ROTTEN TATER BLOG

Roboroso

2012-02-04T00:10:00.000-06:00

Global Game Jam Page

Do you have an hour to kill? How about a friend and 2 gamepads? That's what Roboroso is: a good old couch game.

Roboroso is the product of this year's Global Game Jam, where video game developers from around the world simultaneously develop games in a 46 hour period. They're working everybody into the book of world records. :D

I was the designated programmer in our team of four. Dr. Nathan Patterson, was our designated sound man, creating the wonderfully weird music and phonetic sound effects for the characters. He is featured saying "Roborosorazation complete" upon one's inevitable demise.

Jordan Laine was the design honcho and an artist. He balanced the team's initial concept, and soon became the project manager and directed us when time was putting me to sleep. Jordan drove ALL THE WAY DOWN FROM MINNESOTA JUST TO JAM. DEVOTION.

Lastly, we had the game development newcomer, Paul Goeser. Paul helped with the design and some of the art as well.

So what is Roboroso? It is an asynchronous two-player arena combat game. Both players take turns sending units at their opponent player in the arena. The first player to run out of units loses. That's the cut and dry version.

What were my personal goals and motivations behind the project? As with game jams in general, collaboration is great. As much as I resisted the idea initially, it turns out in the end that I just like working with other competent game developers. (Kevin Harris had to poke and prod me until I finally got my head straight and started jamming. Thanks man!

One thing however that I've been stressing about this last year is my want for a universal return to the classic couch game: playing a game on a couch, hopefully with your buddies next to you, joining in and applauding the action. Much of my gaming life has been spent this way. Online play just doesn't really cut it with me; I've always believed that face to face interactions in games with your friends are THE strongest way to make one of my aforementioned 'moments' a reality. I feel like Roboroso is a step in the direction I want to take more of my future games in.

For now, you can enjoy Roboroso, and some pictures (courtesy of Christopher Fournier) of members from the team at the jam! :D

Members (Left to Right): Ted Lauterbach, Paul Goeser, Nathan Patterson

A couple of fellow jammers trying Roboroso out. Jordan is the guy standing behind the two seated players

All of Chris's pictures from the jam can be viewed here. It was pretty awesome! We managed to fill the entire auditorium with participants. :O

Here's to many more game jams!

Discovering Life Through Video Games

2012-01-09T01:45:00.004-06:00

I played Resident Evil 5 again for the first time in many months. I got my sister to play mercenaries with me, too.

We started out pretty rough; the last game we played a game together was Gears of War 3, and we were still trying to roll away from the enemy by mad-tapping the A button (an action that will lead to great misfortune in RE5 if executed under the same circumstances). Even after we refreshed our button fingers to the ways of the zombie slayer, we continued to get clobbered. Hope seemed... silly.

But, almost as we were about to call it, I leaned over and said with as serious a face as I could muster:

"I need to change my character."

I'm pretty sure she knew what that meant right away. I scrolled over to Tribal Sheva; I wasn't kidding around anymore.

The last time I had used her, it WAS a joke. But, the stakes were higher then; we had tried for several hours that night many a month ago to demolish our worst enemy: The Boat Level. Just imagine a crap load of chainsaw wielding jerks that just FREAKING LOVE dying only to come back to life ten or fifteen seconds later for a second helping of countless shotgun and magnum blasts. The holy 'A' rating required to unlock our last character seemed fourteen-million times more hopeless than our feeble attempts to pick up the game in the present day.

Then there was Tribal Sheva. Her gloriously primitive bow lacked the oh-so-useful and seemingly essential laser sight every other weapon had. Her scantily clad costume certainly didn't garner any further support from either of us.

"You're kidding, right?" was something similar to what my sister said when we were loading up The Boat Level for try number 33,495, this time with my Sheva sporting her... nothing. (Seriously, still disturbs me that so many costumes do that with women).

I wish I was all cool and would have said something like, "Trust me, we've got this; I'm pretty fucking 1337."

But, it was more along the lines of, "Seriously, this is getting ridiculous. I just want to mess around a bit," spiced with a couple of bargains stating that I'd change characters if we didn't do well again. (That might even be a lie. I honestly don't remember anymore. xD)

We did our now usual drill; I climbed down the ladder, murdered an undead crossbow wielding bonehead and collected as many time bonus things as I could, while my sister expertly executed the first chainsaw maniac dropping from the sky a few feet away from the spawn and only 20 or so seconds after the round started, lamenting the second a tentacle endowed 'special head' zombie would materialize, chucking a flash bang to eliminate its sorry ass. Only thing different was, I was missing a crap load of shots; Sheva's arrows whipped past their heads with expert inaccuracy.

"It's no use!" I cried with anger! After the bow had proved ineffective, I had given up and resorted to Tribal Sheva's seemingly superior Grenade Launcher. Not so -- rounds were too few and ineffective to be useful.

Naturally, the next thing we knew, we were out of sequence; my sister and I had been backed up on top of a shipping crate that had no easy exits to avoid the blood thirsty mob, but did have a nice distant view of the pain to come: three more chainsaw-wielding, potato-sack headed freaks of nature slowly proceeding along their maddened war path, fueled by gasoline and a deadly Uroburos ridden blood stream closely followed by every green-bottle-toting, crossbow-straddling local who decided to join them on their head cleaving pleasure cruise.

All hope was lost.

But, hell must have frozen over. I started nailing half court shots on the undead: the weaker ones going down with one arrow a piece -- 'special heads' revealing themselves and being exterminated in three. Sis powerfully conserved every Magnum round she could for the big boys -- waiting till she could laser point them dead between the threads separating their bloodshot eyes for four or five expert head shots, waiting for their bodies to rise once again and repeat for the kill.

Shit hit the fan hard; 'special heads' were breaching the comfort zone. They'd pop of the occasional slice and we'd need to revive each other with that (thankfully) endless supply of morphine vials we were pumped full of on the heal.

Then, each and every one of our greatest fears materialized simultaneously.

Two of the sack heads used their unimaginable leg strength and leapt up onto our crate AT THE SAME TIME and stared at us at near point-blank range. SIS HAD TO RELOAD HER MAGNUM AT THAT VERY MOMENT.

"EXPLICT WORD STARTING WITH F!!" we cried!

I did all I could. Arrow to the face! Arrow to the face! Arrow to the face! Holy shit, one went down! The other began his horrifyingly maniacal tantrum of blood thirsty laughter as he raised his gas powered totem of judgement toward my sister's Albert Wesker's glorious head attachment device.

Arrow! ARROW!

SUSAN WAS RELOADED.

I wish I could make this stuff up, but you just can't.

We totally blew them away. We actually had a whole 30 seconds of time left over where there were no enemies left to kill because we had dispatched ALL of them. I think we had some stupidly large combo going. Like, a 50 combo or something. I don't quite remember. We unlocked the new character with flying colors.

Turns out when you can actually hit enemies with Tribal Sheva's bow, they die REALLY quick. We figured one arrow does about just as much damage as a Magnum round, but meh, we never ran numbers or anything.

So.

What does this rather lengthy story have to do with 'Discovering Life Through Video Games?'

It's not quite what you think. This story is only one of dozens of moments my sister and I had while playing Resident Evil 5. What's oh so very important about this is the moment. Through a game, my sister and I discovered a moment that we'll carry with us for the rest of our lives.

There's a big difference from the moment we had and some moment that was made by the designers to be memorable. Screw all of the boss encounters and stuff. I only really kinda remember a few of them, and probably not for any good reason. (Except maybe the final fight with Wesker or something, but that was born out of a hopefully unintentional lack of ammo. Really funny stuff)

I find the moments in video games so personal and moving, it's hard to say just how many of these things I carry with me. I'm one hundred percent certain that some of the most inspirational and enlightening times I've had have been from moments like these. Ones that on most occasions my sister and I would be the only people to ever know about them.

Events like ours are really cleverly hidden in my opinion. "They were just a good time of gaming" is what it comes off as on the surface. But how many times do I just reference Tribal Sheva and get a goofy grin between us? I've shared a (admittedly disguised) pivotal moment with another human being.

That's discovering life.

The larger bulk of my work has been sharing moments of my life of creating the games themselves. Did you feel a little bit of pain playing suteF? I hope so. There are times where I felt some myself when I was making it. A lot of times in fact. Gee, does it show?

The more I think of moments like my sister and I have shared (and, she's not the only one I've played games with and felt the same way, mind you), the more I believe that I need to create an experience that can provide some of these open-ended, non-scripted moments. Admittedly, I'm guilty of throwing my personal story into my work and thus muffling any moments people may have been able to create for themselves. It's just kind of how it has worked, really.

suteF has achieved a better result, though. How many people have just been left to connect the dots of the narrative? That was a choice I made at nearly the last minute, thanks to a friend who had showed me her own unique spin on it.

Anything the player gets to create in their moment is better than something the designer could have scripted.

Here's hoping that 2012 brings a few of these ideas to light so all of you get a chance to design your own moments through a system I present to you with plotted dots. Connect them however you see fit. :]

Teaser Screenie

2011-11-03T22:37:00.000-05:00

Current state of my newest project. If you're following me on twitter, you may get a clue what it's about. ;D

Make Games Like Your Other Ones

2011-10-20T21:43:00.001-05:00

Lately, I've been stuck in a development dreamland.

Since I released suteF close to ten months ago, I have completed exactly zero personal game projects. Compared to my ultra productive 6 game year (Fetus, Super Space Rogues, Vatn Squid, Hold Off Brownish Yellow, Chawp!, and of course, the flagship suteF), 2011 has been a flop.

It's been hard to put a finger on exactly what might be keeping me from working on any projects this year, but one thing I know is that I feel a lot of pressure to "deliver" on my next project. After lengthy discussions with several of my coworkers and friends, they've assured me that it's a bit irrational.

"You should have been riding that publicity wave you got after making suteF! Are you crazy?"

I feel like they're definitely right. I've hacked and slashed my way trying to make some new, different game that will break and shatter everyone's expectations of my work but have actually produced a hollow land of what I could imagine being jaded fans. I don't claim to be a cactus or anything like that; but I'm certain I have some sort of following! Fan art, tweets, retweets, thirty-one thousand plays? It's nothing to sneeze at, for sure.

Okay, then I'll attack back with....

"But if I make a game that's too much like suteF, everyone will think I can only make puzzle games with blue dudes in them! I will be THAT guy or whatever."

I'm super scared of that. Like, insanely scared. Somehow, I've gotten it in my head that doing something like that is a bad thing. Part of this might be that I've seen a lot of movies that are just the same old thing all the time (I'm talking about you, Michael Bay and James Cameron). Not just recently either. Several directors like to make the same movie with a slightly different theme, and they just don't get away with it. I look at Titanic and Avatar as being almost the exact same movie. It's more apparent with when you look at Aliens, The Abyss, and Avatar, though.

Then, there's AAA video games. Everybody knows that there are way too many military first person shooters these days. I hate that. It's now public.

Then someone reminded me of this important fact:

"It's not like you're making any money with the games that you've made, Ted. So what the hell does it matter?"

I love what I do and the games I make so much that money doesn't even occur to me. I think that definitely says something. When you boil it down, when you make games (and even movies) and sell them, people that like them will buy them. Then there's going to be people who hate Avatar, Transformers, and FPSs that will trash the idea and just not want anything to do with it. But, I'm told they make money; so there's still more people buying them then hating them; or at least enough that IT NO LONGER MATTERS what anybody says about it, because, hey, I'm going to make something else I like even if you don't like it.

And when there's no money involved, I can just say you're stomping on my dream or something like that. Jokes aside, how big of a deal is what I make when I'm doing it for fun? People might be disgusted by undead fetuses and tumorous monsters, and even though I nearly worked myself to death on suteF, damn it if I didn't end up enjoying it to some extent.

I'm not sure how other people view their work in regards to "staleness" or "it's too much like the other ones," but anyone who thinks so should at least consider themselves in the process. There's nothing that says it's going to be exactly the same anyway.

This is probably some sort of rant more than an intelligent argument for making games you want to, but I feel like I've had issues getting over it. Comments on the blog are impossible, but if you have your own two cents to throw in, I'd be really happy to discuss it:

ted DOT lauterbach AT gmail DOT com

Also, if you're interested in a permalink - http://tedlauterbach.blogspot.com/2011/10/make-games-like-your-other-ones.html

Sources say suteF Post Mortem "Coming Soon"

2011-09-30T19:13:00.002-05:00

Since this hasn't been on the website before:

It has come to my intention that one day I said I was going to make one.
Coming soon is code for when I can. So... soon?

For now (and mainly for people I met at Unite 11 who've stumbled here), please give the trailer a watch and visit the official site for suteF.

Virulent

2011-06-13T11:20:00.006-05:00

In late January, I was given the opportunity to work as a 'Design Team Intern' for the Educational Research Challenge Area (ERCA), a group of developers creating games at the University of Wisconsin. Since then, I've been responsible for a large amount of programming as well as designing sound effects and music on the team's pilot project, Virulent.

So, what is Virulent?

In my humble words, Virulent is an action-strategy game intended to teach Systems Biology to middle school and high school students, specifically in the cycle of viral infection and reproduction.

Virulent is available for the iPad and Web (and is completely free in either case). If you play it, keep in mind that it's designed for middle and high schoolers that generally don't play games.

It's also worth mentioning that the game is incomplete in it's current form, but should be finished sometime in August.

suteF Released

2011-01-25T16:54:00.007-06:00

(This article is a compilation of posts from the official suteF website)

Go to the suteF game page and download it now!

Almost month after suteF's release, it's already received over 17,000 plays! Thank you so much everyone for giving it a play!

Along with the huge community response (it's collectively been decided that 'Void Rim VII' is the official Satan level of suteF >:]), suteF has also gotten a huge buzz around the internet with news sites. Here's a number of them:

Freeware Game Pick: suteF (Ted Lauterbach) from IndieGames.com

Game Jolt: New Featured Game : suteF from GameJolt.com

You Don't Belong in This World : suteF from DIYGamer.com

Weekend Download from JayIsGames.com

A Horrifically Wonderful Puzzle Platformer from Switched.com

Want to play a cool indie puzzle game? from ShogunGamer.com

A Raw Steak is Fighting for the Love from Spiegel.de

Feature: Top Freeware Puzzle Games 2010 from IndieGames.com

suteF Review from TIGSource.com

Hell is Other People, but Also Yourself from Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The feature I'm especially proud of is the consideration of suteF as the NUMBER ONE puzzle game of 2010 from The Indiegames Blog. It is quite an honor to receive such a title with a game released 3 days before 2010 was over. A GREAT honor.

Once again, thanks to everyone for giving suteF a play! You have no idea how awesome this has been!

(Picture / Mine Craft sculpture courtesy of Zack Banack)

suteF - Release Date Announced

2010-12-24T14:25:00.005-06:00

Original Article taken from the suteF Official Website

suteF should hit the internet in its done form on December 28th. If you're not, you should be following the suteF Twitter, suteF Facebook Page, where I update a lot more regularly, and you can get the link the second it hits.

So, I have some explaining to do.

The last two months of development on suteF have been fairly lackluster. I have been completely burnt out after the IGF rush, and I haven't exactly been very good at keeping the hype alive on my work. The result that is coming out on the 28th is mostly a bug fixed version of the IGF submission, and won't include Chapter E. I'm leaving it out because I'm not sure how much it would add to the overall game, and if it's a secret chapter, how many people are going to be able to get to it anyway?

If suteF does a lot better than I expect it to, then I might consider releasing a special edition and add Chapter E. This doesn't seem very likely because of my 'marketing' shortfalls, so don't get your hopes up too high.

suteF has been a very difficult project to pitch to people to play for free, so I'm banking on the fact that the mysteries surrounding it also attract newcomers. This is why I'm likely NOT going release the story for the game either, or if I do, it will be fairly enigmatic and convoluted much like the original's.

After discussing this with friends, playtesters, and complete strangers; people's own stories that they invent for suteF are much more fantastic than anything I, a professional writer, or anybody, could ever make. suteF is definitely a passion project. I've made everything exactly the way I wanted, and very likely at the expense good design (design meaning the profoundness of the end product, mind you). suteF is a game that is so personal, I'm not even quite sure where all of it came from.

If you're still a dedicated fan, you'll tell people about suteF. I want people to gobble it up on the 28th, even though that might be a really weird day (that likely will get it ignored by the 'game of the year' type stuff coming out over the next few weeks). Post it, tweet it, love it, review it. I'm going to do all I can to make up for my shortfalls, and I know I'm asking a lot.

But thank you so much for listening! IT'S ALMOST HERE! :D

suteF Website

2010-11-22T08:17:00.002-06:00

http://www.rottentater.com/sutef

Go there. You will be updated on suteF goings on.

It Snows in suteF

2010-09-23T17:44:00.002-05:00

Sorry for posting late. All that jazz.

This is a screenshot from what's been added to suteF in recent weeks. There are several icy stages present now! It's both necessary for adding more visual diversity AND for being totally sweet.

If you haven't been following me in the twitter-verse, then you may not know that I plan on finishing suteF by October 8th. I'm going to take a week or so to bug polish, getting suteF all nice and pretty for IGF 2011.

I think anyone who's been working on a game for a deadline knows that it's really hard to keep everyone posted (especially when you're just working on your own! :O), and I've got some really neat ideas up my sleave that I'll want to share in the future.

But for now, I've got a LOT of work to do!

Obligatory Not Dead Post

2010-08-31T11:07:00.011-05:00

Yeah. Not dead. You get it now.
Things you may have missed:

Chawp! was a project that I and Brian 'brod' Rodriguez made for Game Jolt's Second Game Jam. It involves what the title calls 'chawping.' It is hard, it is fun, and it is pretty unique. Other people who were involved in the game were Matt 'scoz' Scorah (SFX) and Ashley Gwinnell (Music). I may do some sort of postmortem for it here in the future.

Meet Computer Bear. He is one of several new characters that are making their appearance in my follow up to Fetus, suteF. Not much information is available now, but I will tell you that he is the one responsible for building the TVs that teleport you around, and he can be considered a 'gatekeeper' like character that introduces you to the type of world you're going to encounter.

Visit3's progress has nearly slowed to a halt so that I can finish suteF. However, I've placed some of the work for Visit3 in the very competent hands of David Mann, a local programmer. So far, I've introduced the game to him (and by introduce, I mean it threw the entire source at him and he gets to be dumbfounded by my terrible-looking code), and we're in the process of working out the kinks of making Visit3 run on Xbox. The game has no content at the moment.

suteF will NOT be finished for YoYoGames Competition06. This is happening for a number of reasons; I really feel that suteF needs to be “done when it's done” because it has grown into a game that simply requires further gameplay exploration. At the moment, its potential has exceeded anything I had ever conceived when I initially designed it. But...

...suteF is going to be done in time to make the IGF deadline. :]

Game Pick - Mind Jolt

2010-07-30T20:17:00.010-05:00

Download Now
View Game Page

A couple of weeks ago, Game Jolt put on their Indie Games Demake Competition (where I entered Hold Off Brownish-Yellow). The entire competition was a really great success in my eyes, and it made me feel as though Game Jolt is back on the rise once more.

If you're interested, GameJolt is holding a Weekend Jam through August 6th to the 8th, and it's open to anybody who is crazy enough to make entire games in a single weekend. I made Vatn Squid for the very first Jam held by GameJolt.

BUT, what I really want to talk about was a game that unfortunately didn't get completed in time to participate in the Demake competition. This game is called MindJolt, made by the very talented creator of Flood the Chamber, Matt Scorah.

Do you want to know what is really awesome about Mind Jolt? It isn't truly a demake, but more of a reinterpretation of one of my most treasured, most overlooked, and best written games: Mind Shock.

A Pseudo-Review

I'm deeply honored by Matt's work on the project. He has paid such a great deal to the nuances and details of the story that when I loaded it up for the first time, I was in tears of joy! The certain subtleties of the events and abstract characterizations were played out perfectly, and even better than I could have ever hoped to accomplish in the original. I had no idea that anyone could have caught so many of the ideas that were only hinted at once or twice in my version.

Matt also kept one of the most specific highlights of Mind Shock alive: the Vector based drawing of virtually EVERYTHING in the game. This may seem like something trivial, but when you do it right, you can tell the preciseness achieved using the original Vector style, and I've always felt that to be one of the greatest features of this series.

But, this is where the greater majority of the similarities between the games begin to fade, and Mind Jolt becomes its very own, very unique, and very well crafted endeavor.

If you compare the visual style of the games, you can tell that Matt's version feels a lot darker, and certainly more mysterious an threatening than the brighter version I had made. There also seems to be this very clever, and somewhat ruthless nature to the pounding that the enemies receive. BOOM-Boom-Ba-Boom!

The gameplay has also GREATLY changed. Matt took the shmup elements from Mind Shock (and allegedly Vatn Squid) and pushed them to their limit. There are no signs of Static Shock (the pendulum swinging gameplay), and there are a couple of bosses that reflect the gigantic bosses you were required to maneuver through in the original. To sum it up, the chunks of armor from the Boss Shock mode were combined with the Shmup Shock gameplay, and fleshed out in many different ways.

One of the biggest, and possibly most 'controversial', differences between Mind Shock and Mind Jolt is the pacing.

Mind Shock is a very fast paced game that is split into 4 different chapters, each one lasting about 3-10 minutes depending on how good you are at dodging things. You have the opportunity to quit at any time and come back to complete the next chapter. You are also pretty nimble during the fight; you will lose a little speed by shooting, but it's still fast enough to avoid a bulk of your worries.

However, Mind Jolt is a different story. Matt provides, what I affectionately cursed while playing, a 'deadly death gauntlet.' Your endurance will be challenged; this is no exaggeration. You have to conquer 20 separate and increasingly difficult waves of enemies, all in the same sitting. By all means it's doable, but my first play through took me about an HOUR of REAL time to beat. Needless to say, I was exhausted, but it feels so worth it. I got a lot of gratification out of finally winning it, like many older games that require such stamina (i.e. Battletoads, Super Ghosts 'n Ghouls, etc). Matt's version also pushes the speed hindrance to its max, providing a VERY noticeable difference between your movement during fire and while released. This is by no means bad, but very interesting. It puts more skill requirements into the player's hands, and demands that they think twice before simply laying waste to the enemy.

For the record, I enjoyed Mind Jolt's gameplay over my own.

One very good treat that I also enjoyed was the ability to compete for a best completion time. (Mine at the time of writing is 45 minutes and 8 seconds. I DARE YOU TO BEAT IT!)

Overall, Mind Jolt is a very strong game that stays undeniably true to its inspiration but is also ripe with amazing visuals, gameplay, and story of their own merit, and is more than worth the 'deadly death gauntlet' to complete, if not only for the shear pleasure of saying you were able to do it.

DOWNLOAD IT NOW

suteF - Screen Dump

2010-07-23T01:56:00.004-05:00

Sorry for the huge delay on a new post. I have been busy at work, so hopefully these 'enigmatic' shots will make up for it:

Hold Off Brownish-Yellow

2010-07-07T22:37:00.007-05:00

DOWNLOAD

I've finished my first game since Vatn Squid. This was my contribution to the GameJolt IndieGames Demake Competition. The game I chose to do for this was a game called Hold Off Red by Matt Thorson, the gentleman responsible for Jumper, Give Up Robot, and a hole slew of others.

On the surface, my decision to demake Hold Off Red may seem strange to most everyone I talk to; it's a fairly old game (first finished in 2005, then remade as a flash project in 2009) and it isn't one of his best known games (I don't recall reading too much about it on games blogs when he re-released it). HOWEVER, I just get this, vibe out of the game that I really haven't gotten out of too many other games. Ever.

To sum up Hold Off Red, you play as a heart, stationary in the middle of the play-field and unable to move, that has to fend off Woes by shooting them. There's RPG elements and strategy involved galore (you have a bunch of different 'ultimate attacks' you can choose from, all with nice advantages and disadvantages).

But that's not why I really like Hold Off Red.

I'm very likely reading into it a little too much, but on the surface, the game appears to be just that description above. But, why Woes? Why even a Heart? The symbolism just kind of strikes me everytime. I always feel that Hold Off Red is a game about hopelessness, or at least a representative of all of the things that make us feel hopeless. You can't really win. All you can do is try to stop as many Woes as you can before you're eventually completely overrun and have no chance to survive. It's just... so damn BLEAK.

What's even more special about this is the fact that a narrative that interesting doesn't get in the way or consume the gameplay at all. It is companioned with it; bold enough to peak your interest, yet subtle enough that you can only think about it at key moments.

If you haven't played Hold Off Red, you at least need to try it. It's not really for twitch-shooter guys or anything, but the difficulty curve is really nice, though it takes just a tad bit to get into it. Oh, just go PLAY IT already.

And for you retro enthusiasts, you should play mine. It's fun in it's own right, and surely not for the same reasons Hold Off Red is. I tried to stay as close to faking the specs of a GameBoy as I could. There were really only a couple of things wrong with it that don't jive with the GameBoy style, but I felt I did a good job.

Concerning my other projects, they're still on, and I'm going to post about them here pretty soon to make up for the week I missed. Thank you readers, and thank you Matt for making such a wonderful game! It has truly inspired me since I first came across it so long ago!

suteF - Announcement Screens

2010-06-19T01:33:00.004-05:00

If you haven't been following me via my twitter, this is the official announcement of my newest project: suteF, a sequel/remake of Fetus made specially for YoYoGame's Competition06.

If you compare suteF to it's original game Fetus, you'll notice that it looks a million times prettier. There's going to be a bunch of very interesting extra features added for this sequel as well.

Visit3 development isn't on hold! (I nearly exhausted myself to death during the two months leading up to the Visit3 World Editor video, and have taken a couple of weeks off game dev) The next two weeks are going to be a very in-depth work session on both games, to help keep my development sharp and refreshing.

Keep reading! I'll keep you posted!

Fixed Download Links

2010-06-11T16:53:00.002-05:00

It recently came to my attention that I had screwed up all of my download links, and it's been that way for a month or so.

All I can say is that web is definitely a week suite of mine. And to think, that I didn't do a thorough check on my links after I changed it.

All of the issues should be taken care of though, and sorry for any inconvenience it may have caused.

Visit3 - World Editor Preview

2010-05-27T15:37:00.005-05:00

So what does this mean? Well, a number of things really.

This video shows my progress over the last 2 months on Visit3. If you weren't aware, a while back I announced my intentions to create Visit3 using the XNA framework with the intention of placing it on the XBoxLive Indie Games service that Microsoft provides.

Here's the breakdown of what's pretty much "finished":

TileSet Editor
This includes a bunch of stuff. First off, I can customize ANY tileset's Color and Pattern as well as place them on any of 3 different layers (since that's all I'll really need). The best and greatest ability is that the tiles autoformat when I place them, giving each tile the correct siding for all possible combinations, while at the same time, differentiating itself from tilesets that are not the same type.

Not only is that pretty spiffy, but it also means that placing tiles is easy as HELL compared to what I had to do using GameMaker. The average room takes about 5 minutes to place and tweak the tiles, whereas Visit I&II took around 20-30.

RoomStyles
This is a little more complex to comprehend (possibly), but "RoomStyles" provide easy ability to modify the backgrounds and ambient effects that are in the room. I can set things like weather/overlays (not present in the video, or in the editor yet, anyway) very quickly, and I'll usually only have to change it once, as all of the rooms in the game look to a specific style that I've set them to using the editor.

Particles
This is pretty self explanatory, but I've also got particles in and working. I made a nifty editor to tweak things like explosions, rain, and other things to look pretty in game.

End of Post Notes
I really don't have any intentions of making the editor open source for a couple of reasons. One, the editor is EXTREMELY weird to use for people who aren't me, as it requires you know a lot of information on how the editor windows function. The other reason is that I'm not going to be able to give support like updates and tutorials because I am WAY too strapped for time, and I really do want to get the game done.

Thank you so much for taking a look at the video. The next thing on my list is to start making GameObjects and be able to place them into the editor.

Vatn Squid Postmordem

2010-05-15T01:17:00.014-05:00

Although Vatn Squid has been out for a while now, I managed to find a video playthrough of it (an Ortolson one, at that :D ).

I'd also been getting a lot of questions as to the process in creating this little game, so I'm going to do a mini-postmortem (below the video)

The Team

I wasn't going to the jam alone! I had the great musical talent of Heatex behind me, as well as his expertise in shmups that was invaluable during the tweaking and fun making stages of the game. Also present was IceWave, a great guy who contributed the underwater theme of Vatn Squid, as well as the sprite for the final boss with the same name! Both of their work was instrumental to Vatn Squid's completion, as I don't think I could've done everything by myself in the two day deadline.

The Process

We did all of our team communication through MSN Messenger. The first hour or two of our development was focused on designing the perfect game we all wanted to work on. Heatex had suggested doing a shmup. Originally, we wanted to set the game in space, where you flew a mech and had to take on several different enemies in different missions. I had actually started some concept pixels for the player mech when IceWave showed me an outline of a really cool boss he had in mind for the space game:

I immediately fell in love with it, and I instantly had the brainchild of setting our game underwater, all thanks to that single picture!

Screenshot Timelapse

For the first day and a half, I was recording a video stream of my work via LiveStream. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to download and edit the content saved on their website, but I can provide a link to my 'channel' located here that contains a bunch of raw, low frame rate, and unedited work footage from the jam. The best I can really show you is a bunch of screenshots I took showing various stages of the game's development.

Short descriptions of progress:
(1) Player added and movable.
(2) Player can shoot. Added some background elements and bubble-jet.
(3) Added a simple, single pattern enemy
(4) Added multi-value bullet pattern support. (Bullets that create bullets)
(5) Allowed support for more than one color of bullet.
(6) Tweaked backgrounds, added missiles, and inserted UI.

As you may have noticed, the two dummies I had for boss placeholders simply didn't make the cut in the end. I thought they didn't look very cool. Also, the green bullet pattern visible in images 5 and 6 made it's way into the game as Vatn's weapon of choice.

Scrambling for the Finish

The last day was a mighty huge blur. By the time I had gotten to Screenshot 6, the game file had already landed on Heatex's end several times, and he remained in a diligent state of work on creating the perfect track.

I wanted to give the bosses a lot of character, since it was apparent that small enemies and levels were definitely out of the question for such a short work period. I've always loved getting little snippets of information on your opponents like you do in fighting games and sidescrolling brawlers (see Street Fighter and Final Fight), so I figured this would be a wonderful thing to add to Vatn.

The name of the game was Heatex's idea. We were scratching our heads on a good name, then he started looking up definitions in foreign languages. In a list of pitches he gave me, 'Vatn' (Icelandic for water) stood out as the most interesting and relevant. I added 'Squid' since there were so many in the game, and it rolled off the tongue quite well.

Parting Thoughts

Overall, the jam was a really great experience. It was my shortest time-frame of development to date, and I thought a lot of good came out of it. This was also my first true (quality) collaborative project that I had done, which was also a wonderful opportunity. The only thing I wish that I would have done differently in the game would've been changing the difficulty curve a bit. In the rush, I made Squawk the Birdfish WAY too hard (for beginners anyway) for the fifth boss in the game, and the others between him and Vatn Squid weren't very hard comparatively.

Once again, however, this was a great experience, and I KNOW that I'll be jammin' in future ones for SURE.

Rocket Game - Update

2010-05-06T08:51:00.003-05:00

Here's some dev-screenies courtesy of Drazzke:

Rocket Game

2010-04-21T17:41:00.005-05:00

What is THIS?

It's my next collaborative game project! I'll be working together with Drazzke, a Game Maker developer who's also been making some Flash games, as well as Heatex, the totally awesome guy who made the music for Super Space Rogues and Vatn Squid.

We'll be releasing more details as we get more done, but the plan is that it will be a short term project made in FlashPunk, so expect it in browsers soon!

Visit3 is also still going strong. I've been so busy on it that I haven't had a chance to post any of the awesome stuff on it yet. Soon though!

Play Expo 3.0

2010-04-04T15:55:00.007-05:00

Saturday marked the Play Expo, an event taking place in Whitewater Wisconsin where students and some Midwest Indies had yet another chance to show off all of their hard work from the year.

I had the pleasure of entering in four of my games into their 'Games for Fun' category as well as being able to show them to professional game developers. Some of the representatives were from RavenSoftware, Filament Games. Also appearing was Cory Barlog, who is now co-directing the upcoming Mad Max video game. The Play Expo site probably sums up his previous works much better than I could:

"In his 7 years in the industry he has worked on several titles across multiple platforms eventually landing at Sony Computer Entertainment Santa Monica Studios working as the Animation Director on God of War for PS2. He went on to write and direct God of War II (PS2) and act as Creative Director for God of War Chains of Olympus (PSP)." -Play Expo Website (retrieved 4-4-2010)

The Play Expo was much better than I had anticipated. My 'collective works' entered into the expo won the 'Game for Fun' category. Winners of the event were invited to Bertozzi's house to enjoy dinner with her and the judges, and it was a great time! There were several discussions on what the future of games held, as well as convincing your audience that the game you've worked so hard on was worth the play. Some guy brought an iPad, sparking discussion on what kind of weird and cool things you could do with iPhones/Pads.

Also, on the Midwest Gaming Classic. I still plan on updating on the event with my experiences and such, but I got busy on starting work on a room exchange system for Visit 3. As the 'awards' season starts coming to a close, you can bet I'll be running out of things to talk about that are non-Visit 3 related. So, expect Midwest Gaming Classic stuff to fill the gaps. :P

Midwest Gaming Awesome

2010-03-29T12:44:00.006-05:00

The Midwest Game Fair in Green Bay was a great success! Super Space Rogues received top honors as the Best of Show recipient at the event, and I won a speed concept art competition with the drawing above. (The theme was 'Worst Day Ever')

The game fair had less attendees this year, however, but I felt that the local game industry's representatives were great. The three professionals present were from Frozen Codebase, a small game company based in Green Bay that specializes in games made for XBLA and other downloadable platforms. Their previous titles include Screwjumper! and Elements of Destruction, and they're currently working on a Metalocolypse game based on the show as well as a game for the upcoming movie Kick Ass. They talked mainly about the state of the professional games industry, making rapid prototypes, and how to get jobs in the professional sector. The discussions felt nicely refreshing too (although 'how to get a job in the industry' stuff is always at these things, it was entertaining).

I also had the pleasure of attending the Midwest Gaming Classic on Saturday, a huge event based in Milwaukee that celebrated the love of everything games: arcade cabinets, old consoles, and even pinball. It was one of the greatest times I've ever had as well as one of the most inspiring. Later this week, I'm going to update with a more in-depth review of the events that were held (including the spoils I scored and my new-found appreciation of pinball!)

Midwest Game Fair & Play Expo

2010-03-25T09:56:00.014-05:00

ITT Tech Green Bay is hosting the 2010 Midwest Game Fair, and four of my games (Fetus, Vatn Squid, Thunder Gun, and Super Space Rogues) have been accepted as entries. The scheduled date of the event is this Sunday (March 28th), and it gives student game development programs across Wisconsin the chance to not only compete with their work, but also make connections with local game development professionals. Last year, I had the honor of receiving the Best of Show award for Mind Shock; Visit II and Descent surely weighed in as heavy support too.

This year also marks my first appearance as an entrant for the University of Whitewater's Play Expo, where the same four games have also been accepted. The 3rd annual Play Expo takes place on April 3rd; I first attended the event in 2008, (while I was still developing the original Visit game) and it was there that first I expanded my fervor to develop and create games like a madman.

After these two events, it will essentially mark the end of my 'awards season' series of endeavors for the beginning of the year. There'll be plenty to work for as the year goes on. Look forward to more information on the results of the competitions.

Starting Up

2010-03-22T12:28:00.005-05:00

After a half week of recovery from GDC insanity, I got together with a couple of guys who were interested in working with me on Visit III. Aaron Hoffman, an amazing programmer currently acting as project manager for the Heatbees' game Existence, was very interested in helping me out. He's been working with XNA on and off since it was 2.0, and he's definitely added an edge to Visit III's development. So far, we've begun talk on a development outline as well as crafting a clever World Editor; this means I'll release some details on both as we get them going strong.

The site's been up for a couple of weeks now too, and I've gotten some questions on RSS feeds to the blog. People were wondering where to subscribe, and that's the fun part. Currently, the blog is being displayed via my Blogger account (through some craftily awesome stuff my sister did). A feed is available at this link, but the main blog that it is attached to is nowhere near as pretty as the main site. In the future, comments will be accessible through the main site, and permalinks can be made to posts on the main site (as opposed to the blogger account).

I want to let everyone reading know that I'm going to be posting at least once a week with updates on our development, or update with interesting links that I've found pertaining to game development or indie games in general.

We're Back

2010-03-16T11:10:00.013-05:00

GDC was a blast! We got a chance to show off all of our work from the last year, and the Heatbees team made some really awesome connections. I especially got a lot out of being able to demo my work at our booth (paid for by the school).

GOOD STUFF

Squids and Fetuses are Interesting
The best compliments I received from people were for Vatn Squid and Fetus, but for completely different reasons. Vatn was awfully flashy and fresh compared to some of the other games on the expo floor, and attracted bullet hell fans and other curious people from all sides of the spectrum. Fetus on the other hand kept a lot of people intrigued; at least four people who had played Fetus played it to completion, which is saying a lot when it takes 10-15 minutes for the average person to get through it.

Controllers are Nice
Out of all of the games I showed off, most people were much more receptive to the pick up and play aspects of a controller based game; they didn't have to sit down, I could toss them the controller after a quick demonstration of the controls, and it gave a certain degree of polish in presentation that I never really expected. Many of the keyboard and mouse centric games I had weren't really played too much. Also: when I would explain the importance of the Z, X, C control scheme to players, they usually couldn't pick it up in time to become interested.

48 hour Games Shock people
One of the most common "WHAT!?" moments I got from people was explaining that Vatn Squid was made in a really short period of 2 days. It was really nice to hear too, because it's apparently something hard to do. On a side note, several people were surprised to hear that my games were done in Game Maker.

BAD STUFF

Missed out on the Fun
One of my biggest regrets coming back was the fact that I really didn't interact too much with the Indies and other people that were at GDC. I didn't hit any of the parties that went on after dark (and that's where all the real connections get made). Most of my time spent on the expo floor was at the booth, and although I had a few chances to hit the IGF pavilion, I only played a couple of them and quickly returned.

"That's Cave Story/Spelunky"
A lot of visitors to the booth thought my games were pretty indie. So much so that a guy said Descent was a Spelunky mod. That's really cool and all, but it was a bit of a reality check for me. Several of my games have a nice indie kind of flair, but I really haven't found my own voice and color as far as the way my work looks and operates.

Macs = iPhone
One of my biggest gripes about presenting at the booth was the fact that my games were operating on a Mac computer that was Boot Camped to run Windows. A majority of our visitors to the booth thought my games were iPhone Games or that we were a group of Mac developers. It always seemed a bit awkward to tell people about our misrepresentation. Also, a lot of people assumed that my games were available on the Xbox Live Indie Games service because of the 360 controller I was using.

Even with the few things that I felt I did wrong, GDC was a great experience for me, and I'm definitely going back next year!

Visit 3 - 2010

2010-03-07T20:52:00.011-06:00

And here's the big announcement several people over the last couple of years have been waiting for:

A few months shy of Visit 2's two year anniversary, I've started work on it's sequel using XNA, meaning Visit 3 will definitely appear for PC. I would never want to jump the gun, but I'm going to see what I can do to make Visit 3 available through the XBox Live Indie Games service as well.

I'm not going to reveal any of the new features yet, but the game will certainly remain closely tied to its predecessors while expanding the dynamics of the puzzles.

The Visit games are a series of lighthearted platforming games that utilize a unique blend of Adventure and Puzzle gaming. They have featured interesting and challenging puzzles that require the player to change colors and push blocks to deactivate puzzles impeding the their progress. Very dynamic cooperative puzzles made their debut in the second game, where the player gains control of a second character to activate switches and complete puzzles that the lone protagonist could never defeat on his own. The games have also featured several interesting and familiar environments to traverse and explore.

If you're still not sure what the Visit games are truly about, feel free to play both of the games, Visit and Visit II: Dark Tower. Each of the titles were originally developed using Game Maker 7 for two separate YoYoGames competitions. Visit received an honorable mention in the Ancient Civilization themed competition, while Visit II took 2nd Prize in the Cooperation competition.

If you want to see what others have thought about the Visit series, read and watch more at these links:
Freeware Game Pick: Visit (Ted Lauterbach)
Freeware Game Pick: Visit II (Ted Lauterbach)
Bytejacker Episode 09(starts approx. 3:30 in)
Cooperation Competition Winners!

GDC Time

2010-02-28T20:24:00.000-06:00

I wanted to let everyone know that I'm leaving for San Francisco to attend the Game Developers Conference!

Several other students and I from my university have been selected to attend the event, the only stipulation being that we each do a little time at the booth our school paid for, giving us the chance to show off the work we've done to a really large group of people!

The big team, Heatbees, is planning on showing a demo of their big project that I co-designed, and I hope to be able to show off several of my works, if not all of them. If you're attending GDC, be sure to check us out!