Unfortunately I will no longer be posting here. What a bummer. I have taken out a big boy's website.
www.ballerindustries.com
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Day 139 Rock Bottom Video Preview
Yesterday was a boring day. A fucking boring day. I'll summarise it in 140 characters or less. I woke up, ate lunch with my brother then went to the gym. What about today? It was amazing. I woke up, made a tuna sandwich ate it, then started working on Rock Bottom. I added in three scenes, where Wilson Cooper gives a speech at the prison guard's masked ball. There are three variations of the speech, two fail, one succeeds.
To defeat the first level, you must acquire a costume, procure some poison and sneak your way into the prison guard's masked ball. You then poison the punch, then propose a toast to a legendary prison guard you read about in the library. If you try to give a speech without spiking the punch or reading about the legendary prison guard a failure speech plays.
It's pretty rough at the moment. There is a lot of place holder audio. I need to commission more character art and background art and more comics. However I don't really know what I need until I start working on it, so you'll just have to bear with my terrible placeholder graphics.
After working on the game for numerous hours, I went into the City to meet with Kevin, Keith and Francis. They had been filming all day at a youth hostel. They're making a promotional video for a youth hostel for free, just to get some practice. Somehow I decided it would be a great idea for me to spam youth hostels offering Kevin, Keith and Francis's film production services. Then we played StarCraft Brood Wars, we played a level where you have to build bunkers and defend against 20,000 hydralisks. It was seriously difficult. Then I challenged them to a 1v3, but they kicked my ass.
Then we ate pizza, and then drank beers. Then I went home and spammed the youth hostels. Tomorrow I have to wake up seriously early, 6:30 AM. It is going to be difficult considering I woke up at 1:30 PM today.
To defeat the first level, you must acquire a costume, procure some poison and sneak your way into the prison guard's masked ball. You then poison the punch, then propose a toast to a legendary prison guard you read about in the library. If you try to give a speech without spiking the punch or reading about the legendary prison guard a failure speech plays.
It's pretty rough at the moment. There is a lot of place holder audio. I need to commission more character art and background art and more comics. However I don't really know what I need until I start working on it, so you'll just have to bear with my terrible placeholder graphics.
After working on the game for numerous hours, I went into the City to meet with Kevin, Keith and Francis. They had been filming all day at a youth hostel. They're making a promotional video for a youth hostel for free, just to get some practice. Somehow I decided it would be a great idea for me to spam youth hostels offering Kevin, Keith and Francis's film production services. Then we played StarCraft Brood Wars, we played a level where you have to build bunkers and defend against 20,000 hydralisks. It was seriously difficult. Then I challenged them to a 1v3, but they kicked my ass.
Then we ate pizza, and then drank beers. Then I went home and spammed the youth hostels. Tomorrow I have to wake up seriously early, 6:30 AM. It is going to be difficult considering I woke up at 1:30 PM today.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Day 137 Finishing off Let's Get Fiscal
So what’s been going on. Well I have been making difficult decisions. Yesterday I woke up pretty early. 9.00 AM, and did some work on Rock Bottom. Then I watched a documentary about Pablo Escobar . It was pretty interesting.
Then I went to the gym. I hadn’t been to the gym for fifteen days. This is because of my horrible leg injury . So I started off doing some weights then I went to the dreaded elliptical machine. Actually it wasn’t very difficult, I ran for about twenty minutes and my leg was fine.
Then I chose an artist to draw the backgrounds for Rock Bottom. His name is Rafal and this is his gallery. In Rock Bottom you start off in prison, then end up on the streets, then you steal a job from someone using a cutting edge technique. Finally Adickle Face turns you into a fish. Then something surprising happens. Next it was time to do some finishing touches on Let's Get Fiscal.
There are four things I must do before I can put Let's Get Fiscal into peer review.
1. Replace all sound effects that have copyright attached to them. I stole a bunch of sound effects from Streets of Rage 2 because it was damn easy. Luckily there are only five sound effects that need to replaced and Jonathan Tree was nice enough to agree to make replacements for me.
2. I need four more comic strips. These comic strips are played as cut scenes by Let's Get Fiscal. A cool guy called Rudy is making them for me. Unfortunately Rudy is massively busy. He has a full time job and has been making the comic strips for me after work. As a result it takes him on average one month to make one strip. So I am going to hire someone else to draw the remaining four comic strips. Which is completely fucked up, but I don't want to wait four months. Fuck.
 |
| Cutscene comic that plays before Stelven battles Fred. |
3. Cut scene audio. Rudy is drawing the comics, and Josh Koen is composing the audio to go along with the cut scenes. He'll be done really soon and I can't wait because at the moment I have place holder audio and it fucking sucks. Combining the comic strips, professionally produced audio and my crumby comic viewing code all together makes for some awesome cut scenes.
4. I am waiting for eleven more animation frames for Fred's spritesheet from Clest Elnith.
Once all that arrives, I'll combine it all into the Visual Studio 2010 project. Play around with it to make sure it works and then enter peer review. That Daft Punk song Josh made is really excellent, I have been listening to it on repeat while writing this blog.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Day 135 Bikini Shopping
Damn I want an HP TouchPad. So I wandered over to eBay and searched up HP TouchPad, only to find a list of bullshit by assholes who are trying to trick people into buying HP TouchPad boxes, leather cases and other accessories that no one wants to buy. Fuck I hate eBay, it is so difficult to buy things on eBay. Those complacent bastards at eBay do no give a shit about their horrible user interface and product listings filled with shit. "Who cares man, we're still #1. Fuck the customers". Fuck you eBay, especially since your right.
In case you don't know, the HP TouchPad was released a few months ago. No one bought it. So HP decided to stop making it along with phones and laptops and desktop computers. Then a they decided to sell the remaining TouchPads for $100 instead of $500. Which resulted in a huge pile of humans purchasing the discontinued product.
Why do I want one? Do I want to be one of those jerks who walks around with google maps open trying to figure out where I am. Do I want to be some doofus who plays games on the train on the way to work? No. I want one because I want to port Let's Get Fiscal and Rock Bottom (when that is done) to it. Why? Because no one is developing for it anymore and an assload of people have recently bought them.
This plan may turn out to be complete failure. Whatever, onto bikinis.
Last night I stayed up really late working on Rock Bottom. I was just typing up notes and dialogue I scribbled all over various pieces of paper. I also did some small stuff. In actual fact I was watching various debates between the people behind Loose Change and 'debunkers'. Loose Change must make a lot of money and I have a feeling the creators don't really believe what they said in the film anymore. It seems like they are just defending it to sustain their cash cow. I stayed up to 5.00 AM.
Today I was woken up at 12.30 by Jacqui. She wanted to go to the beach. So I took a shower, and went to the beach. We sat around for about half an hour. It was a little bit cold. Then we ate lunch and went to look at bikinis. Which for me meant sitting around waiting. Wilson called me and we talked about his stock market stuff. Then Jacqui asked me to get her a different sized version of a bikini top she liked. GROAN. She gave me the bikini for reference and I began my journey searching through the woman's swimwear department for the sisters/brothers of the reference bikini I had in my hand.
Then Jacqui's phone rings, it was her friend. I like to pretend to be Jacqui when I answer her phone so I put on a very high pitched girly voice and answered. Then I realised how exceedingly gay I must have looked.
In case you don't know, the HP TouchPad was released a few months ago. No one bought it. So HP decided to stop making it along with phones and laptops and desktop computers. Then a they decided to sell the remaining TouchPads for $100 instead of $500. Which resulted in a huge pile of humans purchasing the discontinued product.
Why do I want one? Do I want to be one of those jerks who walks around with google maps open trying to figure out where I am. Do I want to be some doofus who plays games on the train on the way to work? No. I want one because I want to port Let's Get Fiscal and Rock Bottom (when that is done) to it. Why? Because no one is developing for it anymore and an assload of people have recently bought them.
This plan may turn out to be complete failure. Whatever, onto bikinis.
Last night I stayed up really late working on Rock Bottom. I was just typing up notes and dialogue I scribbled all over various pieces of paper. I also did some small stuff. In actual fact I was watching various debates between the people behind Loose Change and 'debunkers'. Loose Change must make a lot of money and I have a feeling the creators don't really believe what they said in the film anymore. It seems like they are just defending it to sustain their cash cow. I stayed up to 5.00 AM.
Today I was woken up at 12.30 by Jacqui. She wanted to go to the beach. So I took a shower, and went to the beach. We sat around for about half an hour. It was a little bit cold. Then we ate lunch and went to look at bikinis. Which for me meant sitting around waiting. Wilson called me and we talked about his stock market stuff. Then Jacqui asked me to get her a different sized version of a bikini top she liked. GROAN. She gave me the bikini for reference and I began my journey searching through the woman's swimwear department for the sisters/brothers of the reference bikini I had in my hand.
Then Jacqui's phone rings, it was her friend. I like to pretend to be Jacqui when I answer her phone so I put on a very high pitched girly voice and answered. Then I realised how exceedingly gay I must have looked.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Day 134 Profiteering
Get Rich or Die Gaming and Virtual Kelvin both cost about $1, and I get 70% from every copy sold. Over the month I have amassed a huge collection of cents from these games. However yesterday I acquired 20 cents in a spectacular fashion.
Yesterday I woke up, did some programming on Rock Bottom. I basically linked the game up and did some planning. So I planned out what backgrounds I needed to get drawn and what backgrounds could be photographs with a filter applied to them. Then I replied to all the emails I got from artists. I'm not really sure who to go with. About 40 people applied, I looked through all the galleries and really liked about 8 of them. Unfortunately none of the people I really liked wrote back. I feel like the backgrounds are not very difficult to draw and it doesn't matter too much who I go with.
After doing all that heavy programming and emailing I went to the train station to meet Cooper and then take the train to City and watch a rugby match. Unfortunately I got to the station early and Cooper said he would be fifteen minutes. So I wandered around and decided to buy a bottle of coke from some shop.
I got the coke from the cabinet. Placed it down on the counter. The guy at the shop hit some buttons on his register and it displayed $3.60. Nothing out of the ordinary here, except that $3.60 is quite a lot of money for a bottle of coke.
I grabbed some coins from my pocket. I found five fifty cent pieces. Put them down on the counter. Then moved them to the side in a gesture that said "this is not the complete amount of payment, do not be alarmed shop keeper.". Then I fished around for a one dollar coin. Found one and put it down a few centimeters from the pile of fifty cent coins. Then I looked at the shop keeper and adjusted my body in such a way to say "That's it. I have given you the payment. Now where is my change".
The stupid thing is, I actually thought that I was entitled to ten cents change. I somehow gained the belief that paying $3.50 for something that costs $3.60 should result in receiving ten cents change. The even stupider thing is so did the shop keeper. He hit some buttons and then gave me ten cents change. I feel like it worked because I was acting so natural because I truly believed I deserved change. I want to try it again some day.
Also I imagine it is possible the shop keeper thought "Oh this guy has only given me three dollars fifty. Whatever, I don't care about ten cents. I'll just accept it. Hmmm. He is still here and somehow feels like he deserves some change. Whatever I'll just give him another ten cents. Fuck he is stupid".
Damn! I just realised those two ten cent pieces could have become my pair of lucky ten cent coins. I think I gave them to a busker in Central station later that night.
Alright on to game development discussion. First I suggest you check out Vishal discussing writing Rock Bottom's script. Today I haven't done any work on Rock Bottom. I have about eight emails to reply to, maybe I'll choose a background artist tonight, but I might wait until tomorrow morning to see if anyone else replies. Yeah that's probably good idea. Then I am going to make some minor changes. Like making Professor X go away after you receive a custume (not a spelling mistake), from him. I'll try to finish up the entire first level. Which will require me to piece together the a toast Wilson gives at the masked prison guards ball.
Fun times ahead.
Yesterday I woke up, did some programming on Rock Bottom. I basically linked the game up and did some planning. So I planned out what backgrounds I needed to get drawn and what backgrounds could be photographs with a filter applied to them. Then I replied to all the emails I got from artists. I'm not really sure who to go with. About 40 people applied, I looked through all the galleries and really liked about 8 of them. Unfortunately none of the people I really liked wrote back. I feel like the backgrounds are not very difficult to draw and it doesn't matter too much who I go with.
After doing all that heavy programming and emailing I went to the train station to meet Cooper and then take the train to City and watch a rugby match. Unfortunately I got to the station early and Cooper said he would be fifteen minutes. So I wandered around and decided to buy a bottle of coke from some shop.
I got the coke from the cabinet. Placed it down on the counter. The guy at the shop hit some buttons on his register and it displayed $3.60. Nothing out of the ordinary here, except that $3.60 is quite a lot of money for a bottle of coke.
I grabbed some coins from my pocket. I found five fifty cent pieces. Put them down on the counter. Then moved them to the side in a gesture that said "this is not the complete amount of payment, do not be alarmed shop keeper.". Then I fished around for a one dollar coin. Found one and put it down a few centimeters from the pile of fifty cent coins. Then I looked at the shop keeper and adjusted my body in such a way to say "That's it. I have given you the payment. Now where is my change".
The stupid thing is, I actually thought that I was entitled to ten cents change. I somehow gained the belief that paying $3.50 for something that costs $3.60 should result in receiving ten cents change. The even stupider thing is so did the shop keeper. He hit some buttons and then gave me ten cents change. I feel like it worked because I was acting so natural because I truly believed I deserved change. I want to try it again some day.
Also I imagine it is possible the shop keeper thought "Oh this guy has only given me three dollars fifty. Whatever, I don't care about ten cents. I'll just accept it. Hmmm. He is still here and somehow feels like he deserves some change. Whatever I'll just give him another ten cents. Fuck he is stupid".
Damn! I just realised those two ten cent pieces could have become my pair of lucky ten cent coins. I think I gave them to a busker in Central station later that night.
Alright on to game development discussion. First I suggest you check out Vishal discussing writing Rock Bottom's script. Today I haven't done any work on Rock Bottom. I have about eight emails to reply to, maybe I'll choose a background artist tonight, but I might wait until tomorrow morning to see if anyone else replies. Yeah that's probably good idea. Then I am going to make some minor changes. Like making Professor X go away after you receive a custume (not a spelling mistake), from him. I'll try to finish up the entire first level. Which will require me to piece together the a toast Wilson gives at the masked prison guards ball.
Fun times ahead.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Day 133 Caught being a jerk
I have come up with a brilliant idea. I am going to start blogging a lot more and write all the boring little details involved in the production of Rock Bottom. I officially started working on Rock Bottom on April 30th 2011, when I had lunch with Vishal and he told me he had been writing a script for it. I worked on it for about two weeks, then furiously went back to working on Let's Get Fiscal.
LGF is now completely coded and I am simply waiting for bits and pieces from some people. So each blog post is going to start out with a day number followed by a snazzy title of some sort. This way you can sort of understand better why I take so damn long to create Rock Bottom. So first I had to figure out how many days it has been since I started working on Rock Bottom. I wrote some code in C# to figure it out for me. How clever am I?
Yesterday I spam replied all the artists to applied to a job posting I put up, then I bragged about it on this blog. It resulted in this email from one of the artists I spam replied.
This brought me back to the middle of the week when I was playing StarCraft 2 with Seedo. We played a bunch of 4v4 games and I would always unintentionally do things to irritate my team mates. One of my team mates blocked my ramp so I couldn't leave my base. So I asked him to move but he didn't, so I killed one of his zealots to get out. This caused the whole team to get furious at me and my team mates started attacking me. So it went from a 4v4 to a 7v1.
We played about 5 games and in every single one I did something to make my team mates mad and attack me. I also got this response from someone when I was negotiating prices.
Ouch. I'm one of those people who is really polite and nice in real life, but when I get on the internet I become a total jerk. In other words the sort of person who is unpleasant and not nice to be around.
LGF is now completely coded and I am simply waiting for bits and pieces from some people. So each blog post is going to start out with a day number followed by a snazzy title of some sort. This way you can sort of understand better why I take so damn long to create Rock Bottom. So first I had to figure out how many days it has been since I started working on Rock Bottom. I wrote some code in C# to figure it out for me. How clever am I?
Yesterday I spam replied all the artists to applied to a job posting I put up, then I bragged about it on this blog. It resulted in this email from one of the artists I spam replied.
We played about 5 games and in every single one I did something to make my team mates mad and attack me. I also got this response from someone when I was negotiating prices.
Ouch. I'm one of those people who is really polite and nice in real life, but when I get on the internet I become a total jerk. In other words the sort of person who is unpleasant and not nice to be around.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Request for Quote
Two years ago I was working on a database and front end for a fridge company. I think they made other things too but I always thought of them as a fridge company, so let's just call them FridgeCo. The whole point of the database was to help FridgeCo find the cheapest supplier for different parts they needed to make fridges. There were all sorts of weird things they needed to purchase. 50 gallon tubs of hydrochloric acid, hoses and other weird chemicals I couldn't believe were used in the production of a fridge.
So you would choose the things you wanted, then the database would search through the manufacturers that could produce it and create some Excel spreadsheets. Then some jerk at FridgeCo would email the spreadsheets to the manufacturers. They would fill out the spreadsheets and send them back. Then the program would read in the filled out spreadsheets, and display all the price quotes for whatever product you wanted to purchase.
Before our database was made the jerks at FridgeCo had to email out everything and create all sorts of crazy spreadsheets. "What a bunch of morons, they're doing everything by hand". Well today I just finished writing forty emails in reply to people who want to draw background images for Rock Bottom. It is such a pain in the ass and is my least favourite part of making a video game. I have to look through their galleries, tell them what I want them to draw and then negotiate prices with them. Fuck I hate all the flash galleries that are impossible to browse.
When a lot of people apply for a job, I basically write out a long email describing the job and then replace the name at the top of the email. Something like "Hey DudeMan, [Long boring Rock Bottom backgrounds description].". The funny thing is a lot of these guys are sending out the same email to every single job they see out there.
So they send out some pre-written email, and I send out a pre-written response. Sometimes it takes about four emails before I write something unique to them. I hate the whole process of finding an artist.
Clever Vishal found a website called odesk.com. They streamline (man I hate that word) the whole process. So you pay on the website, you communicate on the website AND the website even monitors them while they are working. So you can make sure they don't fuck you in the anal canal.
We put an ad there but everyone who applied sucked.
So you would choose the things you wanted, then the database would search through the manufacturers that could produce it and create some Excel spreadsheets. Then some jerk at FridgeCo would email the spreadsheets to the manufacturers. They would fill out the spreadsheets and send them back. Then the program would read in the filled out spreadsheets, and display all the price quotes for whatever product you wanted to purchase.
Before our database was made the jerks at FridgeCo had to email out everything and create all sorts of crazy spreadsheets. "What a bunch of morons, they're doing everything by hand". Well today I just finished writing forty emails in reply to people who want to draw background images for Rock Bottom. It is such a pain in the ass and is my least favourite part of making a video game. I have to look through their galleries, tell them what I want them to draw and then negotiate prices with them. Fuck I hate all the flash galleries that are impossible to browse.
When a lot of people apply for a job, I basically write out a long email describing the job and then replace the name at the top of the email. Something like "Hey DudeMan, [Long boring Rock Bottom backgrounds description].". The funny thing is a lot of these guys are sending out the same email to every single job they see out there.
So they send out some pre-written email, and I send out a pre-written response. Sometimes it takes about four emails before I write something unique to them. I hate the whole process of finding an artist.
Clever Vishal found a website called odesk.com. They streamline (man I hate that word) the whole process. So you pay on the website, you communicate on the website AND the website even monitors them while they are working. So you can make sure they don't fuck you in the anal canal.
We put an ad there but everyone who applied sucked.
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