Elecorn: The Animated Coder

Yes, this is the main menu of Caster on the IPhone (simulator).  Most of the credit goes out to my main man Spencer Nielsen that handled the Mac port of Caster.  Spencer is one crazy awesome coder that is not to be taken lightly.

No, that is not Caster with the Seeker (pink colored attack) selected.  We just need to swap the blue and red channels for our loaded images.

So why IPhone?

Well, the first hour after I heard the announcement for opening up IPhone development, I had to take a break from work because I was so dizzy with excitement for the possibilities of what could be done that I almost passed out.

Later when I got a grip back on reality, I realized that Caster was not the best game for the IPhone.  It’s a third person shooter.  I could think of a dozen other game ideas that would be cool and work much better on the IPhone.  If I was going to spend time doing something for IPhone, I would rather spend my time doing something that made sense on the platform.

So I shelved the idea of Caster on the IPhone.  However, I still really wanted to get Caster on an embedded device because:

1) Caster has a small footprint and pretty low hardware requirements.

2) I like doing ports and I like the challenges of low end development.

3) It’s just cool.

Really, the turning point for me was when a publisher offered to port Caster to the IPhone for me.  For some reason, this made me look at it in a different way.  Instead of thinking “Caster is not a good game for the IPhone”.  I was thinking “How can I make Caster work on the IPhone”.  Then it became a challenge.  How can I take a 3rd person shooter like Caster, and make it work… no… make it ROCK on the IPhone?

For me, the value of getting Caster on the IPhone is the challenge of taking something that has no business being there and making it shine.

And shine it will!… (if nothing else, from the glare you get when you tilt your IPhone into the sun).

So what about a port to Nintendo DS and Pandora?  Well Nintendo DS is of interest, but I would need a publisher and I would have to deal with a publisher as well as certification etc.  As far as Pandora (Linux handheld) goes,  they have an awesome dev community and I have a person planned for this.  If the install base was bigger, I would probably do it myself.

That’s right! This month, Caster will be released!

The release will be the first chapter in the Caster Saga. All subsequent chapters will be FREE for those who purchased the game.

The sale price will be $9.99 and you will be able to purchase for Mac or Windows.

No DRM will be used.

Happy New Year Everyone!

Here it is! The first public preview on Caster!

http://www.indiegamemag.com/2008/11/caster-preview.html

The chaps at the Indie Game Mag gave what I feel is a very fair assessment of Caster.

Based on their feedback (which is similar to some other feedback I’ve had before) I will be upresing some of the textures and increasing the poly count a bit on some of the models.

Thanks Indie Game Mag!

Okay,

This is your chance to flex those art muscles and create some art for Caster!

The winner of the November fan art contest will have their art featured in Caster in addition to receiving a free copy of the game!

Visit this forum page to check out all the details:

http://www.elecorn.com/smf/index.php?topic=24.0

Thanks and get arting!

Oh by the way, I’m now working as a Senior Graphics Programmer for Hidden Path Entertainment. The place is awesome! We share ideals about game development and I’m working with great people on some really awesome projects. I’m getting to do tools stuff as well as graphics and prototyping.

I currently work for a game company, Radiant Machine, that is part of a larger company, SolutionsIQ. Sadly, SolutionsIQ has decided to close it’s gaming division after we finish our current project for Wizards of the Coast. I’m not sure why they’ve decided to do this, but for whatever their reasons, the short of it is I’m looking for opportunities elsewhere. My latest resume is here. Any leads would be much appreciated.

In better news, I met up with some fellow Seattle indies last Saturday night and had a blast! Attendees included Amanda Fitch and Bryce Jonasson from Amaranth Games and Keith Sink from Piddlepup Games. I’m more pumped than ever to finish up Caster and have it ready for Casual Connect in July!

Continued progress on Caster. I’ll be making a new downloadable version available soon.

My wife made visit to Seattle, Washington a month ago and rather than getting it out of her system (she is from there and wants to live there), it fortified her desire to move back. We had previously decided to stay here in Utah and see what we could do about budgeting more money for travel because it’s just too expensive to live there. Well, about a week after she got back I got an offer for a great job there that would pay enough for us to live there. So… The game begins anew!

I’ve accepted a position with Solutions IQ in Redmond, Washington working on computer graphics in their newly formed games division. They are a work for hire studio and they don’t have any issues with “owning” my time, thoughts, and ambitions when I’m not at work. This means I feel comfortable again working on projects that are important to me. Caster will get back into swing soon, but I have one other project to do before then. My next project is code named Lovely Day. It will be a short prototype for a 2D/3D animated soccer game based on the characters from July Film’s “My Little World” animated film. It will be on the XBOX 360 using XNA and the Flat Red Ball Engine (FRB). The reason this is trumping Caster is that I have a more urgent feeling about it than I do for Caster. Also, it will be short and it will be nice having another little something done before jumping back hard core into Caster.

When I put Caster on hold, I decided to start doing some other projects that I wouldn’t be afraid to lose to EA. Yes, the odds of the EA legal department caring anything about what I did were extremely small… but they did refuse to grant me an exception for my work when I asked for one, so I didn’t want to take any chances. I did the following:

• Created one level of a side scrolling Ninja game for XBOX 360 and Windows using XNA and FRB. I did the game design, the character art, the animation, and the audio work. My friend Victor Chelaru of FRB fame did the programming and our friend Leo did some awesome Background and tile art. A couple of the animations can be seen here and here.
• Created a match 3 game in Flash with the same core game mechanic as Chuzzle.
• Created a painting game in Flash based on the “Romeo and Juliet Sealed with a Kiss” animated film.
• Started working on a XBOX 360 demo with Ryan Petrie (hurri) for the Spark Arts Festival that will be held this October. We worked together on Isosurfer for Pilgrimage 2005 and decided to go at it again.
• Got a Nintendo DS homebrew setup up and going. Compiled and ran some stuff. It was very cool.
• Did a lot of interpersonal and business networking.

Looking back on it, abandoning Caster wasn’t all that bad. It was an opportunity to get out there and try out some other things that I would not have otherwise. As a result, I also got much more proficient in two other programming languages, C# and Action Script. This in turn beefed up my resume and helped me land the job that I have now. So there you have it, I took my lemons and made lemonade.

Whereas freedom to do whatever you like in life, animation, game development, etc. is ideal, there is a lot to be said for the creativity in how you handle restrictions on your work. Sometimes, the results of having the restrictions are better than if you had all the freedom you desired.

For my closing remarks on this post, I want to give huge props to the people at EA Salt Lake. They’ve done a great job maintaining the quality of life that we had while we were Headgate Studios. Great things are happening at that studio and lots of exciting projects coming down the pipe for them. I highly recommend the studio for anyone looking to get in the games industry. Honestly, instead of being excited about the new position in Redmond, all I’ve been feeling is sadness about leaving my good friends at work. It’s really been a great place to work.

Well, with the acquisition of my employer mentioned in the previous post, I have decided to put all Caster development on hold for a time. I have some plans and ideas in the works and no matter how things work out, I will be taking up Caster again to finish it. After Caster is finished, there are several other projects that are starting to line up.

Viva la indie!

On December 1^st, Headgate Studios became EA Salt Lake. That’s right, Electronic Arts, the worlds largest video game publisher purchased the game development studio I work for. The studio focus is to be on Wii projects for Nintendo.

This is both good and bad for the studio and its employees. Good for “stability”, bad for flexibility. I prefer the flexibility. You can read about my concerns here as well as a well written rant about the situation here. Mostly concerning the fact that EA feels a right to own anything you work on in your time away from work if it’s related to the “business” of EA.

It’s not just the ownership of my own time that concerns me. It’s the new attitude from management that has already become apparent since they took on more projects and accepted the break neck time frames. We’ve started doing some pretty important stuff for EA and we’re now seeing the effects of powerful executives pressing their agenda on us. You can read from my last entry about how we would constantly have to fight EA about how we manage our overtime. Well, management has buckled under pressure and I imagine will continue to do so so long as we remain part of the EA mega corp. I don’t like the feeling I have when I go to work anymore. Sure, my tech lead is great and doing what he can, but how long can he keep up the fight under the constant rebuke and pressure? It’s been a little while in the works but we’ve finally become an EA studio with the EA culture of “Crunch hard for our late reviews and feature creep and get the thing out the door!” After considering things, I don’t think things will “remain the same as they were” with respect to quality of life. Things were already changing before they purchased the studio.

I don’t know if I will stay or for how long. Several more appealing opportunities have become available. I turned down working for EA in the past so that I could work for Headgate. Looks like I just can’t get away from them.

I have always had my side projects that I could use keep my sanity and provide me with a creative outlet. EA wants me to stop working on them so I can focus more on my work for EA and not “compete” against them. Well, I will not stop working on them. Weather I stay with EA Salt Lake, or weather I go elsewhere, I intend to continue with my work. That’s just the kind of personality I have. There are so many things I want to do—want to create. I won’t give up this flexibility for “stability”.