Gamemaking

Wherein I talk about games I am making

I design a game for Penny Arcade

 Posted by (Visited 10124 times)  Gamemaking
Oct 102007
 

Well, sort of.

So there I was, at the San Diego ComicCon, sidling past the Penny Arcade table on my way to say hi to Scott Kurtz at the PvP Online booth, when suddenly this Tycho person grabbed me and pulled me aside to rant and rave. He had an idea, he said. A crazy idea.

I should have known. Another wannabe game designer. But hey, this one has this semi-popular website and regularly trashes developers he doesn’t like. I had to stand still and listen, or risk professional doom.

Basically, he said, he had this idea for a construction game. “Like, SimCity?” I said. No, like with dumptrucks and demolition balls and cranes and architects with blueprints and everything. Like, real construction, Bob-the-Builder style.

And he wanted it as an MMO.

Great, I said, humoring him. I’m working on this thing called Metaplace, and you can make it yourself, and…

“No, no…” he said. “I want you to write up a design article. For the site. Like, a guest spot.”

A perfect storm

 Posted by (Visited 7614 times)  Game talk, Gamemaking
Sep 192007
 

One kind of perfect storm is BoingBoing, the BBC, and Slashdot all linking to a site at the same time. 🙂

Another kind is the kabillions of questions scattered all over the Net that I have no hope of answering piecemeal. We’re going to be doing regular blog posts over at Metaplace.com and expanding the FAQ based on the stuff we see. but I can’t possibly keep pace with everything everyone is asking… so please be patient. Answers will emerge given time…!

Metaplace!

 Posted by (Visited 33728 times)  Game talk, Gamemaking
Sep 182007
 

It is an amazing relief to finally get to talk about what we are making.

It’s been interesting to see the reactions everywhere. Lots of folks “get it,” some don’t (and that’s fine, no need to persuade everyone with just a FAQ and an eight minute demo!). Lots of folks saying “exactly what I predicted!” — which is fair. 🙂

For me, the bottom line is this: man, I have never had as much fun working on something as I have had working on this.

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Art Games: Best Indy Titles

 Posted by (Visited 12443 times)  Game talk, Gamemaking
Aug 012007
 

This is very flattering. Mentisworks has done a selection of the best indie “art games” which is featured on the front of Indygamer. Andean Bird placed on the list, alongside titles like Facade, Flow, Raspberry, The Endless Forest, The Marriage, and many more intriguing titles. Given that the Bird is still at version 0.5, that’s quite august company to be keeping.

 Quite unlike anything else out there, Andean Bird offers a leisurely glide across the landscape to the accompaniment of beautiful music. It does manage to instill some of the qualities of flight, yet that same endeavor is hampered by its lack of fullscreen capability.

Hmm. Fullscreen is about two lines of code, I should add that.

Anyway, the latest version is 0.5, and it’s here (PC only, zip file… sorry, I haven’t compiled a Mac version in eons).