Funny timing for Doc Boa to announce his development intentions literally hours before I post this, but dat's cool. Although I can guarantee that my game has a much smaller budget:
Copypasta from my site:
The game is called Late Again, and it follows the exploits of a downtrodden cubicle jockey who awakens to discover that he's late for work. And you've got to decide if he's going to take the safe route to the office, or explore an unfamiliar and potentially disastrous alternative. It's short - maybe 5 minutes - but I like how it's coming together, especially for a first attempt. I was deeply moved by Jason Rohrer's Passage when I first played it last year, and I think I'm subconsciously trying to achieve the same thing; a really short game that somehow expresses something valuable. I'll let y'all know how it comes together! You can expect to play it in June.
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...yet everything in this article applies squarely to me. I play Eve Online more than anything else now, simply because it's the only game that doesn't require me to actually play it in order to become more awesome.
Shit, and I'm a game designer. At least I still spend time, you know, designing.
Oh, and hi again Dtoid. Been a while.
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Okay, so I'm a bit of a closet Apple fanboy. I have a Windows machine because I love my PC games, but when you really boil it down I prefer to use a Mac - my homebuilt PC is actually dual-booting XP and the iATKOS hack of Leopard. While most of my self-taught game projects are hastily slapped together in Game Maker 7 (yeah, laugh it up, you bastards), I spend a lot of time screwing around with the Mac-only game engine Unity 3D. It's surprisingly robust for such a straightforward toolset, and the tutorials made it easy for me to get a handle on scripting languages (code-retarded as I am).
On a seemingly-unrelated-yet-parallel note, I never really cared that much about the iPhone. It's cool, sure, if a bit overpriced. Its existence certainly doesn't push me to the paroxysms of rage you might expect from a more discerning geek, but I never found that much to get excited about. It didn't really engage me.
Well, until I saw this.
(Video here - skip ahead to 01:00:00).
Now, I'm not a rabid fan of Super Monkey Ball. But seeing a game like that - a dead ringer for a PSP title - running on a mobile device built around digital distribution was like looking into the face of GOD. They built the damn thing in two weeks and it ran at 30FPS. Halle-motherfuckin'-lujah.
So, now that Apple has released their for-realz iPhone SDK, it's only a matter of time before the Unity player gets a mobile port. Until today, I would've killed for the chance to make a PSP title that wasn't guaranteed to net a loss, but now it looks like I can pull off a similar feat by myself for less than a grand...
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Development
Unity indie license: $250
iPhone developer registration: $99 (!)
Models and Animations
Cheetah3D: $129
Textures
Photoshop CS3 upgrade: $199
imageSynth plugin: $99
Music and Sound Effects
Logic Express: $199
TOTAL: $975
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...and distribute the result on iTunes. EPIC WIN, says I.
What about the rest of you? Did this announcement change the way you look at the iPhone?
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I just got back to my friend's place in Oakland after crawling SF following this year's Game Developer's Choice Awards. I think I lost my voice cheering for Phil Fish (monocles FTW) and Jon Mak. So awesome. The IGF was freakin' incredible this year.
3 THINGS YOU MAY NOT KNOW!
1. Fez was created entirely in XNA Game Studio. Yes, the $99 one. Did it not just become 50 times more awesome? What more do you want? Phil gave his acceptance haiku wearing a fez and a monocle, fer fucksake.
2. Motion capture is dirt cheap now. W00t.
3. Mova Contour is not cheap, but HOLY SHIT.
NOW YOU KNOW!
Okay, off to bed. Somebody's got a (long shot) interview with Bungie tomorrow...
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Evidently, someone at the 32nd Street GameStop in Manhattan thinks he's a comedian:
ALSO! Tomorrow (Friday) marks my final day of employment at Atari, Inc.
Oh, you bet your ass it was my idea this time. I've come to the realization that the only way I can keep my enthusiasm for my own projects is if I'm not working for a video game company during the day. I mean, I work in marketing. There aren't many opportunities to cross-pollinate into production from there (never mind the fact that Atari is now two companies). So I'm gonna bounce, finish the last four (FOUR!!1!) credits I need to get a degree, and start makin' some goddamn games.
So yeah. At least I finished 3 different trailers for the new Dragonball Z game. Trust me, they'll make you wanna preorder that shit. It's the nature of my raw Final Cut skillz.
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WARNING: NOT A REAL NEWS POST.
WARNING: ALSO A REPOST. QUIT YER YAPPIN'.
I posted last week about GDC, just wondering who was going to be attending the conference. Like an idiot, I posted it in the late morning and evidently did not capture a large enough cross-section of Dtoid (Hi CTZ!). So I'm just asking y'all at night in the hope that we can throw down in San Francisco come Monday. Excited?
Circle one:
Y / N
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WARNING: NOT A REAL NEWS POST
Hey dudes. Just wondering if anyone else from Destructoid is going to hit up GDC this year. I'll be rocking the Independent Games Summit on Monday and Tuesday, but I might just wing it the rest of the week. Are any of you guys planning to head to Moscone as well? What are you excited to see/hear?
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