Determinance screenshot

Archive for July, 2007

This is just crazy

Friday, July 20th, 2007

More TIGSource gold.  You must play this.

Malakian, I expect a review.

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Real Lives

Friday, July 20th, 2007

As well as preparing for tomorrow’s (now possibly-postponed) Truck music festival in Oxford, I’ve been playing with Educational Simulations’ Real Lives after reading this post on TIGSource.

At age 6 I suffered a floating point division by zero.  Really.  Zing.

I’ll liveblog a little more…

At age 11, my stupid father, who moved us into a much more expensive house when I was about 4, forced us to move back to a crap one.

I just got rejected by the first girl I ever asked out at age 13.  That’s alright, her family’s net worth is WAY lower than mine.

I started neglecting my studies and I got placed on “academic probation”…this is becoming more like Princess Maker every second I play.

I just got rejected by another girl.  I’m going to see if I can transform my character into a maelstrom of adolescent rage.  Starting smoking should do it.

I helped a tramp but this still isn’t allowing me to get girls.  Another rejection.

I started drinking and taking drugs, then got a job as an electronic engineer.  Now I have a girlfriend, obv.

Haven’t blogged for a while because I was investing in land, going through several new women, and moving to Honolulu. I’m 26 now.

I got married to someone called Clarita Zamoro at age 28.

I lost a load of money on a really dodgy investment deal, got addicted to hard drugs and saved my best friend’s life.  Awesome.

I had a child, gave up drugs, gave up drinking, lost a load more money.

I gave up my job, was unemployed for a year and then became a police inspector.  Despite my long-term drug addiction.  Also awesome.   I got divorced and left my wife and daughter.  I’m now 51.

I got mouth cancer, quit my job as a police inspector and started working as a primary school assistant.  Er…yeah.  And I moved to Indiana.  Oh yeah and I’ve got married again.  I’m losing track now.  I’m a grandfather.  I’m 66.  My wife has senile dementia.

I just died of a heart attack at 67.

If you’re looking for something which is a mild fusion of Progress Quest and Democracy (I know I WAS), and is a bit broken in lots of ways, you’d do far worse than have a blast through Real Lives.

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Thunder

Friday, July 20th, 2007


It never fails, one peal of thunder and BT drops my internet connection.  Nice one.

We’re waiting on other localisation kits to come back, and doing some testing.  A teensy bit boring… more updates soon.

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Polaris World

Thursday, July 19th, 2007

I just saw an advert for this property developer on TV. If you ever needed an example of why executives should not star in their own marketing, you should seek it out.

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Determinance Fan Video

Tuesday, July 17th, 2007

Here‘s the first fan-made video of Determinance we’ve spotted on YouTube.  Very insane it is too – fantastic.

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On Distribution

Thursday, July 12th, 2007

I’ve recently read James B. Stewart’s Disney War while variously on planes and waiting for buses.  I think it’s pretty much an essential read for anyone interested in big business and/or the entertainment industry.  At several key points, Disney made choices to stay out of distribution and stick to content creation, and that’s certainly of interest to indie game developers.

Most of us got here to create content.  Is it worth investing the time in working up online stores and doing distribution stuff when we could just concentrate on creating great content?  Just a thought: I think the answer is different for different people.

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Mi scusi

Wednesday, July 11th, 2007

Determinance has just been translated into Italian.  Via the wonders of Babelfish reverse-translation, we have:

“It listens, Johnson,” it said Stephens, drying up itself one wake of dribble from the labbro inferior.

This is why I got into this business.

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Liveblogging “Cape Wrath”

Tuesday, July 10th, 2007

British television, as anyone who lives here knows, is atrocious.  We never went through the big-money stage of post-ER American TV, and now we’re in a situation where people think Dr Who is classy.

Now Channel 4 are launching a much-vaunted new suspense-type-horror thing by the name of Cape Wrath, and I’m liveblogging the first episode.  The aim is to see how long I can stand watching it.  Remember this series has been touted as, “unpredictable and fascinating” by The Times.

10:05 A man in a blindfold is being transported somewhere.  Plaintive music.  Dodgy flashbacks to some bad stuff happening involving fire.  Soundtrack involves lots of bowed steel.

Blindfolded family get out of car, blink in sunlight.

The first line is, “New house, new life, new us, eh?” something which no character should EVER say.

Title sequence is clearly 6 Feet Under-influenced.  Oh yay.

10:10  This is clearly going for a kind of Twin Peaks / Alan Ball zaniness.  The first minor character was an incredibly irritating shrieking woman.

“Concerned” wife characters – NO. 

First joke, “Who needs the World Wide Web when you’ve got BO.” “Excuse me?”  “Brenda Ogilvy, your next-door neighbour.”

Second joke, a character used the word “plumbing” suggestively.

“You can revive my filament in situ” – also suggestive.  Writer obviously proud of this one.

10:15 – a tender moment between husband and wife leads to an argument.  That’s it for me.

Horrible.

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Crunch

Monday, July 9th, 2007

Welcome to my mind.

I am Ian Hardingham, twenty-five year old game designer/programmer.  I do not find self motivation particularly easy – strange for someone running their own business, but there you go, I managed to finish the leviathon effort otherwise known as Deliverance (or something like that) and that was truly unexpected.

Well, I say finish.  It appears it’s not done yet.  It appears that our retail release requires another period of crunch.  A six-week-long orgy of bug fixing, testing, and arguing with my esteemed colleague over whether each bug actually needs to be fixed (his point of view: it does.  My point of view: there’s beer downstairs).

I’d say that this is the fourth major period of crunch for Determinance.  The first was for IGF and IGC 05, the second for IGF and IGC 06, and the third for the online release, in December and January 07.  You’d think I’d be tired of it by now.

But actually, I’m not.  The worst bits of development for me are where there’s ages to do a vague task (like “making a game” for instance).  I spend 95% of that ages drunk, hung over, or playing tennis; and 5% working.  But crunch is wonderful because when it’s done, it’s done.  Crunch is enjoyable because I can see the pay-off coming.  And the pay-off is usually me going to California, where the beer is cheaper and the friends are missed.

Quite frankly, the following is the moral:

Making games is fun.

Avoiding making games because you’re lazy is boring.

Having just finished a game is unbelievable. 

So here’s to crunch, because it’s that time of year again.

Oh, and you guys are going to like our next game a lot.

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Store

Monday, July 2nd, 2007

I’m working on getting our store up and running – making buttons in Photoshop is not my forte, as you’re about to witness…

I’m also full-time today.  Yay.

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