So Close

Terry Apr 30, 2011 19 Comments

I missed a deadline last night – I’d planned a small playtesting party at our place here in Cambridge, planned it over a week ago, but I totally underestimated how much work I actually needed to do to get everything to come together. So, had to cancel that. We played NIDHOGG instead.

No Quarter itself isn’t for almost two weeks, so I’m not worried about missing the deadline or anything like that; but it would be cool to have some time to test it out properly and polish it up before the exhibition. So I’m probably gonna give this weekend’s Ludum Dare a miss. Which I absolutely hate doing, especially as I like the theme, but it’s for the best.

It’s so close! This’ll be the biggest game I’ve finished since VVVVVV. Should probably start trying to come up with a name.

Awwwwww

Terry Apr 23, 2011 16 Comments

Oh wow! Look who arrived in my dimension this morning! Thanks, @marinavela!

Go play Soul Brother

Terry Apr 21, 2011 12 Comments

Soul Brother is a new game by fellow Cambridge game designer Jasper Byrne, who just went full time indie today! Congratulations, dude!

I’ve played several iterations of this game over last couple of years, and it’s fantastic to finally see it finished. It’s an amazingly beautiful and personal game, and a hell of a lot of fun, too.

Guys, play this game right now. You’ll like it, I promise.

12 Comments

Player two connected

Terry Apr 16, 2011 8 Comments

So, this week, my game finally became two player!

Sometimes I wonder if it mightn’t have been saner just to hammer out some fun little multiplayer action game for this exhibition. It certainly would have been a lot less scary.

Pretty much every game I’ve finished before this has been what Michael Todd described in his GDC lecture on game design and depression as “procedural” – as in, I’d have the basic heart of the game working right away, and spend the rest of the time expanding on that. This game is different – the downside of working on something like this, something with a grand, overall concept, is that it can take months before you’re even able to answer the question “is this going to work?”. And there have been times, while working on this game, where I honestly wasn’t sure.

This last week, though, I really feel like that question’s been answered. Yes, this is going to work. There’s something cool here.

Ludum Dare 20

Terry Apr 13, 2011 7 Comments

Ludum Dare 20 is at the end of this month! If you’re in Cambridge, come join us in CB2 for our Ludum Dare get together!

(There probably wasn’t any real need to blog about this here; I just really liked Dock’s poster!)

Wanted: Coder

Terry Apr 12, 2011 0 Comments

I’m no longer looking for any applications – thank you! [13th April 2011]

Hey all! Time for another wanted ad – I’ll keep this one short.

I’m looking for a contract coder to port a new flash game of mine to C++. The job will probably take a couple of weeks. If you’re interested and would like to know more, please send me an email, and we can discuss rates, deadlines, and more about what’s involved.

Ideally, you should:
– Be very familiar with C++ and SDL (or a similar cross platform library)
– Be at least somewhat familiar with ActionScript 3
– Have some experience building binaries in Windows, Mac and Linux.

Thanks!

A preview

Terry Apr 9, 2011 16 Comments

At some point, I’ll make a more revealing trailer for my new game. For now, I just wanted to share this brief glimpse.

Music by Stian Stark, audio from an interview with Alan Moore.

Untitled, still

Terry Apr 2, 2011 17 Comments

(Note: These screenshots aren’t representative of the final game’s graphics anymore – I’ve gone with a more saturated look.)

A quick update on my new game: No Quarter is in less than six weeks! I’ve been working to a strict deadline and hope to have the game more or less finished by April 22nd for playtesting.

Stian sent me more music for the game today, and it’s absolutely bloody perfect. Still hoping to put together a video or something soon so I can share some of it.

To repeat something I said elsewhere: I know I’ve been complaining a lot about deadline pressure on twitter and in real life recently, but it’s only because I really feel like I’m on to something with this game, and don’t want to rush it. I don’t even know what it’s called yet.