gaming

Life Is Hard

Posted on by magicrat_larry

I’m writing this during the middle of the day.  Why you ask?  Because life is hard.  See I had to change my daily schedule due to the difficult nature of life.  It happens.  I get it.  What I hate the most is when this stuff makes people truly believe that the world is almost too hard to succeed in.

There are two types of people that think life is hard.  The first is the “Life is so hard, I can hardly stand it” person and the second is the “Normally life is easy, but I make my life more difficult because I interact with the world” person.  I am the second person.  If I wanted to I could lay back and have a simple life.  I have a good job, a great family and I generally enjoy everything about my days.

I personally hate that, oo life is good, feeling and always push myself, and the world to the next level and feel satisfied doing it.  So The other people, sit around waiting for an excuse to explain why they do not do anything other than what they do today.  I hate that.  Don’t be one of those people, please!

Do something that is hard.  Make life hard.  I took my normal life and said I need to do more with it.  So I started fitting more and more in and now it is bursting at the seems.  Not because life is hard, but because I choose the difficulty level.  I choose to be a game developer chasing a dream after work.  I choose to play with my child whenever I can.  I choose to get up early and sleep less.  I choose how difficult my life is and my life is hard and I love it.

Select Difficulty level

What’s Your Game Development Dream?

Posted on by magicrat_larry

I had a nice conversation of Twitter yesterday with @berit_anderson, yeah I’m calling you out.  In that conversation I was asked the following questions, “What is my gamedev dream?”, and “What would be an ideal setup for you?”  Let me attack each one of those this morning.

What is my gamedev Dream?

Well to begin with, it is on my bucket list, actually the final item on it, to create a game and sell it to at least one person I do not know.  Sounds dumb, but it’s a dream.  Starting with that I think it has evolved from there.  I am a computer programmer by trade, so I spend my days coding to save companies money.  It’s not terrible, it is kind of fun usually.  In the end though I am working for companies and providing value to an entity that is not a living breathing person, so I am changing the lives of people through proxy of the company I happen to be coding for.

What I believe games are is a means for me to directly change peoples lives without a proxy.  In games people feel emotions, and generally get happier.  What a better way to spend the last portion of my career, fulfilling my bucket list and making the world a happier place, one game at a time.

What is my ideal setup?

I have already done business before, so I really don’t want to do it again.  What I want is my current job to turn into game development.  I work for an amazing company OST and they have showed interest in creating games after Aaron, my partner in crime, and I told them “They have a game development company, they just don’t know it yet.”

So Ideally, we work for OST full-time on games.  Right now we are in the attempt to prove to them that we are not nuts, that there is money in it, and we are the right people to attract that money by making great games.

Conclusion

I want to make games, to make peoples lives better.  I do not want to be the accountant of a games company.  I want to concentrate on making high quality games that people will enjoy for years.  So I work my butt off trying to make that happen, daily.

If you have not seem our project on IndieDB yet, here is my shameless plug – Violent Sol – Worlds

worlds

One of Those Days

Posted on by magicrat_larry

I got up late today, and everything is taking a lot longer than it normally feels it does.  So this will be a shorter one today I am sorry.

The past week has been fun though.  We finally got the game announcement out the front door.  Our hope is we can have some validation of the idea through a few means.  Once we get validation then we will pour ever ounce of energy into it and knock it out.  If you are interested in the game pleas do go check out one of these places and leave us feedback.

Violent Sol – Worlds Forums –

Game Features

Dev Forums

 Violent Sol – Worlds Home –

OST Games Studio

Violent Sol – Worlds

I’m sorry this post is not more witty and interesting but it is kind of an off day.

Our Game Project – Top down, survival, Action, Shooter with vehicles, crafting, and an AI overlord.

Posted on by magicrat_larry

We are so close to explaining our title and unleashing it on the world.  We have been painstakingly putting together the feature list and starting to commit to what we will develop for the title.  It is fun, but it is a process I cannot wait to be done with.

I wanna tell you that our game vehicles are amazing physics modeled action joys to drive, and our character runs around and shoots laser guns at enemies.  I want to tell you that We will have an AI overlord that will continually keep your game interesting.  I want to tell you that you will be able to do all of this with your friends.  There is so much I want to tell you, but can’t.

NewSplat

Well, the truth is all of this is speculation and rumor, but it would be cool if I could tell you.  What if I could tell you tht you could craft weapons, cars, and possibly even planes?  What if I could tell you about the game and start to get you fired up?  That would be awesome wouldn’t it?

handle barrelgun

I wish I could tell you something about it, but I hope you will stay tuned to hear more from me about it in the future.  I wish I could say building too.

House

Take care.

Twitter, the Best Mobile Game Ever!

Posted on by magicrat_larry

I’ve said it to many people and I get the same response of laughter every time.  “Twitter is the funnest mobile game ever! ”  Why does everybody laugh?  To me it is really true, Twitter is a very addictive and fun mobile game.

Why do I call Twitter a game?  I think it has all the elements of a game.  It has a large open world to explore, multiplayer, goals, rewards, and even disappointments.  Twitter takes the game to the next level, where Facebook just touched the surface.  Twitter made it fast paced, exciting, and very interactive in nearly real-time.  Twitter turned the social networking experiment into a very huge Social MMO where everyone is attempting to contact everyone else and get as many interactions as possible in like 8 minutes or less, how exhilarating.

Let’s take all the game-play elements and explain them.

Open World

Twitter is a massive world, you can sit there and search many different areas of it and see nearly endless content that is quick, and entertaining.  You can find anything and not have to read for hours, but just 140 characters at a time, or even just look at pictures.  So this world is vast, diverse, and tailors to many kinds of peoples mindsets for gaming.

Goals

Twitter is very much goal oriented.  You are motivated to create content, and try new things to reach the rewards that we detail in the next section.  It is highly likely that you will end up putting a lot more thought into your 140 characters than you ever imagined.

Rewards

It will tell you in real-time when somebody noticed you and the part of the world you are creating.  They can favorite you, which is like telling you that you rock.  They can retweet you, which is like broadcasting your content to their part of the world.  The holy grail though, is the follower.  If they follow you your empire grows in power and strength.

Multiplayer

It is social, every bit of the world was created by another person.  So every interaction you have in that world rewards another player, or disappoints them.  There is not single player mode on Twitter.  You cannot help but reward anotehr player with either a good interaction or a terrible one.  You choose what you do to them and how.  You can follow others, or gain a following yourself.

Disappointments

Twitter has its highs and its downs.  This makes for a great story, not a conventional one, but a great one none the less.  Followers bring you great joy.  But the negative comments from some can hurt you.  The posts that get no interaction what so ever really are a downer.  Plus the dreaded unfollow.  Oh man there is nothing worse than somebody leaving your tribe of followers.

Conclusion

When using Twitter make sure you see it for what it is.  It truly is one of the greatest games created of all time.  It is pure, simple, and genius.  Play it and enjoy.  Join me @magicrat_larry

Hello, Let me Grab This By the Face

Posted on by magicrat_larry

You know what I do?  I see something, I learn it quickly, then I grab it by the face and never let go.  Not sure if this is the right way to do things, but for game development it seems to be a good thing.  See, I love the visual effects, so what did I do?

I saw games, said I wanna do that.  I learned how to do it quickly just by doing things.  I then grabbed it by the face and have never let go since.  What do I mean by grabbing it by the face?  Well, I mean that you don’t just do it, you live it.  To really excel at something, you need to make it part of your life.  Part of your life so much, that if you stopped doing it, you would be left with an empty hole.

So that is what I do, I constantly feel like I’m riding a raging bull an I love every second of it.  Try it for a while and see how fun it is.  Take something you like to do.  Grab it by the face and see what happens.  It’ll hurt, it’ll be exhilarating, but it’ll be worth every second of it.

Here Kitty Kitty, Let Me Grab You

Posted on by magicrat_larry

So we added a pet element to our game.  Who doesn’t want a little kitty in a survival, action, top-down, simulation?Stand_Cat_000  You can have a pet, and if it is small enough you can pick it up.  So I have been making animations of every combination for our demo to demonstrate this.  So I have a shooting, standing, and walking animation.  That is a lot of tweaking animations to get get it with a cat and without a cat.

So in the actual game design we need to figure out a better way to add equipment and such to a player so that we do not have to animate every combination of stuff on a player.  For a game-play demo that is 1 step above a Proof Of Concept it is fine though.  I cannot wait to get back to designed code though.

Game Developer SMASH!!!!

Posted on by magicrat_larry

Let me explain this in three phases and I am sure all you game developers will understand.

Phase 1:  The Plan

Today, my wife and daughter were leaving for about 4 hours and leaving me home to work on the game.  Awesome!!!  So the plan is to crank through the remaining physics task to get the car to not be completely jacked up by a collision with a human sized bug.  So Seems easy, I can crank that out and maybe have some time to play a game or two afterwards.  I’m excited.

Phase 2: Let’s Do This

I sit down after they leave and crack down on this physics thing.  Turns out, this is not easy, go figure.  I bust my butt on it for hours getting nowhere.  No matter what I do I cannot get a good outcome.  I have my car driving and the wheels literally flying off for no reason.  I get frustrated, the doomed feeling sets in.  I did nothing, I think to myself.  Then I hear it, my wife and kid are home, 4 hours are gone, nothing to show for it besides the pure joy of pounding on code that was pointless.  At this point my brain is jumping into the computer and killing all the bad things in violent, terrible, imaginative glory.

Phase 3: Just One More Go

I sit down, right after my wife and daughter go to bed.  I open the laptop, look at the code and see a variable being set in some obscure location in our jacked up proof of concept code.  I start playing with that variable.  It turns out that is the most important thing in my life, I just didn’t know it.  So now I am happy.  What a strange way to be happy huh?

Just One More Thing

Posted on by magicrat_larry

I know your idea is awesome.  It is the greatest game of all time.  I get that.  Take the time though to add more.  Don’t just make another minecraft with better this or that.  Take the time to add more, to innovate.  Don’t stop at the greatest game of all time, make it one idea better than that.

Stop for a second and take your best part of the game and brainstorm on how to make it more unique, more exciting, more addictive.  Once you do that then you will find you feel even better about your game.  Don’t take it off the rails completely, but if you take it just one step further, you might actually have the greatest game of all time.

Often times we take an idea we had and know it is great, when it is simply just something we think is great.  Take the time to actually invest in greatness and add, just one more thing.