Summer in CA and Stage IV
Ok, so Music Monsters did get done... unfortunately, likely because of my crappy programming, it had showstopping memory leaks that slowed it to nothing after a few minutes of play. Not only that, but turns out that I introduced a last minute bug in a change to the music lab I made just days before showcase. So the main innovation of the game was broken. Great. So.... I blew it, I would say. I'm not happy about that. I do want to work on it to fix my part of the game up, because other people really put work into that, and it sucks that it's ruined by my failures. We'll see what I can do, if I ever find the motivation.
Time out here with Oracle is going fairly well... weather is always sunny, slightly to moderately windy, highs in the high 70s/low 80s, low humidity. I have extremely nice apartment, rental car, and nice salary, complements of Oracle. I guess I'm not really comfortable with life like this though. Mind you, I'm not a masochist, but living such a wonderfully blissful life just doesn't' sit well with me. I've made up my mind that one of the worst moves I can make in life is to make a lotta money and live in comfort, because it just makes you so complacent and... well, it just makes life flow like hot oil, if that's actually a phrase.
Then again, I'm young. Young people are like that... think they're not gonna just be like their parents, etc. I know that my opinion on what kind of life I want will change. Someday, I will be happy with this life. Stable job, stable money, modern convenience. But, conversely, it's not a sin to follow what you find to be true now. I can't declare "my current state of mind will pass; ergo, I shall live in accordance with my future state of mind." Wouldn't make much sense. And this is all hopelessly selfcentered blather. Shutting up on it now.
Anyways, the point I wanted to write about in this entry was brainstorming for Stage IV, my tentative title for what I hope will come together as my Fall 2007 game. I've been referring to it previously as "the cancer game", but that's not exactly very appealing, is it now? :)
While I've got a lot to say about it, basically, the "meat" of the game will be conversations with the three major NPCs in the game. You're playing a young man (in HS still, though, as being away from home would not work for the game). Your dad's diagnosed with stage iv cancer, and it's basically a drama of life for you and the 3 other main chars as it gets worse and worse. A little close to home? Yeah, maybe. Autobiographical? Darn close. I'm still not sure where the line is supposed to be between just talking about yourself and drawing on personal experience for your work, you know? Will people look at it and say "wow, he really likes to indulge himself in his own world"? Or, will basically recreating life for me in 2006 be a wise idea? Hard for me to say... I'm new to all this stuff.
Anywho, got a buncha notes on it that I don't really feel like detailing now, but one thing I did want to say is that I've realized that I can't really form up the game system, then attach story to it. Over the past few weeks, I've tried to concentrate on how I'll build the game system, the underlying engine, trying to forget about how the specific story content will be applied.
This just doesn't work.
The game and story must evolve together. Otherwise, it's like the proverbial square peg in a round hole. They'll feel disjointed, unmatched for eachother. Odd as it may sound, I've noticed this while playing Sam & Max, the new episodic chapters (Gametap is nice....). The puzzles in these comical games work extremely well, but only because they are moreso a part of the story than most any I've ever seen in adventure games before. They're not ad hoc add-ons; they are both story and game at once. This is the same sort of gameplay I want to create, albeit with a more serious tone.
Time out here with Oracle is going fairly well... weather is always sunny, slightly to moderately windy, highs in the high 70s/low 80s, low humidity. I have extremely nice apartment, rental car, and nice salary, complements of Oracle. I guess I'm not really comfortable with life like this though. Mind you, I'm not a masochist, but living such a wonderfully blissful life just doesn't' sit well with me. I've made up my mind that one of the worst moves I can make in life is to make a lotta money and live in comfort, because it just makes you so complacent and... well, it just makes life flow like hot oil, if that's actually a phrase.
Then again, I'm young. Young people are like that... think they're not gonna just be like their parents, etc. I know that my opinion on what kind of life I want will change. Someday, I will be happy with this life. Stable job, stable money, modern convenience. But, conversely, it's not a sin to follow what you find to be true now. I can't declare "my current state of mind will pass; ergo, I shall live in accordance with my future state of mind." Wouldn't make much sense. And this is all hopelessly selfcentered blather. Shutting up on it now.
Anyways, the point I wanted to write about in this entry was brainstorming for Stage IV, my tentative title for what I hope will come together as my Fall 2007 game. I've been referring to it previously as "the cancer game", but that's not exactly very appealing, is it now? :)
While I've got a lot to say about it, basically, the "meat" of the game will be conversations with the three major NPCs in the game. You're playing a young man (in HS still, though, as being away from home would not work for the game). Your dad's diagnosed with stage iv cancer, and it's basically a drama of life for you and the 3 other main chars as it gets worse and worse. A little close to home? Yeah, maybe. Autobiographical? Darn close. I'm still not sure where the line is supposed to be between just talking about yourself and drawing on personal experience for your work, you know? Will people look at it and say "wow, he really likes to indulge himself in his own world"? Or, will basically recreating life for me in 2006 be a wise idea? Hard for me to say... I'm new to all this stuff.
Anywho, got a buncha notes on it that I don't really feel like detailing now, but one thing I did want to say is that I've realized that I can't really form up the game system, then attach story to it. Over the past few weeks, I've tried to concentrate on how I'll build the game system, the underlying engine, trying to forget about how the specific story content will be applied.
This just doesn't work.
The game and story must evolve together. Otherwise, it's like the proverbial square peg in a round hole. They'll feel disjointed, unmatched for eachother. Odd as it may sound, I've noticed this while playing Sam & Max, the new episodic chapters (Gametap is nice....). The puzzles in these comical games work extremely well, but only because they are moreso a part of the story than most any I've ever seen in adventure games before. They're not ad hoc add-ons; they are both story and game at once. This is the same sort of gameplay I want to create, albeit with a more serious tone.
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