Year: 2010

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Time.. can I haz some more?

Well the swift summer days are here again. Somehow the motivation levels have deflated a bit, probably due to being super super busy at the 9-5 and a good showing of freelance work this month.

Well that and babies appearantly seem to need more and more human interaction as they grow, and I’ve gotta do my part to keep gfw sane 😉

So sheep productivity has seen more active days. That’s ok though, there’s nothing wrong with being busy. 🙂 even if its not the kinda busy i’d prefer.

Oh well at least I got a couple sheep done last night so it’s a start. Oh and I can live vicariously through gfw’s adventure in Kelly Raes e-course, whic shell be blogging about over at her Wenderflonia art blog.

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On the road to nowhere

Well.  So according to “the plan” By now I should have had 28 sheep wrapped and packed.

Turns out it’s more like 4, well.. not like… it’s exactly 4.

On the other hand, though, I do have 20 sheep drawn, inked and scanned ready to paint, and that’s good.  That was all last week but I’d qualify that as keeping up on the schedule.

So this week just didn’t lead to any real work getting done.  Worked on some freelance stuff and started messing about with what will be the marketing site for Mutant Sheep Eat the Earth! Which I’ve the photoshop files all ready to go on. And ninjababy has been taking up all the time that’s more or less left over at the end of a work day.

Baby Jude earns his Ninja Legs at 8 weeks.

So, I’m not gonna fret.  Just buckle down and give it another go.  And I’m gonna be a better blogger and actually post on a semi-regular basis, there’s actually a series of game related things I’ve been meaning to get put down.

For now.. It’s time to crawl into bed and plan to assault next week with renewed vigor.

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A sheep a day

Short update on sheep development.

For the last week I’ve been maintaining an average of finishing a sheep a day.  As of today I’m racheting that up to 2 sheep a day with the allowance to either work forward or catch up as needed on weekends.  However, at midnight every Sunday 14 more sheep will be completed.

This puts me at 31 days for the next round of beta testing.  Give or take a day or so for a pass on the card files and rules to get updated with the more updated rules from the existing rounds of playtesting.

I know, 2 cards a day doesn’t sound like much.. but it’s probably going to work out between 1 1/2 to 2hrs a day.  Which, with a 2 mo old baby and normal household duties and freelance work piled on top.. It’s going to be a challenge and I forsee several late Sunday night cram sessions in the not too distant future.

However, tonight, I’m on top of the world and on schedule.  Which feels damn nice.

Some quick random notes from the gaming world.

http://www.frozensynapse.com/ is a fun turn based combat a-la X-com but with the whole future retro graphics vibe.  Games are very quick (5 -10 turns) and you don’t both have to be online at the same time. You can snag 2 beta keys for this excellent indie game for $25 (one for you and one for a friend)  Anyone playing feel free to shoot me a challenge (Drakkehim) I’m pretty terrible but it’s a heck of lotta fun.

http://www.sleepisdeath.net/ may be one of the more important Art ‘games’  that’s out there. Its 2 player always.. no ai.. freeform collaborative storytelling.  The community that’s serious about it are making filly, fun and sometimes deeply touching and moving stories together.  I’ve got 1/2 the cast of buffy built. 🙂   It’s all user generated content.  But content travels between players which is very cool.  So the more you play, the more stuff you have to play with.

http://www.taleworlds.com/main.aspx Mount and Blade – Warband is a very nice update to Mount and Blade which is probably the coolest mounted warfare game ever.  Made by a very talented bunch of guys from Turkey.

http://www.kings-bounty.com/eng/ The kings bounty series is just crazy turn based fantasy strategy that’s incredibly well done.  The Rock Paper Shotgun guys talk about it here.  And it just happens to be available on whatever digital download service you prefer. (steam, gamersgate, dirct2drive etc)

Oh, and they’ve announced Witcher 2…  yeah.. if it’s half as good as the first one it’ll be amazing.

That’s it.. I’m done.. -G’night.

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Quick update 50% marker passed!

Just tooting my own horn.  I just passed the 50% mark on the art asset creation for the sheep decks.

Just 62 more cards to finalize..

Here’s where things stand as of now:

Cards Drawn 78 remaining 47 total cards: 125
Cards Painted 63 remaining 62 ready to paint 15
Cards Placed indo Deck Files 63 remaining 62 ready to place 0
Cards Tested in Gameplay 1 remaining 124 -<this isn’t exactly accurate but I know what it means>-
Known Text Revisions To do 3
Proof  for Press complete remaining 125
Done 0 remaining 125

Drawn 78 remaining 47 total cards: 125Painted 63 remaining 62 ready to paint 15Placed 63 remaining 62 ready to place 0Tested 1 remaining 124 Known Rev 3 remaining 122 Proof 0 remaining 125 Done 0 remaining 125

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A minor change of Title

So with the acquisition of a planned fun little markting site for Mutant Sheep, the game has undergone a Minor Title change.  It’s now:

Mutant Sheep Eat the Earth!

[read that in a booming movie trailer voice]

So with the arrival of the new scanner  and spring mental cobweb cleaning done, it’s time to get down to brass tacks.

The big things to get done:

  • Art – lots of art still to do
  • Trademark/copyright  the game name/title
  • File actual paperwork for Swiftthought Games n stuff
  • Playtest the new version of the rules and card changes.
  • Create Marketing site mentioned above.
  • Make tutorial videos that explain the rules for above mentioned website.

Yeah so that’s a decent chunk of work..  Ok I’m gonna go watch SG-1 and draw 5 sheep before bedtime.

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Updated look for the site

Digital Spring Cleaning

Well it was about time for an update around here,  a bit of spring cleaning you might say.  It was a bunch of  fun.. especially trying to get Comicpress to integrate without going insane..  Still have to have to fix the navigation on the posts and subpage.. but it’s functional for now and I’m happy with the new look.

I got the basic layout and tweaks done and found some new widget plugins that will make things a bit easier to manage.  After I did a bit of housecleaning that is..  A bunch of old templates, junk files etc etc got wiped and some leftover images got resized.

Next up is www.wenderflonia.com getting a facelift and some tweaks and then both sites are going to get some core content cleaned up and moved about.

But for now, it’s back to baby training, working on the template project and maybe even enjoying the weekend a bit.

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Incubation And Spreadsheets

State of the Sheep

So after a couple days of taking a look at all the assets I feel like I’ve got a good grasp of where things stand in Mutant Sheep Eat the Planet!

In Short..

Cards Drawn 75 remaining 50 total cards: 125

Painted 62,remaining 63 ready to paint 13

Placed 60 remaining 65 ready to place into deck 2 (this is a short and easy step but it’s important which is why I track it)

So that’s not so bad.  Only 50 illustrations left and then 63 color jobs.   Granted the biggest hurdle is that I no longer have a scanner and the whole ‘transition to an all digital pipeline’ just doesn’t seem to be happening.   So I bought a scanner and it’ll be here in a couple days.

In the meanwhile I’ve started revising some basic rules, and updating the text on the cards so as to get mystelf start thinking about the rules etc and balance.  Hopefully I can make edits to the cards while watching baby Jude perform his nightly antics.. So a new round of playtesting will  be in the immediate/near future.

Then there’s a couple other steps for the cards, proofreading, final alignment, etc but those are what I’ll make friends n Family do 😉

Other Projects that Eat Time

Irismel.com

Ok so this is currently a formative tech demo.  But the thought of a multiplayer online web based rougelike with a live DM has been percolating around in the back of my mind forever.  So when I needed to figure out jQueryUI standards I whipped together the beginning’s of a web based map editor.  The downside..It more or less kills IE.. something about absolute positioning 5,000 32×32 divs makes it crawl.   But I’ve got some ideas to improve performance drastically.    Oh and what’s already up at Irismel.com is my first level editor for Blood Soaked Deadly Dungeons of Doom! But Irismel is a project that’s growing out of research projects not a driver for research, which is why I’m looking to use CakePHP for the foundation, because it’s something I want to learn.

Template Driven Microsites

The project that’s primarily eating away from SheepTime(tm) is an easy to edit microsite development tool.  That’s all I’m saying for now.. but it’s pretty cool and easy to use and has the potential to actually ‘Earn Real Money’.

Freelance Work

Yup just a trickle at the moment, but at least one item in the immediate future.

Misc Gaming News

So the Christmas Deluge has come and gone and it was good.

The highlight was clearly Dragon Age, easily the best game of last year.

Currently playing Mass Effect 2.. and it’s absolutely spectacular, also playing some Sins of a Solar Empire : Diplomacy for the strategy fix.. and it’s good and a handful of tiny Indie & Casual games that are just lots of fun (Trine, AI War, Soliumn Infernum, Boowork Adv 2 etc.)

The top 3 acquisitions that I’d like to make that just came out in the Spring Bonanza are: Bad Company 2.. Multiplayer shootem fun, Final Fantasy XIII for the jRPG fix and Settlers 7 for the build a world fix.. except it’s covered in UBI’s super evil DRM so it’s getting a pass until they come to their senses.  But really I’ll probably just go and play more Arma2 and Witcher and Empire: Total War.

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Firing up the ol engines of creation!

So now that Jude

aka Milkface

has come into our lives things are slowly settling into a routine (granted it’s one with less sleep than we’d like, but it’s a start).    That means there is starting to be some periods of non super stressful time where freelance work and pet projects can once again start to flourish.

On the freelance side of things, things are picking up nicely with more design work for KELL

And the Big paintings were a big success and look beautiful on Jude’s wall.

Sun Elephant

So that leaves the much neglected games projects, and the sheep are getting hungry.

So starting tomorrow it’s time to take a good hard look at where things stand and what still needs to be done.  I have a sneaky suspicion that it will involve spreadsheets and maybe even some project planning stuff.. YAY!  And more playtesting.  I have an XML based card shuffler program I whipped up to teach myself Python that will let me run a couple hundred pulls of the decks and see how things work mathmaticlly so I can see if I can find some solution to the whole endgame issue where players don’t have enough clout to affect the outcome.

Lots to do, and it promises to be exciting.  Oh and I’ll be blogging more, and possibly adding some more game industry ramblings / reviews n commentary.

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Bebbeh?

The first of 2 paintings for Jude’s baby room is finished and the second one is on the drawing board.   So that’s progress.

Hang the Stars from the Moon

Freelance work has actually been pretty busy so that’s been sapping a good bit of the ol’ come home from work and work on pet projects enthusiasm.  However I’ve got a good chunk of time mentally set aside here in the near future to get to grinding out the updated art for the cards.   So hopefully I can get the Mutant Sheep out the door.  And start one of the other two game ideas that have been percolating for a couple months. Very exciting stuff.

But right now, it’s pretty much all baby all the time.

On the games front there’s a couple little tidbits worth sharing.   I finally beat Mirror’s Edge which was surprisingly good and different, not sure why it go panned so bad when it came out.   Metaplace, Raph Koster’s mmo brainchild, closed down, which isn’t entirely unexpected since it felt so un-rooted and essentially wound up more of a chat room than it did a fully customizable world.  It’s still kinda sad after following his blog and twits for a couple years and knowing how hard those guys worked for it.  Dragon Age, is deep and spectacular, and definitely not default to easy mode, which is nice.   Solium Infernum, is mind bendingly complex and looks to have the award for best Play By Email game of the decade wrapped up.  (anyone up for a game? email me)

Board game wise..

My copy of Pandemic has arrived and we’ve played a couple games.  It’s a bit of a mental twist to be playing cooperatively against the game, but very refreshing.  So far we’ve mastered easy mode and haven’t lost yet and need to kick it up a difficulty, the awesome thing is that you can play a game in about an hour to hour and 1/2.

Also glaring evilly at me from my shelf of recent aquisitions is a copy of Arkham Horror, also an entirely cooperative affair we’ve yet to play it, as it looks to be a 2-4 hour thing and we havent had that kind of time (and go figure it’s gonna take longer for the first game).  Interestingly enough, it allows 1 player games as well.

And we need to play more Decent while we’re at it.

Hmm wonder if we can mandate a monthly game day in the house?

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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.