My Birthday and Off Roading

Yesterday was my birthday. Yeah, it is on that infamous day now in American history. 9 years ago it was a shocking wake up call from a friend of mine called Ian. Today it is a sad memory of how people died and how people fight over stuff. Real or imagined it makes little difference to me. Killing people just seems so wrong. Although i must admit to knowing people that make me feel like i need to kill them. Alrighty, so that last sentence was not actually true, it is a figure of speech only, and i am glad it is. So apart from helping ferry my kids around and having to go into work for a few hours it was a rather uneventful day. I did get some great birthday cards and this year for the first time i got a whole load of birthday well wishes from friends and family via Facebook. That was very very nice and made me feel all sentimental i can tell ya.

Sunday morning was to be my birthday time and i took the whole family off roading at Rowher flats off of Sand Canyon exit of the 14 just outside of Valencia. We had a great time and the kids and wife rode very well. I even got to have a go at some of my more intimidating hill climbs and this time the shoulder held up to the abuse. That certainly made me feel better. We rode to the top of the mountain up the fire road and generally razzed around a lot. I made a new friend in a guy also called Robert who lives close to Rowher.

Later we managed to get clean and go visit my friend who has a new puppy and steal his warcraft 3 disks while also delivering his Xbox back to him. He had loaned me this so i could do high score sharing code. Hmm, i just realised i have not released that to the general public yet, DOH! i need more time!

After that it was a quick visit to grab a malt shake from Carls Junior and home to watch the ens tennis final. Only to be told that it was rained out and might now happen on Monday.. How the heck am i gonna tape that now? I am noteven sure they know what time it is gonna be on. bah! Stupid USTA.

I am now pretty tired, and looking forward to some hard earned sleep.

Dreamland is still in Peer review and so far has maybe 3 reviews, which is ok with me.
A Shooter has had a single playtest so far, and no scores have been shared to me :( Though i keep leaving my xbox on all the time with a score from me. Though over night it turns itself off, also during the day when i go to work.

G'night everyone.

Screenshots and Video

So of course i have gotten around to grabbing a buncha screenshots with multiplayers playing. It was actually rather a lot of fun. I got to brin my wife and kids into the game and play several levels. It was quite fun, and i had a monologue going telling each one to avoid the bullets that were chasing them. with my kids laughing and pushing each other around, or racing to be first to a powerup. A lot of fun.

I grabbed 145 screenshots which i have reduced down to a measly 11 now and added them to the games press pack.

While i was doing this i recorded a bunch of gameplay footage with various numbers of us playing. Now i need to go through them and cut pieces that might resonate quickly with the Xbox owners out there that look at such things. I think this is a tough thing to do, as my favourite bits are not nescessarily the bits that would resonate the best with people seeing my game for the first time. For me, knowing it so well etc, it makes it real hard.

Anyway, back to the video editing, in fact i might wait on that and write up what i want in the video. That way i can maybe save on some superfluous video editing time.

Gnight.

Missing my Family

Here i am supposedly working on me stuff. I have lots to do, but no inclination. This morning i went out for a good hike in some mountains north of Fillmore and that took me till lunch with some of my friends at Chuys in Moorpark. It all went very well and was a great morning, though my calf muscles may argue that point :O

After that though i did a bit of work when i passed where i work (just needed to get a few things finalized for Playstation Home). Then it was off to real home and shower. That was refreshing and then i sat down to some motorcycle racing and then a bit of tennis on TV. I felt this would set me up for getting on with the big workload i am accumulatinig for Xblig atm. However it did not. While i was at work i got to chat with my wife over Msn Messenger. That was awesome, but it made me a bit sorry for myself.

You see my family (wife and 2 kids) are still in England till this friday. They are having a great time and usually when we do this i can work like a maniac while they are away. This time i don't know why, i just cannot get started. Maybe i need some starter juice, haha. Or a beer, yeah right. That'll help loads. Still sounds like a tempting idea right now!

So i have done nothing today for my Xblig stuff. I did play Limbo and went through the Demo real fast and easy. Only i cannot say i really enjoyed it, it is just too dark for me and i hate turning up my brightness for games. Maybe i can get a start tomorrow. If anyone can suggest some go juice, let me know.

Laters