What have I been up to? Shooting video for 343 Industries!

So after 6 months of unemployment, getting my CSM (Certified Scrum Master) and working on a 1 year certificate from MSU (Michigan State University) in Game Design and Entrepreneurship, I landed a gig as an Associate Producer at 343 Industries.

I'm still working on games, I had a hard time finding employment for some reason, three times I was told I was hired, only to have the position canceled or some kind of hang up in HR, it was bizarre.  Anyway, a lot of those jobs side tracked me into doing prototypes, etc. as part of the interview process, did them, was told I was hired and then something would always result in it not coming through... It's fine though, I'm working for 343 and it's going great.

Still not sure what I'm going to do with this blog...  A game came out about 2 months after I posted my Defend the Earth video, and it was pretty much the same game I was working on, but with neon vector graphics.  It discouraged me a lot from finishing the title, still might do it after this MSU course is finished though.  For the MSU course I was required to concept, develop and publish a game in 2 months.  I'm working with Danielle on this, and it's coming along pretty nicely.  It's a voxel game in the style of Zombies Ate my Neighbors, but with an interesting

It will be a browser / phone game.

Here's the pitch she made for it:

This was my pitch for a Bolax themed Dungeons spinoff VR game:

Oh and I went to Steam Dev days got a free Steam Lync and a Steam controller, wish they gave out Vive this year (would love to dev on one, the theme of this event was very VR orientated, gave me a ton of ideas and the Vive is simply amazing) but hey free controller! :D

The Microsoft Shuffle.

Well, I was told last week I was getting my own private office, very excited.  Then this monday I was given three weeks notice.  We just merged with another team, and it pushed our head count to high, so seniority rules.  Understandable, but now I'm stuck job  hunting again.

Been working through a web app development course, got inspired to make a web app / universal app for the Windows phone due to their barren marketplace.  I will be sure to share the beta here, once I have it live on my site.

I also registered a trademark for it ;)  I'll share it, along with the site and our logo at the same time.  I've never filed a Federal trademark before, always relied on the cheaper State ones prior, didn't know I was lose my job at the time, but I did score a sweet URL and an even sweeter Trademark name,  thanks to Danielle's wonderful suggestions!

Anyway, more coming soon-ish.  Just wanted up date this thing, since it's been neglected for a while.

William

We lease it back from the company we sold it to and that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account.

Yo,

Just a quick update.

This is an early draft of my game trailer for "Defend the Earth".  Still not sure about the dialogue sequences yet.  I have also discovered that Fraps does not like capturing footage from Unity Preview.  Anyway, I'm not sure when I will give this another pass and fix it up at the moment, I go to work today at 9-5 after New Years break.  I've been sick for a week so now that I'm pretty much well again I have to get back into the swing of things.  I have 1 month to prove myself in my new position, so things are going to be a bit stressful this month.  Did I complete anything on my list from my last post?  Not really.  Was still too fuzzy headed to think clearly enough and work on anything major.  Then New Years came and Danielle insisted we break open our Xmas gift of Dying Light.  I also visited some friends and tested out the Gear VR (very cool) and got a ton of ideas :P

So yeah if I have time I'll try to complete my listed tasks as soon as possible, but right now my job / future is taking priority.  

Other than that, I hope you all enjoy the WIP trailer:

Right thinking people in this country are fed up with being sick and tired.

Hi All,

Day 5 of being infected with the plague.  I'm actually feeling better today.  I wish I could say that I wrote a lot, or completed some programming, but no.  I've been in a NyQuil induced stupor, coughing an dying by inches.

Since I feel better today, after waking up at 1pm, I'm going to try and do something

• Going to try to edit at least two chapters of my novel.
  
• Going to tweak the trailer and upload it here.
  
• Going to code for least an hour.
  
• Sleep.

He must have died while carving it.

Greetings and salutations,

I am alive and am currently not sick. I went to work day, but I so have tomorrow off so that's nice. Nothing planed for Xmas, Danielle is sick and I have to work the day after so doing a long commute to a gathering isn't really in the cards. I'm still re-writing my novel. Very conflicted over 3rd person Omniscient narration and limited 3rd person narration. I work a half day Sunday... Basically this is my schedule at the moment;

Work December 24th.
Dec 25th and 26th OFF.
Work 1/2 day December 27th.
Work December 28th - December 30th.
December 31st - January 3rd OFF.

I have plans to meet with my friends John and Chase to see Star Wars and test out John's new Gear VR on the evening of the December 27th and to meet with my friend Keith on January 2nd to play some D&D with a mystery group of people. Outside of that, my schedule should be fairly clear.

My current goals remain the same;

1. Finish re-writing my novel, run it past Danielle, if she approves it, I will publish it on Kindle, 
2. Finish Defend the Earth. 
3. Re-code game website. 
4. finish C# course. 
5. Finish Escape for the Salad Kingdom, once Danielle is over the flu. 

Nate and John are both talking about getting Dungeons running on Linux/Mac using some new binary compiler, sounds very exciting :) Better late than never as they say.

Outside of this? I'd love to do a game jam, or something. I've been wanting to attempt a short 3D game for some time now. But yeah as you can see my plate is kind of full. Re-writing a 35,000+ word story isn't something that is done quickly... Or maybe I just suck at it? lol... Ah well. Hope you all are having a good holiday, whatever you believe in. I will be spending Xmas with my cats.

William, Danielle, Nerbyl, Mochi, Spike and Petra.

Well, don't worry, sir, I used to suffer from short stories.

Well the great and mighty Xmas break is upon us.  I will be staying home with my cats, instead of seeing my family for a variety of personal and work related reasons.  However, I will be attending my Grandmother's funeral on the 22nd.  I actually finished my Defend the Earth trailer, got some feedback via my pre-screening on Facebook and am now tweaking it.  When it's done, I'll be posting it here.  I'll need about 2 hours of consecutive work time to fix it up.  

As for finishing the game itself, I'm going to need about two days of solid coding time in order to review my current code (regain a full understanding of what I've done) and then finish it up.  Unfortunately I'm only getting about 1-2 hours of inconsecutive free time a day, until break happens.  I even worked part of this weekend and was stuck doing chores, errands, catching up on sleep and such for most of it. 

So what have I been doing with my time this week?  Well I've been doing a perspective re-write of my novel.  Yes, I wrote a novel, a little over a year ago, I shared it with about two dozen people, of which about six gave me feedback, including a blow by blow list of issues provided by an actual editor.  My main crime is being a head hopper.  I just can't seem to master the omniscient 3rd person narrative in novel form, while it's super easy to do in film scripts.  So I'm attempting to re-write it into a limited 3rd person perspective, but I still want to have the narrative opening and closing via 30's serials... No idea how that's going to work.  In the end I might have to kill (cut) that baby, which is sad, since it's that kind of intro / outro that I use to love about classic sci fi serials.  I'm a huge fan of 60's - 70's sci fi novels, and it's unfortunate that their style of world setting openers is apparently "boring" to modern readers.  In addition I will be extending the novel, taking in some recent changes in society, some of the humor wouldn't fly quite as smoothly in the current market and I can add jokes that are a bit more bite-ing, in a different way, by today's standards.  This book was based on a script I co-wrote with Danielle about 7 or 8 years ago, and just look at how uptight things have gotten in that period of time.  Hell Dungeons highly offended some people and compared to Adult Swim or South Park it was pretty tame.

I want to get this book finished up and on Amazon, so I can move onto three other stories which I think they would be a bit more interesting and unique.  Already have the outlines and slug scenes written.  Unlike my current work, "Captain Hairdo Conquers the Cosmos", they are not really based on anything directly, or spoofing anything, but rather my own "world" and hypothesis of what things may come.  They are completely original stories, any one of which I could see randomly appealing to some of the younger adult audiences.  I'm good at getting a first draft out, I basically need about 20 cups of coffee and a weekend alone.  Polishing that manuscript, as you can see, takes me YEARS.  lol.  Oh and no my blog is nothing like how I write books, this is glorified email / journal writing to me.  I don't proof read this (much) and just write how I think.  Oh and I have two different versions of cover art for the book that were made about eight months ago.  I'm leaning towards the semi-realistic one of the right, but the cartoon one looks much more crisp.  What do you all think?

Oh and yes I did do SOME work on the game this week, I updated the level select system, check out my amateur artwork ;)

Working for a living.

Hello everyone; male, female, other and undefined,

I am alive and now living in Kirkland.  I landed that job I applied for and have been working there for the past three months.  The cost of living in this area, is much higher than I anticipated, but not unmanageable.  Essentially, my disposable income hasn't changed very much, but at least I'm employed and alive.  I am interviewing for other higher paying positions currently.  Between the two hours of commuting and the 8 hour shifts I have about two hours of time to call my own during the day, so that has resulted in my blog being neglected.  So you have no real idea of the things that have changed in past few months.  I'll give you a quick rundown.

We presented at Seattle Six, got a lot of people excited about Dungeons: The Eye of Draconus and walked away with a lot of contacts.  We moved to Kirkland, both Danielle and myself getting contract jobs at the big M$ and having our lives revolve around work, food, unpacking and sleep.  The front of my car was ripped off and had to be bolted back on, since we didn't have the money for it to be replaced or repaired properly.  I am receiving medical treatment for an issue that has plagued me now for about eight years, thanks primarily to this job.

"Defend the Earth" has not been canceled, in fact it's about to enter Beta!  I will be posting up a trailer this weekend.

"Escape from the Salad Kingdom" is not canceled either, in fact I am switching animation systems to make it easier to animate / code.

My current personal goals are; Finish "Defend the Earth", wrap up my online C# class, Finish "Escape from the Salad Kingdom," complete several of my Blender tutorials and make a VR test project.

I may be participating in an Online Bootcamp starting next year.

Oh and today at noon my Grandmother died...  She will be missed, hate to end on a downer, but I feel like that needs to be shared.  It's probably the reason I felt that it was time for me to update my blog.