At long last!

Cloud with a threat to rain, almost powerful windy, but not yet. Potential to rain seems pretty high, not thrilled if that is the case. Biking home in the rain is  not that much fun.

Bike chain fell off again. You notice pretty quickly, almost like a baby tooth suddenly coming free.

And finally the big news, we have a contract! Which feels like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYzOQFpGPYE (minus the advertisement...). Looking back we have been trying to wrangle a deal since March when Marguerite first made her pilgrimage out to GDC. Its so momentous that you kinda expect the world to respond, like sunny skies & birds in the air, etc instead of the storm clouds vaguely shaking their fists.

There wasn't any balloons falling from the ceiling at work or champagne either, we just circled the chairs and started to break it down. Ok, what needs to go first? Where do we need to focus and what could cause potential issues. Emails went out to the composers we had talked too and meetings have been setup with Marco so we can all come to terms.

Maybe the lack of joyous response is just shock, think we are all going to go out and grab a celebratory dinner that should help get some feeling back.

Leaping Forward

Started raining just as I left this morning. Not the funnest bike ride, but at least my socks are dry.

Pulling together Trait & skill lists for character classes today. The goal is to get all of the UI stuff working today. The functionality for everything is already in place, Shouts are super easy, Traits aren't that hard, but Skills all need unique functions which is kinda a pain to get up and running.

Leap Motion went on sale the other day. Loc is now on sale once again and somehow we are on the top of the games page: https://airspace.leapmotion.com/categories/games. Very cool to have that all wrapped up. Mike did the whole conversion process by himself and the final product is quite an accomplishment.

New Home

So I moved.

The site is currently being redone, thanks to a slick looking new outlook that Ed, the owner of 8-Bit fit &  a client we are working with to create an app.

The new one is all wordpress as well, which is going to make updates a heck of a lot easier for us.

I guess we aren't doing a "company" blog any longer, just individual ones which we will link out too. Until we figure things out, my blog has made a move here.

Still waiting on the contract, maybe tonight is the new word. Until then, Matt is working on the new website and I'm still pushing forward with turn based combat.

New library books today, 4th Dexter novel & another Patricia McKillip, so I'm set for another week.

Oh right, the great Apple debacle...

So let me bring you up to speed. Last week the Pathogen Provisioning profile expired due to our own lack of focus. When this expires the application can no longer be downloaded or even played on any testing devices. Normally this is not much of an issue, you log back onto the developer account and press the refresh button. Except that late last week Apple got hacked. Yes, you heard that correctly.

The whole developer site went down and has since been. Worse we don't even have an ETA on when it might go back up. Until then we basically can't work on it...

At least we haven't officially started development yet...

Emptying the Bucket.

Maybe today is the official word, if not than Monday.

The Lawyers made their changes and now we just need for the other party to sign off on it.

Matt is continuing to do a first pass over the "Bucket List" - a list we made of what we would like to see polish wise added to the game. Getting our feet wet again with the inner workings of Pathogen is good. We haven't really touched it in more than a month and since then we have adopted new, better coding practices. Unfortunately we cannot implement them into Pathogen without basically rewriting the game again. Oh well.

Spoke at Champlain this morning to a group of teachers, explaining our process, and what Flash & Unity are. Great to do it, game development teaches a-lot of really strong skills that more people need. Pictures went up on Facebook & Twitter I believe thanks to Mike.

Finished Winter Rose by Patricia Mckillip yesterday after starting it only the day before. A fantastically written little novel infused with a lot of beauty and passion.

Continuing work on turn based stuff. Got a system for putting Unique Skills into the game up and running which is super exciting. Need to really settle on what classes exists & how that whole system is going to play.

TGIF, more tired than usual.

 

Vision

Warm again today, almost enough to completely forget that only two weeks ago its was pouring like someone cut the sky.

Pathogen has been picked up by its Indiecade jurors, which is exciting. Cross your fingers, knock on some wood, hope a little for us. Getting anywhere with them would go a long way to helping us make a name for ourselves. Unfortunately the build does have a few persistent issues that might ruins things + the lack of music which means we probably can't even be scored in that category :( But we will continue to hope.

Pulling the presentation together this morning for tomorrow.

In other news I can finally see what the Turn Based Combat is supposed to be. I know my short term goal which is a relief, had been searching for a while now. Synergy between characters is the key, being able to create squad wide builds is what I want to be able to accomplish. So far I'm on the right track. Got two systems in place already, working on special skills today.

I have a rant about games and narrative now, but I want to get to work, came in late after stopping in at the Helpdesk to make sure we are ready for tomorrow on the technology front. So maybe tomorrow.

Alls Quiet on the Western Front but the Dying.

Wednesday and again the temperature is summery again, not too excessively hot when we entered the week.

No word as of yet about the contact and so we continue on. We have been down this road before, but hopefully it ends in a better place than previously.

Matt was sick yesterday, so it was just us three. Specc'ed out the jobs for Physical apps, which spill out to be far more than a month so we will see what we will be doing for them. Another temp hire could help shoulder that work. In my neck of the woods I think I have a better handle on how to get combat progressing faster. Adding in the first of the new systems I'm designing today and the goal is to get it working.

Saw Pacific Rim this past weekend and it was fantastic. A perfect film for that 13 year old we all still carry around. Its a huge spectacle that delivers exactly what you need, whether you were aware of it or not. The movie felt stream lined to a T, and as a result it ends up being a ridiculous amount of fun. The CG effects are amazingly overlaid with real props and they did a great job with creating the sheer sense of weight being thrown around. Enough said, go see it.

Finished LoveDeath, a novella collection created by Dan Simmons. Very interesting pieces for sure, but the two that really shined where Sleeping with Teeth Women, and The Great Lover. Sleeping with Teeth Women was a Sioux tale which I found familiar & exotic at the same time. I have read only a few books about native/first people culture and beliefs. They give a great contrast to what we supposedly learn in grade school and somehow feel far more faithful. The Great Lover on the other hand was a novella told from the perspective of a poet conscripted into the British Rifle Division during WW1. I am now convinced that being on the French front, in the Trenches, is probably one of the most horrible moments in all of human history. Hundreds of thousands told to die by an incompetent command structure, while thousands more died in the horrific conditions.

Watching: Hero's Season 1.

Playing: Civilization 5 BNW (darn you culture victory on Emperor difficulty).

Music in the left ear

Ugg, yesterday ended up being a scorcher. Way too hot. Today's bike ride in was pretty good though, maybe I'll take the bike path up after work if it remains like this.

Had the Physical App's guy come around yesterday and they are looking for a bunch of things. The product is getting ready to ship, which means they were looking for as much work done as possible within a months time. That's a little brutal in terms of a development timeline. We are specc'ing some of those potential projects to see what we could do/bring people on to do.

Lorrie came by to help out figure out tax stuff. We had a client bounce a check and amazing how much of a domino effect that can have. Mike & Marguerite's checks both bounced, while Matt's and Mine were held by our bank until they could clear. We also had a rent check bounce as well. We quickly got the clients check put back through, but it caused more than just a little bit of chaos in our quick books.

Today is possibly THE day, the contract changes have gotten looked over (hopefully) and we should have an update today. In the mean time Matt played around with the particle system built into Starling which is as powerful or more so than Unity's built in system. I'm working back through the combat in the turn based game, looking to see how to make the whole thing faster, while keeping choice and strategy in there.

Sad day, headphones are broken... I have iPhone headphones, but the Headphone jack is on the back of the tower and there is no way its going to reach.