My heart was racing this morning as I woke up at 5am and discovered a major problem with my trip to GenCON this year. I had made all the arrangements but only for 2 Days which would mean that I would need to call Expedia to see if they could help me sort things out. Luckily I'm not hurting for cash and even though the cost was quite steep I was able to fix the dates and I will be attending the convention again this year. I've done a lot to prepare this time around. I purchased a new video camera, made some new business cards, and have submitted my interview questions to Hex for my interview this year. To tell the truth I'm super stressed out about the whole thing. The last couple of days have been a marathon to get something that will be playable before the convention starts. Of course I'm still working on my video game Six the Aspects of Man and it's at a state that's mildly playable. Today Chris Deleon and I will be working on creating win conditions and death conditions for the game. I've done a lot of the groundwork but I'm worried that I won't be able to post it to my Squarespace website. My wife has been rather unsupportive of my endeavors which hasn't helped me much either. I just pray that God will help me in my time of need. Speaking of which I need to spend more time praying. Honestly I don't think that I'll get very far with this game without God's help and I haven't really been giving Him the credit that He deserves for helping me get this far. I suppose that only time will tell what His will is for me and I need to be receptive to it. Changing my itinerary has placed me in a different hotel, and that may afford me some opportunities that I wouldn't have otherwise. I'd say that having this deadline has been good for getting things done with the game functionally although it's also trying at times. I really hope that I can get a demo set up, but if I can't then plan B will be to post a video of myself playing it. I hope to see you at GenCON and if you're one of the many that I give a business card to this weekend thanks for talking to me! Make sure to check out my game and let me know what you think.
Pax South
As I write this I'm nervous about the video I'm compiling. It's the first real look at my tactical fantasy game which I've named "Six: The Aspects of Man." The game actually doesn't look that bad but of course I still feel that it could be better. This weekend I'll be attending Pax South and really hope to glean a lot of good information from my fellow indie developers. I know that I haven't been much on keeping this blog up nor have I been doing my dev VLOG's but I have been working on the game and making more progress than I had before. Other things that are going on right now are a future family move and I'm also working on my Computer Science Bachelors degree. There's a lot to juggle these days but I suppose it's better than being idle. I'd just like to say that working with Chris Deleon has improved my productivity on the project 10 fold and if you're serious about making game I highly recommend looking at his Hobby Game Development program. Hope to see you out at PAX, wish me luck and don't forget to give me some feedback on my game Six: The Aspects of Man!
Happy Thanksgiving!
The last time that I made a blog entry was before I went to GenCON which was a long time ago. Rest assured that I'm still developing games, and much like most people there's a lot that goes on in my life just like everyone else. Thanks to my work with Chris Deleon I've made some real progress in creating a combat engine that's inspired by the old SNES Ogre Battle. I'm hoping to have it done by the time that PAX South comes around in January. It would be nice to have at least a YouTube video of the combat playing out to show people that I meet out there. I've recently started using Trello and am thinking that future blog entries will simply be excerpts from my notes that I take down after doing a game development session. I've also started working in Blender and it has been somewhat arduous but I'm getting more efficient at using it. I'm hoping to have more blog entries for people that are interested in testing out my fantasy tactical game in the future which has yet to get a name. I have tossed around some idea's like "Battle Squire" or "Mercenary War." Honestly I'd like to make up a word that's two syllables. Oh well it's a rather low priority right now. Right now I'm working out the in combat targeting system.
Thanks for reading!
v/r
Charles Zammit
GenCON Here I Come!
I'm very excited to be going to GenCON again this year! Last year was my very first experience and I remember thinking then that it would be a long time before I would be able to go again due to the cost and time associated with it. Luckily things worked out and I have the support of my wife to be able to go again this year.
This week I had a huge milestone in my company when I created this website! There's not much on it right now but everyone has to start somewhere. I didn't have any time to do my development video this week, and there wouldn't have been much to say anyways. Work has picked up recently and so I don't have the kind of time that I had when I created Constantine I & II. I'm still working hard on making my next game though. I'm still focused on creating something that will be similar to one of my all time favorites Ogre Battle. Chris DeLeon has made some great learning tools for me to control units in three dimensional space in Unity 3D and so I've started to script the combat which will trigger once they engage each other. This led me to some more trials and tribulations. At first, I had a really hard time programming the combat card for each unit to be read in. Specifically I was misunderstanding the syntax necessary to create variables inside a class. After working on it for somewhere between 2-3 hours I did have a breakthrough.
When I'm working on something intensely it's probably one of the worst feelings to know what I want it to do and not be able to get the program to do it. The sheer amount of euphoria that I feel once I've discovered the answer is truly awesome although it doesn't always cancel out the pain that got me there. It's just like Chris DeLeon says in the "Hobby Game Development Handbook" - you have to practice making games, you're not just going to wake up one morning and know exactly what to do (DeLeon).
Thanks for reading my first blog post! I've been meaning to post some of my D&D 4.0 modules for the public to read and use. If you've played my game Constantine you may notice that some of the scenario's in the game are based on the modules.
Enjoy!
http://www.mediafire.com/download/0i9v2riwvs678bd/Ophen+Modules.zip
v/r
Charles Zammit
Errantsquire