Long time no update.
In short: I got a game industry job and will be focusing on that right now. So I don’t have time for nano at the moment, but you never know about the future… I might win a lottery or something and start making my own games full-time again. Who knows.
- Riku
There’s not been posts in the last week. This was because I broke up with my girlfriend and moved house. This really fucked up the whole week, so I didn’t get almost anything done. My week went basicly driving from A to B and moving and buying stuff. And I guess I now have to even start to prepare my own meals… damn this sucks. But such is life 
Designed some enemies today and wrote some boring code.
I think this one turned out pretty interesting… not sure if it will be in the game, but I kind of like it Rigging and animating it will be some good practice…
I worked with the gunscript (the weapon scripting stuff) today.
Quick rundown on the rules of gun / utility system:
(This means that if you shoot all the time, your gun will get weaker and weaker)
(These abilites can be boosted with upgradeable devices)
I think this kind of system adds to the strategy of using your weapons and utilities wisely.
Today I presented a project plan of nano to a panel of business life representatives and teachers. This was the first part of a special vocational degree I’m trying to complete at the same time I’m working on the game. The presented project plan spans a 5 month period, that started in January. So, in the beginning of June I should have a working demo version of the singleplayer game to present to them.
The presentation went pretty well, and the panelists were really nice chaps, but there were some complains about the project plans being a bit fuzzy and about the absence of other ‘independent’ project contributors that have a more significant role in the project. I think they felt a bit that this is not a REAL project (as in business life standards) as I’m doing 70% of the work by myself, and I don’t have to report for anybody. There’s also the fact that we don’t have a real budget and the motivation behind the product is not very commercial. As this is not usually the case in the business world, this project may not meet the standards required by the ministry of education for passing a special vocational degree. But I guess we’ll see how that goes.
The presentation got me thinking about the corporate life again. Certain aspects of all this reporting and absurd spinning of papers to get anything done in the modern world is pretty annoying. Everything is forced into a mold where it necessarily doesn’t fit into. I think that indie games and small developers represent the exact opposite of the highly hierarchical and big software industry. Certain freedom of creativity follows from the more loose plans. Small teams can work with less hierarchy and make things happen instead of spending their time on paperwork.
I know, I know. These thoughts might sound a bit naive. But I KNOW that there’s a lot of people in this world that wish that things were a bit simpler and in smaller scale with more creative freedom. This is what the indie game scene is like, at least at the moment, although some developers have been transforming into a more corporate style cloning factories (mostly in the casual scene). But the heart of indie games is somewhere else. That’s the place where I wanna be.
Now I’m going to have a beer…
I spent the morning coding a system where we can load player ship parameters from a configuration file. This saves some hassle later, because Juho can tweak different ship parameters without me having to compile him a new game build every night. And now I’m trying to add some things Juho wanted to the gun scripting system. That’s the way it goes… Juho thinks new ideas and I work my ass off to make them.
I also started a drawing course. It’s a couple of hours every Wednesday. As I’m pretty crappy at drawing I thought now’s the right time to do something about it…
My first drawing since high-school… click to view a bigger picture of my lovely piece of art… Picasso, here I come!
Nothing much happened with the game today. Upgraded Wordpress to the latest version. That went fine without too much hassle. I must say that this blogging software really is a great piece of work. Only bug I have noticed so far is that the spell-checker introduced in the latest version doesn’t work for me, but it’s not so big deal. Tomorrow I hopefully get a lot of coding done.
…not really. Nothing wrong with this Monday. Juho presented me some of his plans about the player weapons and devices that you can fit to the ships. There will be quite a lot of different gadgets and interesting weaponry to use, if I can (and find the time) to fit all Juhos designs to the game.
Also, Jani sent me a fantastic piece of music just a few minutes ago. He got it right the first time, and I was instantly blown away! The music is perfect for the menus and intro-screen(s).
Also I got the texturing for one of the player ships done… might still change, but I’m pretty happy with it… for now
So… all in all quite a good day for a Monday.
Because there seems to be some people reading this blog, I will now try to update it more often. This means I’ll try to tell about everything from the boring code bits to other stuff that happens in my everyday life. So I guess I’ll try to turn this blog more into a diary type of thingy…
So here goes - First chapter of Bouncer’s diary - Sunday 21.1.07
Terrible hangover today. Last night me and a few of my friends had a normal Saturday night in a local nightclub. In Finland this normally means pretty heavy drinking. So every sunday I’m usually pretty tired to do anything except lay on the coutch watching telly.
But now I’m actually trying to texture a new player ship, while watching Southpark with the other eye. The current plan is to make 3 different ships for the game that have different amount of gun and utility slots and they also have difference in weight, armour and engine.
I have decided to re-open Bonebroke Games forum. Old forum was originally closed because it gathered a shitload of spam. I hope the new forum stays in better shape. Come there, register and let’s form a nice community. I’ll hope this helps to keep the development even more open to the public. There’s also a Contributions section, if you want to help us building this game.
I hope we can build a nice small community even when there’s not much to talk about at the moment. But I hope later this year the forums will be a source to all nano related material like arenas, gunpacks and other mods! And a great place to chat for all the fans of the genre.
So, join the nano revolution! and register here… http://www.bonebroke.com/forum
I’ll put an official link to the mainsite a little later.
