…coming across a notepad containing an analysis by your two daughters of which version of Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes we should buy.
Being a GameDevDad is…
…trying to explain game development to a six-year-old.
My little girl was playing my game Planitia, which, if you’re not familiar, is my Populous/Powermonger forever-work-in-progress game.
(She also has trouble pronouncing the name. She was calling it “Planishiwa” for a while, which is what I guess the game would be called in Japan.)
But the game she really wants is Star Kittens, which I’ve also been working on for quite a while.
Cue yesterday’s conversation.
“Daddy, is Star Kittens done yet?”
“No, sweetie, not yet.”
“Why NOT?”
“Because it takes a long time to make a game.”
“No it doesn’t!” Six-year-olds.
“Yes it does, sweetie. First you have to tell the computer all the rules of the game, and that takes time.” I scroll through the roughly fifty source files Planitia has and her eyes widen.
“So it’ll NEVER be done?!” To six-year-olds, ‘now’ and ‘never’ are the only time frames that exist.
“Yes it will, baby. I’m going to take Planitia and change it to make Star Kittens. I’m going to change the little men to kittens and change the land into a space station. Then you’ll be able to build a space station for your kittens. So it won’t take as long as Planitia.”
“So you’re going to change Planitia into Star Kittens?”
“Yes, baby.”
“But then I won’t be able to play Planitia any more!”
PTFSD Update, Friday, September 16, 2011
Weight last Friday: 385.6
Weight today: 380.6
Change: Loss of 5 pounds.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I hear you thinking. “I thought you’d topped out at 378.2!”
Um…yeah. It got worse. Anyway, I made my goal for the week (and then some!) and if I make my goal for next week I will leave 380 behind. Wish me luck.
Scary Time with Anthony
I posted this to the indieconversation channel and thought, what the heck, I’ll post it here.
Updates
My idea for this week’s Name That Game! is a bit more involved, and I haven’t had a chance to work on it yet. Hopefully it’ll be up tomorrow.
Second…ClanDestiny is getting an overhaul. I’m rewriting it in Seth Robinson’s ProtonSDK to make it easier to make it cross-platform. This will take a while, since the SDK doesn’t map well to my own framework (this is not a problem with ProtonSDK, it’s a problem with my framework).
I also need to get rid of those Fire Emblem textures because…I’m going to release this beta for free not only here on the web, but on the Android Market. I got this idea from Seth, who has done the same thing with his new game Tanked. Getting feedback from Android users should make it easier to polish the final version and make it something Android users are expecting.
So…that’s why there’s no new content on the site. Except this post. Which doesn’t really count.
PSRD Breach: The Nannies of New York.
I am about to breach PSRD.
(For the uninitiated, I don’t normally talk about Politics, Sex, Religion or Drugs on this blog. But I’m about to.)
Click the link to continue reading. Or don’t, if you’d rather not.
Inaria Special Effects
I’ve kind of held myself back from throwing a lot of particles and such around in Inaria because I wanted to maintain a “classical” look, but now that the game is nearly done, it just looks kind of…sterile. Yes, compared to modern games classic games looked blah de blah.
The question I’m asking is a simple one. Would modern effects, like particles and possibly fog of war that used lighting effects, hurt Inaria? Or help it?
Odd…
For some reason, I feel like giving out candy today.
I also have an overwhelming desire to fire an AK-47 into the air.
My Last Day at Somanetics, Plus PTFSD Update
No more working on medical devices for me. I loved my time at Somanetics and I’ll miss everyone here, but Somanetics has been bought and the parent company is closing this office. On Tuesday I start my new job at General Motors.
Perhaps now I’ll be able to spend more than 18 months at a job.
PTFSD Update:
Previous Weight: 354.4
Current Weight: 357.4
Delta: +3 Pounds
Blech. I tried to do better this week but got hit with a lot of temptations, “Oh, there’s donuts for the Linux guys,” “Oh, there’s ice cream for the Linux guys,” “Oh, I got KFC for dinner.” I succumbed to all of them.
But Lord, let now thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen my salvation.
That’s a Marcy recumbent exercise bike. I had been thinking for a while about getting a treadmill, but ones that could support my current weight cost well over $1000. And then I read in The 4-Hour Body about a guy who got his exercise on a recumbent bike – it allowed him to relieve the horrible boredom that always eventually makes me stop exercising. With a recumbent bike, you can read, watch TV or even play video games while still keeping your heart rate in the cardio zone. And this one is supposed to be excellent – not just for the price, but excellent all around. The biggest plus – it’s magwheel-driven, so it’s silent.
Once it arrives (which will take a week since I picked free shipping) I’ll add a new entry to these posts detailing how many minutes of exercise I got each week.
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