So today was kind of a low-key day in terms of my actual job here. Most people are settled in, have network and the software they need, and so on, so there’s not too much I can do. I did take pictures and cut out the heads of all the jammers so we can graft their faces ontosome models in one of the games (it’s an Indie Game Jam tradition).
Robin implored that I mess around with the engine in my spare time, so I did. I’m not a great coder, unless you count 5 flavors of assembly. Then I’m “1337,” so to speak. So I was only able to get the example application up and running, make my own map, and change some of the meshes and animations, making Sims with yeti heads and that kind of stuff. I was unable to figure out pathfinding and behavioral AI stuff, because I am a pretty lame coder. But it’s okay; I did learn a lot about the basic engine stucture and level editing, so I’m able to help other peoplediagnose their problems.
In other news, I bought Blokus at the game store across the street, and just played it with my roommate Vincent, of Insert Credit fame.
Vincent and Chris (another Chris) have been doing sound, and man are they good. Chris is an audio contractor who mostly works with EA–in case you didn’t know, a good part of the Jam attendees come from the EA/Maxis nexus. So Chris did the audio for Sims 2. Anyway, he and Vincent are great, you just tell them “give me a laugh track, salsa music, and people being murdered,” and they whip up the sounds in no time. They’re also really good at working with the programmers, getting feedback from them as to the sounds they’re looking for. Just damned awesome.
The games are coming along really well. Jesper is doing “emtional Chu-Chu Rocket,” which if you don’t know the reference, I won’t explain it. Ike, from Big Huge Games, is doing a dance game, where you’re walking around a club and you dance with groups of people. First you dance with uncool people, and by successfully “dancing” (read “beat-matching”) you learn a new move from them, which you can then use to impress progressively cooler and larger groups of people. Jordan is doing this amazing murder mystery game, all in black and white, where you first watch different people in the house reenact what their version of the night’s events were. Then you switch to a crime scene mode, where you search for clues in the house. You collect the clues, and then move to solver mode, where you compare your evidence against their stories and try to guess who’s lying to you. Brilliant, and the sound work on the game is unbelievable. Those are just a few of the cool games that are being made.
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