and then I wandered off the project to illustrationland and then got mired down in EPIC project full of GRAND ideas etc etc and just essentially spent some time thinking myself to exhaustion.  Time to think less and do more.

I’ve made a list damnit!  With a great big list of bite size (a week or 2) tasks to do. I’m going to pick one and just do it and then simply rinse and repeat.   Theory being that this will decrease the amount of time spent bashing head on desk/wall/art table/sidewalk by not getting overwhelmed by any one thing or medium. 

Updates to follow.

Posted on by — 1 Comment

unscheduled diversion & waves of light

So Progress on the main project has been really slow this week.   That’s not to say a bunch of stuff didn’t get done.. It’s just not tangible stuff.   I got the high scores put in and it seems to be working fine, and then I just ran into a mental brick wall of ‘now what?’.  So I just let things stew in the noggin while I did other things.

  So what other things did I keep myself occupied with one might ask?

Well, such things as going ocd in trying to lean guitar.. step 1. hurt fingers daily until you can press a string for more than 10 seconds without pain.  well.. im still working on that one. 

More interestingly I dusted off my lightwave 9.6 and started digging in to finally trying to learn the damn thing.  Sloooowly making progress.  I have managed to make a cube and some ovals and give them a texture.  The whole layout side of things is making a bit more sense as well with the lights and timeline etc etc.  Anyway the results of this is:  

box-v8-desktop

And in the meanwhile, I’ve been jotting down whatever ideas that have popped into my head as things to add to the game and I’ve now got a pretty handy idea of what i need to do next.

Posted on by

A week of dubious progress

Well ok so I’ve got a valid excuse for not getting a whole lot done over the last week.

However, I did manage to get the whole loading, saving, entry and displaying of high scores implemented.

 So.. that’s a plus.  Still a couple bugs to work out but 90% there.  Next up … hmm.. not exactly sure.. maybe I should iron out some details so I can see what I need to do before calling it Finished.

Posted on by — 2 Comments

Mar 7 update – alpha 4 released

Whew, so It’s been a while since I released alpha 2… Soo much has changed and been improved.  Here’s a brief changelog of stuff I can remember off the top of my head.

  • New main menu and faster startup times. 
  • Lots more assets to load at startup so it’s actually doing stuff while you have to look at the pictures.
  • New map. A huge dungeon assembled off arenas from the web map generator.
  • Rooms seal upon entry and then depending on how deep you are get harder and harder.
  • Sounds!  ok just some basic sounds but man does it make a difference.
  • New look for gameplay areas and tiles. 

Alpha 4 new main menu

Aplha 4 - screenshot 2 gameplay

Lots of hooks are ready for easy insertion of new enemies, powerups, and the special items that will be included in the store  you can visit between levels (soon).

Overall I’m incredibly pleased with the amount of progress.  I’m mostly excited about having reached a point where I can do so many thing (new graphics, monsters, quests… the mind boggles!!!)

For now, I’m just gonna play a bit.

As always you can download it here(~12mb), and as always use it at your own risk, I make no claims that it won’t terrorize your cat, melt your eyeballs, or do any other unpredictable things..  But it seems to be working just fine for me.

[edit] changed out some sounds for better samples of what I intend for the end product. [/edit]