So this is it.

I'm guessing there will be one more blog post after this. I'm not a natural blogger and especially over the last little while you may have noticed I haven't had the chance to get many blogs up. The project has gone well and Foamzilla is now availible at:

http://www.foamzilla.com

For those that don't know yet. We do have some plans for writing another patch version and continuning it on, but I'd better be conservative and say there's no guarentee on that. Tomorrow is our industry presentations. The big day. I'm totally excited about the game and I can't wait to present. It's amazing how fast the time has gone.

Any changes or updates will certainly be posted on Foamzilla.com. Plus we will post at least a postmortem here, (if not continue on more Foamzilla news in general.)

Thoughts at the end? A few weeks back we couldn't see anything but the bugs. With some time and certainly some polish the game is impressive. We'll just have to wait and see what happens next!

- Mark out.

5 Days..

Not much time left at all. Production on Foamzilla has nearly stopped as we get materials ready for the presentation. All the printed material is coming together nicely but our actual presentation still needs a lot of work. Over these past few months we've become very good at buckling down and making very good out of very little. I'm certainly not the type to depend on it, but I am confident everything will turn out great. We've come a long way, we certainly feel like we've earned it and we are going to be plowing through any other bumps in our way. No promises on pictures or videos for this last little bit..

Yay! Pictures!

It's been a while since I posted any media content. I feel bad, but not too bad, I've been seriously missing out on sleep just to get basic stuff done. I really have been too busy.

The game is looking good. That last 10% makes the difference between a 4.0 and a 9.0 on metacritic I swear. The focus is still on the presentation but every day we try to get a little bit more done on the game just to patch up any areas we feel aren't as strong as they should be.

They'll be tons of areas we'd like to patch up at the end, but what we get for final will still be something I personally will be very proud of.

Talking about packaging yesterday, and me and Johan aren't agreeing on it. Usually games are distributed in DVD type boxes made up to look like actual game boxes. Previous students have done an excellent job. Johan would rather try something new and distribute the game in one of those toy bags you get plastic dinosaurs with. I admit it gives it a new spin, I'm just concerned there will be some extra problems with it that we haven't considered. Johan wants Foamzilla to stand out from the rest. So he's going to mock the toy idea up. I will admit it would be cool to get one of those pills that turn into a dinosaur for it.

Johan and I have a good working relationship. We certainly don't agree on everything, but we are always great at working things out. I can tell if he feels passionately about something, and he can tell the same for me. And we both respect each other enough to try something that the other really would like to try. It wasn't all peaches and cream, but when this is over, it will have definitely been a pleasure to work with him, and I will miss it.

Here's some pics of the tutorial areas:











I don't know if I'll have any time to fraps some videos for the blog, although I REALLY REALLY would like to. Development has come a long way, and those ragdolls are just a blast!

- Mark out

That last 10 percent..

Makes all the difference in the world. We've been spending the last few days polishing foamzilla as best we can. And although it won't reach a polished state in line with industry standards, we are a student project, and have decided to put our best foot forward making gameplay a fun and complete experience.

The two last features we implemented; ragdolls and soldiers screaming and saying stuff when thrown about have upped this game's fun level but crazy amounts. I'm glad I spent the day to get ragdolls into the game, and the few minutes it took to put the sounds it. It sounds insane, just spending a little to get so much more fun in the game, but thats the trick. When you are working on a project you are considering everything. Including incomplete things like the menu is, how the background just doesn't work, how textures aren't aligning. And although all those little pieces do add to the game experience, those core fun areas have to be focused on first. It's an easy thing to say but VERY hard to do. I dare anyone out there who hasn't made a game to try it.

I've been terrible on the picture / video front as well. I'm going to devote some time to doing that this week too. We have technically reached final. Although we are doing little tweaks here and there. And even those little tweaks are increasing the fun of play but leaps and bounds.

We both now have to prepare for the industry presentation, and that is another whole large project on it's own. We'll do what we can, and after seeing what we did with Foamzilla, I know we will do something great.

Notice I'm not so unhappy about the project anymore? Like I said before, it's that last 10 percent. As well, I've tried to take it a bit more easy in these last few days. It really helps one's perspective on things, and having a good perspective can sometimes be more important than having the perfect product.

Pictures and video soon.

Does it make sense? Or is it fun?

This has been a hard pill to swallow. I've had a personal pet peeve against games that have components just slapped in there for no reason. It doesn't really relate to anything in the game, and in some cases it isn't even funny. On the other hand, games which take the time to place everything in a meaningful way and make sure things are linked up seem so much deeper. And in my opinion, better.


But here's the thing. When it comes to games, it has to be fun first. I suppose I can't remember a lot of games that weren't a lot of fun but made a lot of sense. Either way, games a bit more like popcorn than a movie. They are quick, enjoyable, and bits of them get stuck in your mental dental work, but you don't really care as long as they taste good.

So to those who play the game out there, yes, I'm absolutely aware of every single thing in the game that makes no sense at all, and they drive me crazy every day. But.. the goal right now is to make things fun. And in the context of Foamzilla at least we can bend things (or squish things) a bit more than normal.

Like I said, it's a hard pill to swallow for me. But it's going down... Slowly..

Foamzilla is "almost" on track. Finishing up opening cinematic today. And I've played with some karma ragdolls this morning. With luck we may be able to get those in to final. We'll see. What is hurting the most is just trying to polish up the features we do have in the game and not add others that would make the game 300% better. Thats positively killer. So things were supposed to be done today, but I'm going to push it off one more day for now. The worst case scenario is everything ready on monday. And that would seriously cram us.

Mark out.

Monday Beta time

It's back to monday. And after this weekend I'm a bit thankful. Rather, this weekend was a good break. The expo went well. I got to talk to a number of people from the industry while I was volunteering, and I would have liked to chat with more. It still turned out very well. The presentations were excellent as well.

As for Foamzilla, just volunteering for half the day on saturday helped clear the head a lot. Sunday did the same. Johan put together a quick presentation for Foamzilla on sunday and did an excellent short video for it. I was up there answering questions with him afterwards.

Looking at the project right now it's not so bad either. It's really well done for a student project, but I was hoping for professional. One of my instructors kindly told me that the first mistake students make is assuming they will project professional quality products. Yeah, guilty.

All the same we will push it to be as good as it can be for the industry presentation, and then afterwards, we'll continue to polish it up for a version 1.1.

Time to get to school.

Ahhh the effects of burnout...

I've been here before, and I know what it is like. I'm overworked, very tired, and often not in a great mood. Sure signs that you need a break. Foamzilla is doing.. actually I'll reserve saying anything about it right now. Or rather I'll say this. I'm not pleased with how it is right now at all. However, given burnout and how others are reacting to it, it likely is doing just fine. One skill that I'm proud to say I have is to know when my judgment is clouded enough and I should defer to someone else's opinion. This is one of those cases.

I'm also opting out of a large speech this weekend on Foamzilla. My partner is fine not preparing at all, with how I am now, I know I would have to prepare quite a bit to say anything positive about it. The fact that we don't have the time to do this, means I'll have to rule myself out. I know Johan will do an excellent job.

This weekend we are also supposed to hit our beta mark. I personally don't feel we are far enough ahead to do that. But the mentors think we are and that is a good sign. I'm going to get some rest for tomorrow, I am volunteering at the games expo, and for that I certainly should be a lot more rested than I am now.

Almost beta.. Almost Expo

I've been pretty much triple booked for everything last few days. We have the expo coming up which we will be volunteering for, Foamzilla has to make beta. There's tons of very small things I would love to add to make it so much better. But it's cutoff. We've decided we may work on it after the final presentation to get it up to the level we would like. Honestly that "level" would take another 6 months of full time work. We'll see how much does get done. I've been bad posting, this time it's blogster's fault. I only have a few times a day I can post. And if blogster isn't up, I can't do much. I've been bad on posting videos, but there has simply been no time. I will post a pic today of the tutorial section greenhouse area. This weekend is going to be like a ride at the hell-a-vator. Terrifying, nerver racking, exciting, and when it's all over, I'll be wondering when I get to go again.

Productive day..

It''s super late now, so I'm not posting much. I still have to be in, in the morning. I got the barrels back to destroying objects around them, including soldiers. Objective text is in the game, as well the hints text now waits for the last one to play before playing a new one.. Yeah it all sounds boring. But it does really help the game. It's a fight now to try to get more fun or a game that doesn't look super unfinished...

Johan has been working hard at the emitters too. They should be all done tomorrow. Getting "bug free" by next week, especially with the expo?? It's not looking like thats going to happen.

Foamzilla.com is up now too. Just a simple page but I'll update my portfolio on it later.

Night!

Speech time..

Unreal.. not the game. The situation. We've (Team Foamzilla) been asked to give a speech to 100+ people at the expo this next weekend. It's not a big speech or anything grandiose. But all the same it's a great honor and I would like to do a decent job. It's also good practice for the industry presentation. The problem of course is time. We've accepted, but there's just not enough time to get it all done. The game is going to be released buggy as is, I am just trying my best to improve gameplay and make it worth of it's title.

I want to thank again all the people who've helped. You all have no idea how much even a little bit of help does for a team of 2.

It's also the last term for our class and thats sinking in too. We won't see each other really after this, and I think out of all the GD classes, ours has likely been the tightest. It's going to be hard to say goodbye to everyone. But for now at least, our minds are distracted by the million other things we have to do.

I better get some sleep.

The whirlwind continues..

It's just getting busier and busier. None of this should be a surprise by now, but we've been asked to speak at the games expo on our project. Just our group, it's quite and honor so of course we are accepting.

As for Foamzilla itself, having done the alpha review now the message is pretty clear. Our progress has been great, but the funfactor still needs to be jacked up. I did know this, but when it came to priorities the best peice of advice came telling us that instead of making sure the game was complete and bug free it was more important to make sure it was fun. I didn't really think about that before. I wanted to get a complete game so badly, and I hadn't given thought to the fact that the game even after polish wouldn't be as fun as it should be.

So we've done some testing now with some other students who let them record them playing. This helps a lot going back over where problems arose and what to fix. And there's no way I'm posting those vids up here. I'm just happy they let us tape them.

We are pushing on for fun full throttle. Brennan is still helping us out, which again is fantastic. Better get back to work..

Return to School's Eve

So it's the final hour of the final day off. Well, I used it as catchup time more than time off, but all the same it's gone far too soon! Progress has been good. Not as good as I would have liked, but decent. The general flow of the game is there, most of the major features I wanted to get finished for the break have been done. (At least to a point..) I could really use another week though..

Oh well. The design doc and level design doc have been updated. Neither to the level I would like them to be. I did get the foamzilla site up and running, it's a redirect now, but by the time tomorrow swings around I will have the flash menu up.

The portfolio sites for me and Johan I didn't get a chance to do. But I think I'll take a portion of next weekend to get them done. They are absolutely vital for the expo and the big presentation coming up.

I hope everyone had a good new years and a good christmas. One more crazy month left for Foamzilla. Let's see how it goes.