Reveiwers list clarification

So someone asked me how come i spent so many hours working on a simple list of reveiwers. Well i thought everyone would understand but apparently not. So here is some clarification on what i spent so much time on. And of course expect to do the same.

Every time i wanted to add a contact to the list i would have to go to their website and make sure they still existed (yes even the ones i visit a lot). Then i would find the contact info as best i could. A lot of websites seem to hide this information. Or at least make it hard to decipher.
Once i knew they were still around, i would check their review status to make sure they were still reveiwing Xblig games. Some sites change their focus and some just go stale. Once it passed that test i wrote down the info i could find into the Xcel sheet.

Simple to do all that eh!. Well lets break it down a bit into time.
1. Check my Doc to see the next reviewer link. (minute 1)
2. Bring up the new web page after a quick copy paste (minute 2)
3. Check out to see if there is any contact info (minute 5)
4. Check out the site to see if it is stale, or if they just Mock Xbligs. (minute 8)
5. Copy and write all the info into my xcel file into the correct area. (minute 10)

So there we have it, about 10 minutes per entry (ok this seems a lot more than i spent, but some places were easier and faster. So i am sure that the average is much lower). I went through about 20-25 pages so i know i did not actually spend 10 minutes per, but in about 2.5 - 3 hours work i got through them all. Some were rejected, some were not. i ended up with  about 15 new sites i think, so not bad in the end, but funnily enough 15 added over 3 hours means 12 minutes each. haha!

So time consuming, i am so glad i can now just add to this list in the future, though i feel i will only be adding ones that reveiw my games. The main reason is that i now have a short list of 11 sites that have reveiwed my own or my Peers games. That is an awesome start. I am STOKED that i now have the possibility that i could get 11 reveiws for A Shooter.

Woot!

G'night

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.

Getting Stuck

Sometimes it happens that we think we have a bug. We can spend so many hours on this bug only to discover that it wasn't a bug at all. Today or more accurately this afternoon i had one of these experiences. I am going to share this in hopes that it might just inspire others (and maybe myself) to not waste as much time as i did.

Here is a basic timeline
1. Afternoon starts at about 1:30pm and i am working on repacing some graphics. It is going well but i need more artwork from my artist.
2. Shortly after chatting with the artist i realised i can work on some difficulty circles. These items mark for everyone to see what level of difficulty you are playing at on the game in The Midway.
3. The code was very simple and i changed it out very easily for our new coding style. This will save memory and make it run faster, woohoo! a Double win! (love those)
4. Added the new smaller assets and code and busy testing it. (2:15pm)
5. The numbers on the circles look great, however the colors lok a lot muted. That is odd.
6. Spend 1 hour trying to figure out what i have done wrong. Did i alter the shader somehow to break the colors?
7. Went for a walk to ease the fact that i have found nothing at all to help me out and suggest what i am doing wrong.
8. 4pm and still looking at the models and textures. Decide it's time to go back and see what it looked like originally. but i go half way, including old stuff and some of my new stuff.
9. BAH! the colors still look muted. now to go the whole way back.
10. Discover it looks EXACTLY the same as the new version. ARGH! It is the lighting and the angle i was viewing it at.
11. So annoyed at having wasted several hours on something that was great. Now it is about 5pm or so. Grrrr

I wish in hindsight i had not refered to how my memory visualized the colors on the circles, and had instead gone and looked at a real live version. This would have saved me several hours of confused pain.

Good luck in your issues, real and imagined!

G'night

Where does all the time go?

Tonight I managed to copy some discs of my sons Black Belt promotion/exhibition from last November (yeah a wee while ago eh!). I also managed to fix some more bugs in A Shooter. Had dinner and erm.... yeah

So what happened to all that time. It is amazing that time can seem so inconsistent with how long it takes to pass. Sometimes hours can go flying by and minutes can take forever.

Take a few days ago, i went to the Doctors office to get my shoulder MRI results. I got there 10 minutes early, but i had to wait in the waiting room for a whole hour. This was slow but people were coming and going so not too bad. Then it went into super slow mode when i was taken to one of the jail cells, erm.. i mean't treatment rooms. There i was bored to tears nearly for 40 more minutes... This was a very long time, or it seemed like it. The Doctor saw me for only like 10 minutes and they went super fast. Go figure!

On an opposite type thread, i visited Dave High today. This guy has a printers shop very near me and i was after quotes from him to make me some t-shirts and hats etc for contest prizes. I have visited Dave befroe and he is such a nice chap. Roxy in the front office is also very charming and i have to say that the hours we spent there last time and this were like rocketship time. It passed so quickly it is amazing. I have to say i love visiting their shop. They are both very cool people. I hope i can get some money together to buy some of what they offer.

Tomorrow i am sure the time will go fast and slow at the same time. This is because my tennis team, the Moorpark Raiders is in their final match of regular season. If we win all 5 courts we will be in the divisional playoffs. If we lose a court the currently second place team might be able to overtake us. It is very exciting and I will be there to cheer my team on, as i am too injured to play (bummer!!). So i am sure while i watch us winning will be fast time, i reckon that any close court will take forever to get done. Either way, it is going to be interesting.

g'night and stay healthy!

Down Time

Down Time is that point at the end of a project, or near it. That you have sent off your submission of your game to the testers, and are now awaiting a report. usually at this time I get to test the game i have been painstakingly working on for so many months. This time however it is different.

I am not able to purchase the Tickets nescessary to play the minigames, as i do not have a means to do this (faux credit card number etc). So all i can really do is wander around and play the free games as they pop up. This i can tell ya is Uber boring. Though it could be worse.

So what do i do instead, well fortunatly i got to write the Teleporting Minigame for the Central Plaza. But i finished it yesterday... and then did a big test today. Lo and behold it seems to work great. So that leaves me with erm.... Nothing to do but wait ?

Of course i did manage to interfere a bit on the other projects going on at Mass Media. But they al have very competant people working on them, so  a few minor discussions later and i am done with that.

So what now.. Well i dunno. I got so bored i left early and headed home. Where the kids were hard at homework. I did enjoy checking over their work and helping them a little each. Now that was productive.

I do not understand why people who have worked so hard to get to this point in the games dev cycle, cannot simpy wait at home. till something comes back. not always possible, but in this case it is. Of course this would mean that i could get on with My XBLIG game A Shooter.

We shall just have to see what happens tomorrow, but so far my plan is to go in LATE baby yeah!

Laters.